OCCOM BILL wrote:If concern for the mother is the sticking point, consider: instead of manipulating the infant so that its entire body except the head comes out first, before you kill it; pull the whole damn thing out in whichever way it would naturally come out... and then kill it. This would be safer for the mother, no?
Abortion is a pretty nasty procedure, regardless of what procedure is chosen, and I see little difference in destroying the fetus
in utero and destroying it
ex utero. That's a pretty slim distinction on which to hang a constitutional right, but the majority in
Gonzalez v. Carhart (.pdf) seems to think that it is a valid distinction. As Justice Kennedy helpfully points out:
The Act excludes most D&Es in which the fetus is removed in pieces, not intact. If the doctor intends to remove the fetus in parts from the outset, the doctor will not have the requisite intent to incur criminal liability.
Although it's true that the act sufficiently informs the doctor as to which procedures are permissible and which are not, there is precious little attention paid to explaining
why one is permissible and the other isn't.
The reason might just be that Justice Kennedy and the rest of the majority thinks that intact D&E (or "partial birth abortion") is just really, really icky. As Kennedy states:
No one would dispute that, for many, D&E is a procedure itself laden with the power to devalue human life. Congress could nonetheless conclude that the type of abortion proscribed by the Act requires specific regulation because it implicates additional ethical and moral concerns that justify a special prohibition. Congress determined that the abortion methods it proscribed had a "disturbing similarity to the killing of a newborn infant," ... and thus it was concerned with "draw[ing] a bright line that clearly distinguishes abortion and infanticide."
So congress and Kennedy are of one opinion here: intact D&E looks too much like a regular vaginal delivery, and that just totally freaks us out.
Furthermore, Kennedy argues that not only is intact D&E icky, but that, if women gave it any thought at all,
they would think it was icky too. He notes:
In a decision so fraught with emotional consequence some doctors may prefer not to disclose precise details of the means that will be used, confining themselves to the required statement of risks the procedure entails.... It is, however, precisely this lack of information concerning the way in which the fetus will be killed that is of legitimate concern to the State.... The State has an interest in ensuring so grave a choice is well informed. It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child, a child assuming the human form.
Ooooh,
gross! As
Slate's
Dahlia Lithwick persuasively argues, however, the solution to the problem of uninformed women is not to ban the procedure but to mandate that the women be informed.
Kennedy attempts to distinguish
Gonzalez from the previous decision in
Stenberg, which held that a similar statute was unconstitutional, on the grounds that congress has now discovered that there is a medical consensus that intact D&E is
never medically necessary. But, as even Kennedy is forced to acknowledge, there is no such consensus in the medical community. The "consensus" is a myth, invented by congress solely for the purpose of evading the holding in
Stenberg -- and it succeeded. It is on the basis of this "consensus" that Kennedy concludes that the act doesn't pose an unconstitutional burden on the right of women seeking an abortion. After all, Kennedy would reason, if there's no medical necessity for the procedure, there is no undue burden on women by banning the procedure.
That's a rather startling conclusion, and one that has grave consequences not only for the right guaranteed by
Roe but potentially for any right.
Gonzalez seems to suggest that, as long as congress can manufacture a reasonable excuse for saying that something is unnecessary to the exercise of a constitutional right, then it is constitutionally permissible to ban that thing without impairing the right. One could argue, then, with equal logic that since newspapers are not necessary to the exercise of free speech, then there's no constitutional barrier to banning newspapers. That should be troubling to anyone, regardless of what side of the abortion issue one stands.
), and at the time the video news story was released; she was on her way home. Unless there is a threat to the woman's health; how then do you ignore the viable baby's rights as set forth in Roe?
Why should I assume that? I've read that even the doctors who perform these procedures admit the majority are purely elective, NOT what you describe. Hence; I used the word elective.