Category ►►► Abortion

April 18, 2007

Striking a Blow for Civilization

As many of you know -- though for others, it will be a killer shock that will send you reeling away, screaming dark imprecations at me, never to return to Big Lizards, halving out readership, and destroying the entire franchise... huh, maybe I shouldn't tell you!

Oh heck. Full disclosure, blah.

As many of you know, both lizards are somewhat pro-abortion-rights, albeit Sachi much more reluctantly than Dafydd. So I thought you might appreciate the thoughts of admittedly pro-abortion-rights commentators on today's excellent Supreme Court decision upholding the federal ban on the most gruesome and barbaric "medical" procedure allowed (until today) in contemporary America.

The cases decided in one decision today are Gonzales v. Carhart, 05-380, and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, 05-1382.

Shades of grey

First, let me clarify where my abortion tolerance begins and where it ends. It is impossible to hold any position at all on abortion without first holding a position on when, not human life, but human personhood begins. Some folks may not even recognize that they have such a position, but they do; they're just remarkably unself-aware.

1. Some believe human personhood begins at the moment of conception. Thus, any clump of cells that will develop into a human being, if left to prevailing natural processes, is necessarily a human person at all points of that process... right from the very beginning.
2. Others believe that, while a human zygote (a fertilized human egg) is unquestionably the first stage of a human being, it does not become a human person -- with attendant rights, duties, and protections -- until later in the process. They point to the immense structural differences between a zygote, an embryo, a foetus, and a late-term foetus and argue that personhood depends upon some element of that pre-natal development.

What follows is just my personal belief and isn't part of the mainline argument of this post; I'll indent it, and you can skip ahead without losing the thread.

All right, back to today's Court decision upholding the ban on partial-birth abortions.

Lovecraftian horror

I refuse to use the deliberately obscurantist medical circumlocuation, "intact dilation and extraction," the very purpose of which is to conceal what is actually done. A person would have no idea from this title that after dilating the cervix and extracting the body of the baby, the real work begins. I'll let Wikipedia describe what happens next, in their (generally supportive) article on the subject:

An incision is made at the base of the skull and a suction catheter is inserted into the cut. The brain tissue is removed, which causes the skull to collapse and allows the fetus to pass more easily through the birth canal. The placenta is removed and the uterine wall is vacuum aspirated using a suction curette.

All this while everything except for the head is dangling outside of the mother's birth canal. So I think "partial-birth abortion" is the most vivid and accurate name for the horrific procedure.

Solomonic

Obviously, since I completely oppose late-term abortions (after cortical activation), I cannot help but applaud a Court decision that bans one form of late-term abortion, albeit a rare one. But many partial-birth abortions are performed earlier in the pregnancy, at a time when I do not categorially oppose abortion. So why do I oppose partial-birth abortions, even in the second trimester?

For me, this is the tipping point: Suppose the doctor slipped up and allowed the head to emerge as well -- but then continued with the "abortion" anyway: He just went ahead with the incision and the suction catheter and removing the brain tissue of a "foetus" that was actually lying in the mother's lap. What would happen then?

I believe he would be arrested and tried for murder... with special circumstances. The doctor would have delivered a live baby -- and calmly killed it in full view of its mother. At an absolute minimum, it should be considered "depraved indifference to human life;" but I think murder charges would be filed. The DA would call it infanticide, and nearly everybody in the country would agree.

The distinction between infanticide and legal abortion cannot be four inches movement down a tube.

For me (see above), the second trimester is a grey area: the foetus has some distinctly "baby-like" features, while other features (mostly in the higher brain) are not well developed. It's not yet a person, but it's getting somewhat close. Similarly, at the very end of life, a person can lose so much of what makes him a person that decisions about life and death similarly become murky: I support withdrawing life support under some circumstances; but I totally opposed starving Terry Schiavo to death -- and I still believe it was immoral, despite clear post-mortem evidence that Schiavo was not aware enough to notice.

A lot can tip the scales when in the grey zone. And one very strong distinction to me is between a baby that is born and a foetus that is still in the womb.

By the very act of inducing labor and allowing it to proceed virtually to the point of birth, the doctor has tipped the scales from allowable abortion to criminal infanticide. The foetus has become an independent baby... at least as far as this one abortion-rights supporter believes.

