Turning Back The Clock On Abortion

The New Republic: Supreme Court's Decision Based On Old-Fashioned, Discredited Views On Women

(The New Republic)  This column was written by Christine Stansell.

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Thank God for President Bush, and thank God for Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito," intoned Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention last week, after the Supreme Court announced its decision in Gonzales v. Carhart, the so-called partial-birth abortion case. But Land also should have thanked Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose majority opinion dangerously reframes the abortion debate.

Kennedy doesn't proceed from the question of harm to the unborn — the premise on which the congressional act in question is based. Instead, he reasons that the ban on D&X procedures — the medical name for what the anti-choice movement calls partial-birth abortions — should be permitted because it is meant to protect women from making a choice that goes against their nature. "Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child," Kennedy declares. Concerned that women may learn the details of how the procedure is performed only after the fact, he writes, "The State has an interest in ensuring so grave a choice is well informed."

Kennedy's opinion undermines constitutional protections for a woman's right to make decisions established in Roe v. Wade. And, just as disturbingly, it summons up assumptions about women that go back to discredited paternalistic decisions of the Supreme Court. "It's only a couple of paragraphs in the decision," notes Yale Law School Professor Reva Siegel. "But it's alarming." In Kennedy's words, one hears the echo of the anti-choice movement's new emphasis on abortion as a de facto violation of something at the very core of women's being. Medical technicalities take up the bulk of the Court's majority opinion, but the reasoning concerns the nature of women and the integrity of their moral choices — an implicit rejection of the most mainstream tenets of modern feminism.

Legal abortion owes an enormous debt to the women's movement; without question, feminists were critical in the last stages of the push. But the idea of abortion as a necessity for women's well-being first came from liberals and moderates in the 1960s and even predated feminist arguments for a woman's right to choose. For nearly 50 years, Americans have been able to separate the more abstract arguments about morality and women's rights from the very concrete issues of women's integrity and their health. Kennedy repudiates this understanding by reviving antique views of women as well as endorsing the new pseudoscience of the anti-choice movement.

Often lost in the debate over D&X abortion is the fact that the procedure is exceedingly rare; in 2000, there were just 2,200 cases — or 0.17 percent of all abortions. The procedure is rare because it is used to end a pregnancy late in the second trimester or later, before viability, in a tiny number of cases when the woman's life is in danger. Abortions late in the second trimester are medically involved, potentially risky, painful, and emotionally difficult. So who waits that long?

The answer is simple: women and girls in states of duress. This includes teenagers who didn't realize they were pregnant, or kept hoping they weren't pregnant, or were too frightened to tell anyone and get help (a common plight of incest victims). It also includes women whose pregnancies have gone wrong, such as women found to be carrying fetuses with serious central nervous system anomalies like hydrocephaly.

Ironically, it was precisely women like these, caught in painful circumstances, who first prompted public awareness of the need to overhaul abortion law. Before Roe v. Wade, abortion was as widely practiced as it is today, an open secret despite being illegal everywhere. But, in the late '50s, medical professionals faced a public health crisis as the abortion rate soared and the woman hemorrhaging from botched procedures became a familiar presence in hospital emergency rooms. Reformers began by attacking laws that prevented women whose lives were threatened or who were pregnant as a result of rape or incest from getting abortions. They called for laws allowing "therapeutic" abortion in "hardship" cases to be authorized by a hospital physicians' committee. In the '60s, the idea of therapeutic abortions gained force, garnering support from liberal Protestants and Jews, lawyers, psychiatrists, and social workers. Small bands formed across the country to press the issue in state legislatures. Two panics about birth defects — the thalidomide scandal and a 1965 rubella epidemic — stirred up discussion about what it meant to a woman to give birth to a severely damaged child. The idea of urgent need expanded from a pregnancy that endangered a mother's life to one that endangered her mental health. By the late '60s, reformers had won laws for therapeutic abortion in a number of states.

Over the short run in the '60s, therapeutic abortion really only showed the urgent need for a much bigger change. The therapeutic "exception" never worked: Applications were few, because women were put off by the time-consuming and judgmental screening process before all-male physicians' panels, and most women didn't qualify, anyway. Committees strained to minimize the number of applications they approved, and there were horror stories of women denied — such as the woman confined to her bed by polio. And committees weren't the only problem.

