Posted on 02/13/2002 9:57:44 AM PST by Tumbleweed_Connection
The partial-birth abortion fight is back. Nowhere is the barbarity of abortion more apparent than here, and nowhere is the dogmatism of the movement that supports it more dramatically displayed.
Last week, the Justice Department asked the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a lower court ruling overturning Ohio's ban on partial-birth abortions. George Bush is behaving exactly as advertised in the campaign - as a pro-life president.
The move has abortion forces apoplectic. ``It clearly represents . . . a new attempt at finding a way to eviscerate Roe vs. Wade,'' insisted Kate Michelman of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. ``Bush is . . . willing to sacrifice the health of American women to further his goal of eliminating the right to choose abortion,'' charged the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy.
The administration's assault on the well-being of American women comes as a request that an appellate court uphold an attempt to limit ``choice'' at its most macabre.
Some 30 states have tried to regulate partial-birth abortions. In 2000, the Supreme Court voided Nebraska's ban because it had only a life-of-the-mother exception, but none for her health. Also, the court noted the law was written in such a way that it might ban a more common abortion method.
The Ohio law is more narrowly drawn and contains a health exception. That wasn't enough for U.S. District Judge Walter Rice.
To invalidate the statute, Rice broadened the definition of health. By ``the mother's health,'' the Supreme Court means the woman has a serious health condition that would be substantially worsened by the continuation of her pregnancy. Rice ruled that since partial-birth abortions pose less of a health risk (because fewer instruments are inserted into the uterus) in certain late-term abortions, a woman's health requires her unimpeded access to the procedure.
In its law, Ohio invoked its interest in ``maintaining a strong public policy against infanticide'' and preventing ``cruelty that should not be unnecessarily inflicted upon any being of human origin.''
Partial-birth abortions fall short of infanticide by mere inches. The abortionist delivers all of the child but its head, jams a medical instrument into the base of the skull and suctions out the brain.
Planned Parenthood claims these abortions are ``extremely rare and done only in cases when the woman's life is in danger or in cases of extreme fetal abnormality.'' None of this is true.
A spokesman for abortion providers admitted that each year 3,000 to 5,000 unborn children are killed in this way. One physician told Congress that 80 percent of the partial-birth abortions he performs are on perfectly healthy women with perfectly normal fetuses.
The American Medical Association notes the procedure is ``ethically different from other destructive abortion techniques,'' because the child is ``killed outside the womb,'' where it has ``an autonomy which separates it from the right of the mother to choose treatments for her own body.'' The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons said it ``blurs the medical, legal and ethical line between infanticide and abortion.''
NARAL and Planned Parenthood are indifferent to the fact that, at the time of its death, the child is three-fourths out of the womb. They insist that there be no limitations on what can be done to the objects of ``choice.'' And the humanity of the most vulnerable among us must never be recognized or even alluded to.
That's why they were outraged when the Department of Health and Human Services announced it was extending prenatal care benefits to poor women under a program that insures children.
In opposing partial-birth abortion, Bush is fighting for all of us. If we allow this evil to continue, we will have lost something basic. The debate isn't just about the humanity of the unborn child, but ours as well.
The tide of public opinion has been changing for the last several years and PP and NARAL are worried. GOOD! I'm hoping we'll get some conservative judges on the Supremes REAL soon and get rid of the legal travesty that is Roe v Wade!
Don Feder said something good about George W. Bush. I am stunned.
If they aren't sure and know their options are limited after a certain point they are more likely to abort early. It's a trade off between saving "bigger" fetuses in exchange for more abortions of "little" fetuses no? Think about it.
Uh, no. I reduce it to--Is it better to have fewer "bigger babies" aborted if it means more "smaller babies" aborted. I don't think so.
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