As bad as the more common form of second-trimester abortion is, it does not even begin to approach the Nazi-like, nausea-inducing horror of partial-birth abortion. (In dilation and evacuation, the foetus is killed and dismembered inside the womb, then the individual pieces are extracted.) D & E is itself pretty gruesome to contemplate; but there is no point at which the dependent foetus becomes, for all intents and purposes, an independent, delivered baby.

The road not taken

Finally, there is the question of precedent. Both Sens. Hillary Clinton (D-Carpetbag, 95%) and Barack Obama (D-IL, 95%) make a big to-do about the "departure" from Supreme Court precedent of this ruling:

Clinton:

This decision marks a dramatic departure from four decades of Supreme Court rulings that upheld a woman's right to choose and recognized the importance of women's health.

Obama:

I strongly disagree with today's Supreme Court ruling, which dramatically departs from previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women.

To which I reply -- so what? Even if it's true that Gonzales v. Carhart/Planned Parenthood "departs" from precedent -- which claim itself is questionable -- why should we care? The Court is not bound by any previous court rulings... not even its own.

It has the power to overturn itself, as it has many times in the past; for example, when Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), upholding "separate but equal" racial segregation in the public schools, was overturned 58 years later in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). Does any respectable lawyer, Democrat or Republican, complain that Brown didn't follow the racist precedent of Plessy?

For that matter, did Hillary Clinton object when the Court decided Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973) -- thus overturning 170 years of Supreme Court precedent? Since the beginning of the very idea that the Court could overturn federal laws (Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 in 1803), no United States Supreme Court had ever found a constitutional right to an abortion.

It doesn't even follow the precedent of Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 1965, as the Roe decision claimed; since the "right of privacy" doesn't have any obvious connection that I can see to the right to kill a foetus.

In 1973, the year of Roe v. Wade, Hillary Rodham was a newly minted attorney -- though I'm not sure she was yet an attorney at law. So she must have been fascinated by that Court decision. Yet I will eat a bug if anyone can find a Hillary Clinton quotation complaining that Roe v. Wade "marks a dramatic departure" from Supreme Court precedent.

(In 1973, Barack Obama was 12 years old, so I don't hold him to the same standard. But surely he studied Roe v. Wade at Harvard Law in the late 80s. If he ever objected to Roe because it "dramatically departs from previous precedents," it certainly hasn't come to my attention.)

Thus, the entire argument against today's decision, that it violates precedent, is nothing but a shibboleth: It's an infallible guide to those who vehemently oppose Gonzales vs. Carhart/Planned Parenthood. It is an ersatz argument that needn't be further addressed.

Ergo

So yes, I absolutely and enthusiastically applaud this Court decision, in which we managed to hold onto Justice Anthony Kennedy (who wrote the decision) and the four conservative members -- Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito. It's the best news to come out of the Court since they prevented Al Gore from suing his way into the White House.

I rarely say this, but... three cheers for Anthony Kennedy!

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, April 18, 2007, at the time of 4:35 PM | Comments (34) | TrackBack

July 26, 2006

Demonstration of Sanity

The Republican caucus of the United States Senate, and about a third of the Democratic caucus, having demonstrated unusual clarity and sanity by enacting the Child Custody Protection Act -- making it a crime for non-parental, non-guardian adults to transport a minor girl across state lines to procure her an abortion in violation of state parental-notification laws -- collectively deserve a Rumsfeld Award for actually making sane people feel good about government, for a change. (See last post.)

Here are the exceptions, both the bad (the four Republicans who voted against it) and the good (the fourteen Democrats who voted for it):

Republican weirdos who voted against S. 403:

• Lincoln Chafee, RI, 12%;
• Olympia Snowe, ME, 32%;
• Susan Collins, ME, 32%;
• Arlen Specter, PA, 63%.

Democrats who had at least one moment of sanity in their careers by voting for this act:

• Evan Bayh, IN, 95%;
• Robert Byrd, WV, 95%;
• Thomas Carper, DE, 90%;
• Kent Conrad, ND, 85%;
• Byron Dorgan, ND, 100%;
• Daniel Inouye, HI, 90%;
• Tim Johnson, SD, 95%;
• Herb Kohl, WI, 100%;
• Mary Landrieu, LA, 95%;
• Bill Nelson, FL, 80%;
• E. Benjamin "Ben" Nelson, NE, 55%;
• Mark Pryor, AR, 90%;
• Harry Reid, NV, 100%;
• Ken Salazar, CO, 100%.