[yeshuas_lion]

Of course Sy takes an extremist point of view, and in a civil society concerned with civil debate and discourse there is no reasoning with a person who is entirely unreasonable, who is coming from a very skewed and irrational point of view. The rhetoric is old and tired; reminiscent of old-time "fire and brimstone" preachers or of the "old-guard" Marxist. It is certainly obsolete, not suited for the 21st Century, (by the way, welcome to the year 2007, you're stuck somewhere in the 50's and 60's)- the presentation of false scenerios of fear, are simply tactics with no substance. There is no basis in fact. This is the "scary monsters" theory, which may work on a grade-school playground, but it does not work in adult debate and conversation.

In other words, your presentation is not believable by any stretch of the imagination and therefore can be considered a fable or myth

[sy2502]

Here is what a society that considers embryos and fetuses just like people would look like:
- Since every sexually active woman can become pregnant at any sexual encounter, every woman will have to take regular mandatory pregnancy tests.
- If the mandatory pregnancy test turns out positive, she will have to be locked up under supervision and strict control to ensure that nothing she does, eats, or drinks can harm the fetus.
- If she has a miscarriage, she will go through criminal prosecution, to ascertain that nothing she did caused the death of the fetus. Miscarriage will be equated to 2nd degree murder.
- Fetuses will be awarded the same tax breaks of children.
- Women will carry medical certificates to show they can ride in the carpool lane, since there are 2 people in the car.
- If a pregnant woman gets a illness from, say, a co-worker, and the fetus dies of complications from that illness, the co-worker will be prosecuted as accessory to murder.
- Since the woman will have no possible way of terminating her pregnancy, she can sue a guy who wants to have *** without a condom.

Oh of course, the last one will never happen, since it would put some of the burden on the guy, and the Judeo-Christian tradition wants the WOMEN to be damned, downtrodden, pounded into submission, and stripped of any right to their own body and especially to their reproductive system.

Good luck, I hope you like the society you are trying to create. Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini would be proud of you!

[yeshuas_lion]

To carry life and to have a new and seperate being, fully alive and fully human, come forth from one's body, is a priviledge and gift that can not be duplicated by any other life experience.

Woman was chosen to carry "The Gift of LIFE" It is an honor beyond any other. The span of sacrifice, in which a woman gives over her body as a sanctuary for the yet to be born child, is a mere 9 months. (What wonderful, miraculous creation of life have you brought forth from your body Mr. Todd, in 9 months?)

But it is exactly what Katg says, with the Gift, comes responsibility. Both the man and the woman are ultimately responsible for the life they have chosen to create.

[guysdigdirt]

kat & yesh, you 2 nutcakes crack me up, polishing each other's sniper rifles. you have too much time on your hands...
Posted by actornaught
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It is interesting what some people say when they know they are wrong but do not have the courage to admit it. They attack the messenger for their correct message.

[guysdigdirt]

Ugh. Pro-lifers make me sick.

YOU pay for the health care cost, the cost burden of raising that child, the social cost.

People who bomb Planned Parenthood are terrorists.

Posted by toddpw01
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Interesting that people who want to save lives make you sick. How do pro-death people make you feel?

Is it all about cost to you? If so go to planned parethood and get some free condoms, then there would not be the problem.

I agree, those who bomb or kill others are terrorists. Not much different than those Pro-Abortion people. Why are you not at Gitmo?

[guysdigdirt]

You young women are now the ones to insure your sisters a safe choice.
Posted by kansas1946
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It is not a choice, it is a life.

Why did you not spend your time teaching your sisters to be responsible?

[actornaught]

kat & yesh, you 2 nutcakes crack me up, polishing each other's sniper rifles. you have too much time on your hands...

[katg21]

YOU pay for the health care cost of carrying that baby to term. YOU pay for the cost burden of raising that unwanted child. YOU pay for the social cost of the extra crime and poverty you're forcing on poorer families to punish them for disobeying YOUR religious beliefs.

Get off the religious *** already, this is about taking responsibility for your actions. Stop giving people the easy way out and maybe this world will be a better place.

[katg21]

You see it always begins as a lie, and the lie itself is so very seductive....

The lie always promises more freedom.
The lie always promises a better life.
The lie always tells you,
"This is for your own good."
The lie is always clothed in compassion.
Posted by Yeshuas_lion at 02:21 AM : May 18, 2007

Ahh, TRUTH... speaks volumes, thank you.

[katg21]

Yeshuas_lion,

Beautifully stated.

