Letters to the Editor
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For obvious reasons...
...most of the comments deal with the effect of the ruling on women. There is another effect, and a pretty chilling one: The court has established a precedent that Congress may order a doctor not to perform the procedure that doctor judges to be the safest and best for their patient.
Has the court ever done that before? Any lawyers out there?
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ANONYMOUS
I told you where I went for undergraduate, UMCP and now I'm at Washington&Lee for post
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Dr's are not ethicists
Somehow, the idea of the Supreme Court making that choice rather than a physican scares me.
Science tells us what can be done, however science cannot tell us what should or shouldn't be done. Personally I want the ethicists (philosophers, theologians, etc) to decide what should and shouldn't be done. After all there are tons of things that are scientifically possible, however without a discussion of the "should and oughts" then we will become a sad society indeed.
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Jennilaya
Yes, you're right. Sorry.
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AMA
Actually, the AMA did include this bit when it said it supported a ban: First, the bill would allow a legitimate exception where the life of the mother was endangered, thereby preserving the physician's judgment to take any medically necessary steps to save the life of the mother.
The judgement yesterday makes no exception even in the case of the mother's life.
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kim
The judgement yesterday makes no exception even in the case of the mother's life.
It does make an exception for the life of the mother, but the undefined "health" exception (which had become a loophole for abortion for any reason or no reason right up until moments from full delivery) has pretty much gone by the wayside unless that term can be more tightly defined.
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Is this what Law is for?
How did it become the job of the Supreme Court to judge medical procedures rather than judge the position of a particular law in relation to The Constitution? Not only is this decision dangerous in its immediate consequences to women, but the precedent of turning judicial authority into a micromanagement of citizens' lives is frightening.
The flip side of banning a medical procedure is the authority is grants to forcing medical procedures. Anti-choice advocates should be wary of a court that defines not the rule of law but rules that laws are not made to protect people, but to enforce ideologies. At any time, this same precedent - the government decides what medical treatment is/is not appropriate - may be used to require treatments for the imprisoned, disabled or unpatriotic or that treatments be withheld from the elderly, the poor or the unisured. It could, concievably, make abortion mandatory.
The decision and the argument that late term D&C is illegal because it places the life of the mother over the life of the fetus, not only redefines women as mere vessels, it redefines citizens as subjects. The Supreme Court decision - there were only men in the majority - means men are literally in charge of womens' lives.
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re: Dr's are not ethicists
No one said they were or at least I did not.
However, they should be the ones to decide which type of abortion procedure should be carried out in the best interest of the mother's health.
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mdhpiper
If you like, I'll certainly hold up a picture of an aborted fetus and and say I believe it should be legal.
But I hope you know that it would be misleading to claim that "severed body parts" are the sum total of what most pro-choicers stand for.
I stand for a woman's right to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy.
I stand for trusting women and their doctors to make their own healthcare decisions.
I stand for never, EVER harming a child, and letting my own children know that they were wanted.
I stand for a gentle society that puts its laws where its mouth is in regards to women's freedom.
That said, I could easily be comfortable in a truly "pro-life" society.
Here is how I see it:
If you were to tell me that you had developed the technology to remove a conceptus from the female body while doing no harm to either party...
And that you also possessed the technology to incubate this conceptus through the stages of human development, ultimately producing a healthy human infant...
And if you had a legal system in place that would assign parental responsibility for this conceptus only to those that would willingly claim it (assuming that if the biological progenitors of the child didn't wish to parent it, and no adoptive home is found, wardship would fall to the state)...
And that society was financially & structurally prepared to feed, house, educate, & care for each and every human being conceived in America, regardless of race, color, creed, handicap, proclivity, attitude, etc., up until the age of maturity...
And that we had democratically elected a government that we allowed to tax us accordingly, allowing us to meet the burden of caring for these concepti...
And that society overall consistently reflected a concern for life (that we had put an end to war, that crime rates had dropped precipitously, that uncared-for children in the system did not routinely turn to sex work & drugs to survive...)
And that we also showed that as a society we valued liberty - equal treatment under the law for all citizens, civil rights laws effectively enforced...
I would consider voting to retract a woman's liberty in favor of the promotion of life.
Until then, we're just punishing women by forcing them to experience the "consequences" of their sexual activity, while hypocritically pretending to care about life.
I stand against that.
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Let the Dr's decide, ok, no problem
which appears to single out a certain type of rare late-term procedure known as "intact dilation and evacuation," and which is opposed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists -- is neither unduly vague nor burdensome.
It seems that some Dr's do indeed oppose this proceedure. Now, I guess the question is which Dr's we are supposed to believe.
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Wheaton College, not a slander nor a slur
It is useless to reason with Anonymous. Anonymous may be a kind, generous and thoughtful person, but his/her arguments cannot be reasoned with. They are grounded solely in faith, not reason. You're not speaking the same language.
Wheaton College may be a fine academic institution--I don't really know much about it. What I do know is that its self-proclaimed guiding principle is "For Christ and His Kingdom." Not "truth," not "knowledge from all forms," but a narrow Christian lens through which all of academia is viewed.
Note: there are people grounded in both faith AND reason. Some goods example are St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.