Just so readers can see how astonishingly rational, non-hysterical, and yes, sensitive the Senate was to the principals involved in such cases, both parents and the girl herself, I think we need to read the law itself (click the second link, the one that reads "[S.403.ES].") Trust me, it's surprisingly short for a product of the United States Congress!

Here is the operative part:

Sec. 2431. Transportation of minors in circumvention of certain laws relating to abortion

`(a) Offense-

`(1) GENERALLY- Except as provided in subsection (b), whoever knowingly transports a minor across a State line, with the intent that such minor obtain an abortion, and thereby in fact abridges the right of a parent under a law requiring parental involvement in a minor's abortion decision, in force in the State where the minor resides, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

`(2) DEFINITION- For the purposes of this subsection, an abridgement of the right of a parent occurs if an abortion is performed on the minor, in a State other than the State where the minor resides, without the parental consent or notification, or the judicial authorization, that would have been required by that law had the abortion been performed in the State where the minor resides.

`(b) Exceptions-

`(1) The prohibition of subsection (a) does not apply if the abortion was necessary to save the life of the minor because her life was endangered by a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness, including a life endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.

`(2) A minor transported in violation of this section, and any parent of that minor, may not be prosecuted or sued for a violation of this section, a conspiracy to violate this section, or an offense under section 2 or 3 based on a violation of this section.

`(c) Affirmative Defense- It is an affirmative defense to a prosecution for an offense, or to a civil action, based on a violation of this section that the defendant reasonably believed, based on information the defendant obtained directly from a parent of the minor or other compelling facts, that before the minor obtained the abortion, the parental consent or notification, or judicial authorization took place that would have been required by the law requiring parental involvement in a minor's abortion decision, had the abortion been performed in the State where the minor resides.

`(d) Civil Action- Any parent who suffers harm from a violation of subsection (a) may obtain appropriate relief in a civil action, unless the parent has committed an act of incest with the minor subject to subsection (a).

I hope this lays to rest the lion's share of absurdist attacks on this law by the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL), by foaming-at-the-mouth Democrats, and by abortion absolutists on various blogs (including the comments section of this blog). It does nothing more than make it a federal crime to deliberately bypass state laws by procuring an abortion for a minor without parental knowledge. This prevents perpetrators from quashing prosecution by challenging state jurisdiction.

If that's "an irresponsible action that will do nothing to protect young women's safety or improve family communication," as Nancy Keenan, president of the National Abortion Rights Action League, characterized it, then words no longer have any meaning at all.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, July 26, 2006, at the time of 2:51 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

July 25, 2006

What Is Wrong (Stop Me If You've Heard This Before) With This Picture?

All right, here is the opening sentence of the Washington Post story:

The Senate voted tonight to make it a crime to take a pregnant girl across state lines to obtain an abortion without her parents' knowledge, handing a long-sought victory to the Bush administration and abortion opponents.

As always, imagine the "Final Jeopardy" theme music as you ponder what is so odd and peculiar about that sentence. I'll wait. (Of course, since I'm writing this before any of you out there has even read it yet, I'm not really waiting. It's relativity, man!)

All right, here it is:

• Is there any sane person in the country who would oppose such a law, preventing random, strange adults from taking some pregnant kid across state lines to get an abortion without her parent's knowledge, let alone permission?
• In which case... why was the bill a "long sought" victory? Why on earth did it take so long?

The reality, of course, is that abortion has become so polarized that it took years and years and years for the bill to get this far. And even today, two-thirds of Democratic senators voted against it!

For years, advocates on both sides of the abortion issue have battled at the state level over narrower questions, including parental notification and consent for minors. Fifty-one Republicans and 14 Democratic senators voted for the bill, while four Republicans, 29 Democrats and one independent voted against it. Sens. George Allen (R-Va.) and John Warner (R-Va.) voted for the bill; Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) and Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.) voted against it.

The abortion debate has become so toxic -- as a direct result of the post-modern Roe v. Wade decision -- that abortion supporters today refuse even to yield on the most obvious, reasonable restrictions (partial-birth abortion, parental consent or at least notification, waiting periods), fearing a "slippery slope" that will somehow lead to California and New York banning all abortions. So they fight hammer and sickle against even such a wimpy, no-brainer law like this.

Oh, by the way, fair disclosure: I support the right of abortion right up until the cerebral cortex forms and activates, usually about the 26th week.