[toddpw01]

Ugh. Pro-lifers make me sick. Pregnancy carries plenty of risk, and childrearing is quite expensive, but you don't care about that. All you care about is saving the precious little embryos even if they aren't independently viable yet. You don't care about the mother at all. You wouldn't stop me from having a tumor removed, but if a pregnancy was threatening a mother's life you'd still make her abortion illegal if you could!

YOU pay for the health care cost of carrying that baby to term. YOU pay for the cost burden of raising that unwanted child. YOU pay for the social cost of the extra crime and poverty you're forcing on poorer families to punish them for disobeying YOUR religious beliefs.

2000 years ago people married at puberty and we knew nothing about disease. You can make a great case for abstinence in that environment. But nowadays we have much better medicine and understanding, and economically it makes a lot more sense to build your career up before you start a family. Why do you want to keep poor people down?

Women throughout history have resorted to illegal abortion when they felt they had no better options. But it took the baby boomers hitting their teens to cause a wave of emergency room vists from botched back-alley abortions -- that is how the legalization movement started.

People who bomb Planned Parenthood are terrorists. The only reason we don't send them to Gitmo is because the President agrees with their choice of religion.

[yeshuas_lion]

It always begins with a lie, by a few who are well-meaning, but by most who are not...

The Woman's Movement claim was that they were speaking for a large sector of society, a silent majority who did not have a true voice.

They claimed they were speaking for those who were not being heard or represented, and who were in fact being treated only as property.

The Movement's claim was that of a compassionate understanding of what it truly meant to be accepted as FULLY HUMAN; that women were not being treated equally and as fully human.

In order to be regarded as fully human,the personhood of a woman must be respected and fully accepted. She must be seen as a person.

To be seen as a person means to be given the right to make ones own decision, and the ultimate test of personhood is that those rights pertain to ones own existence and personal life. That a woman has the right to choose life, that she breathes, moves, feels, and is aware of her surroundings entitles her to equal; equal rights of life and happiness, not deminished or unequal rights. Life; that one exists truly entitles them to all the rights of life that are enjoyed by everyone else in existance.

That, even more so, we should safeguard the existence of the very least of these.

[yeshuas_lion]

It was the Woman's Movement who draped themselves in compassion. Who became the voice for women everywhere, because a woman, afterall, couldn't be expected to truly speak for herself.

So, the Woman's Movement became the mouthpiece, to speak for women everwhere who were too timid, or too ignorant, or too emotional, or too religious, to speak correctly for themselves. They became the self-appointed and self-anointed saviors of women because women could not be expected to know for themselves or do for themselves without the superior help and guidance of those in the Woman's Movement. Afterall, women must be told what to do and how to do it. In other words they became the "New Men."

[yeshuas_lion]

Belial, the father of all lies, has been with the World from its inception and knows how to wrap "The culture of death," in sweet smelling sentiment and compassionate words of false comfort and hope.

This is why the debate rages on and on.
It is not of this world.

The premise or concept of abortion comes wrapped up in a neat, tidy, sterile package. Nothing is lost, you have everything to gain, no one is hurt, there is nothing to see or hear, it is quick, it is easy, and always so very, very compassionate.

Money certainly does talk, and the abortion industry certainly does make money.

[yeshuas_lion]

You see it always begins as a lie, and the lie itself is so very seductive....

The lie always promises more freedom.
The lie always promises a better life.
The lie always tells you,
"This is for your own good."
The lie is always clothed in compassion.

[yeshuas_lion]

You see it always begins as a lie, and the lie itself is so very seductive....

The lie always promises more freedom.
The lie always promises a better life.
The lie always tells you,
"This is for your own good."
The lie is always clothed in compassion.

[yeshuas_lion]

I'm not sure that you won, Kansas. It sure hasn't been a "win" situation for the millions of babies mutilated then aborted like trash.

Wasn't that the exact thing you claim to have fought against, that woman were being treated like property, like trash?

[kansas1946]

I am well past the age of having to worry about being able to get a safe and legal abortion. I spent the sixties and early seventies fighting this battle and won. Now it is up to the younger generation of women to take up the standard. I think they are starting to wake up when they can't even get the morning after pill without a bunch of hooey from some pharmacist with an agenda. You young women are now the ones to insure your sisters a safe choice.

[actornaught]

i see extremists still want to race past "when the woman's life is in danger", even if IDX is performed on a non-viable fetus.

The mind is a drunken monkey.

[guysdigdirt]

You want to force me to act according to what you and another few believe.
Posted by sy2502
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I am done with you. You are twisted and dishonest.

Argueing with you is like wrestling with a pig. We both get dirty, but the pig likes it.