The arguments against this bill are so moronic, I doubt even NARAL spokeswomen really believe what they're saying:

Opponents said the Senate bill will threaten the safety of pregnant girls whose parents might beat them if they learn of their daughters' plans for an abortion. The proponents' approach "is not to deal with the reality of young people" in troubled families, said Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). He cited accounts of an Idaho man who raped and impregnated his 13-year-old daughter, and then killed her when he learned she had scheduled an abortion....

Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, called the Senate vote "an irresponsible action that will do nothing to protect young women's safety or improve family communication."

No, I suppose the responsible thing is to allow any old adult to knock up a fourteen year old, then hotfoot her across the border to clean up his mistake. Without the parents having any idea that their barely post-pubscent daughter is in an ongoing sexual relationship with a forty-three year old monster.

It's fanatics like Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL, 100%) and Nancy Keenan that so often make me feel like apologizing for supporting abortion rights. Fortunately, I know better than to base my positions on the maundering of mental mice. I hold what I hold because of my analysis -- not theirs.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, July 25, 2006, at the time of 6:14 PM | Comments (22) | TrackBack

February 21, 2006

One Last Chance

Let me start off right away by noting that I am not at all unbiased on the issue of partial-birth abortion. Of course, I'm biased on every issue we deal with here on Big Lizards... we're commentators, not news anchors. But I'm even more than usually biased on this one.

So I am in very high spirits that the Supreme Court has agreed to reconsider striking down the federal ban on partial-birth abortion (intact dialation and extraction), which they overturned in 2000 -- with Sandra Day O'Connor casting one of the five votes to overturn the ban. Ironically, on the very first day that her replacement, Samuel Alito, took the bench, the Court voted to hear another appeal of a different judge striking down the same law for the same reason: Gonzales v. Carhart, No. 05-380.

If everyone votes the way he did before, and if Alito votes to allow the law -- none of which is a given, of course -- then partial-birth abortion, which I consider to be infanticide, will be banned across the country. So I am keeping my fingers crossed that Alito will be more rational about this than was O'Connor.

There is not much more to say; we all know the stakes, and we all know that we won't know any more until the arguments... and we really won't know what is going to happen until the Court makes it happen, one way or the other.

So we leave it with the hopeful note that four justices, at least, believe they decided wrongly in 2000.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 21, 2006, at the time of 4:53 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack

February 14, 2006

Choice vs. Life

Patterico is running an interesting symposium on [I'll bet you can't guess the subject!] over on his site. The first two posts are here and here.

It's an interesting discussion; and although everyone is being relatively civil (so far as I've read), I doubt that any good will come of this. Not that we can't discuss abortion; that's doable. Patterico and I could have a very profitable discussion of abortion. But Patterico and his fifty closest friends create only cacophany. I counted about a dozen different positions in the first ten comments!

This is the sort of discussion that should be carried out by a couple of special masters, so to speak. The problem with a "discussion" between so many is that you're forced by sheer weight of response to cherry-pick points to respond to; and even if Patterico were consciously picking out what he considered to be the best arguments on the other side to answer, they wouldn't necessarily be what his opponents consider the best.

In a one on one debate, however, one side must answer the best arguments the other side can find, even if they seem "silly" to the first. Neither party gets to pick which arguments to answer.

In addition, the discussion as presently constructed quickly becomes exclusive to those who started early: at the moment I write this, there are 142 combined comments to the two posts -- which is such a daunting task to read that I suppose any new people will just boot the earlier discussions, post their own opinions blind, and reinvent the whale.

What would make more sense is if two people who took opposite positions on abortion -- or let's say not opposite but distinct -- were to post alternating posts on the same blog. Comments could be open for people to discuss the discussion or toss in their own 2¢ worth on the original questions; but the mainline discussion would be conducted in the blogposts.

This is similar to the format of the K-Lo run blog Opinion Duel. So far she's only done "domestic eavesdropping" and "Danish cartoons;" perhaps she could be induced to run one for abortion, then bring in a couple of people who can argue the case well... though who one would pick I couldn't say.

(Somebody should pick me; I have a perfectly consistent position that is considered pro-abortion by pro-lifers and anti-abortion by pro-choicers. That might make for an interesting "duel," though it would take several posts before my opponent got the range on just what my position reall was! Patterico already knows what my position is, so we could skip the zeroing-in phase, if it were we two.)

Patterico's symposium is definitely worth reading (I'm not so sure about the scores and scores of comments), but I'd much rather see him debate Robert Reich (or even me) one on one.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 14, 2006, at the time of 11:29 PM | Comments (18) | TrackBack

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