Letters to the Editor
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Oh, and by the way...
In addition to ruling that Congress can ban medical procedures as long as Congress can prove that Congress thinks there is a controversy over their health necessity, Kennedy mentioned over and over that many might find the regular D&E procedure to be more gruesome than intact D&E, while he was ruling that Congress had the right to ban something because "many" found it gruesome.
Five'll get you ten as to what the next move is.
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Outs and Ends
Why is it that most people support the ban despite opposing overturning Roe? Abortion and the issue of a woman's right to choose is so frequently debated. But, people might know as much about all of these procedures. Will Saletan concluded a piece on partial birth abortion by writing: If you haven't been following the debate closely, it's easy to walk away with the impression that the "delivery" is a nearly full-term birth, as the bill's name implies. It's easy to say yes when a pollster asks you whether you favor a "law to make it illegal to perform a specific abortion procedure conducted in the last six months of pregnancy known as 'partial-birth abortion,' except in cases necessary to save the life of the mother."
That's the question the Gallup organization asked in January. Based on responses to that question, USA Today reports this morning that the poll "showed that 70% of Americans back the ban."I'd like to know how many of the people who answered that question understood exactly what they were being asked about.
To make this clearer, parental notification regularly clocks around 70-80% support in the polls, but it failed in California and Oregon. Ads came out highlighting the issue of abusive households. Exit polls showed 63% of independents voted against it, as did 59% of moderates in California.
The American Medical Association withdrew its support from the ban. And a journal article came out showing the procedure doesn't pose a greater health risk to women. The American Public Health Association and the American College of OBGYNs.
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A Theory
My theory is this: people are very suspect of the reasons someone else might want to have an abortion. The person's irresponsible, misguided, uninformed, immoral, a slut. As such, they want to limit access and impose restrictions on others because they believe, rightly, that abortion isn't a minor deal. However, they also believe that were they to have an abortion, they must have a really good reason. That they aren't irresponsible, misguided, uninformed, immoral, a slut.
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Miz Binkley
Agreed - some of those same thoughts drove my "Abortion of Liberty" post from yesterday.
We don't have anything close to a pro-life culture, but we are quickly acquiring an anti-choice one.
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Emily
"We don't have anything close to a pro-life culture, but we are quickly acquiring an anti-choice one."
That quote really sums things up well.
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I Agree, Emily
I agree with what you said about this becoming an anti-choice culture which is definately not the same as pro-life culture.
I also find this quote by a supposed "pro-lifer" very telling: I take it back. Some "people" do deserve to be sawn into pieces. They can first be prepared by being doused in a caustic solution. After all, they're a parasite on my society.
Anyone else find this quote a tad hypocritical and rather disturbing?
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Hell yes
I find it both disturbing and oddly reminiscent of what the Taliban do to women who go to school. Do people who want to impose their religion on others all share the same collective subconscious or something?
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No Such Thing
There is no such thing as a partial birth abortion. the men who want to push abortion back into the alleys made the term up. Now, a woman in the second trimester who has serious health problems has to hire a lawyer as well as a doctor. The Bushistas strike again, muttering "infanticide" while they murder hundreds of Iraqis a day. A culture of life, my ass.
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How will this new law be enforced?
I wonder if the high court envisions a law enforcement agent present at the abortion procedure or if the uterine content will be sent to a forensic pathologist for examination after the fact.
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I know this is hardly original, but....
...maybe it really is time to let the wingnut base have what it wants. Outright invaldation of Roe.
Maybe the reproductive rights organizations should go back to doing what they should have had to do all along: argue this one state-by-state.
As has been opined more than once in recent years, if the SCOTUS had just butted out of the abortion debate, we'd probably have legal abortion in most states, and abortion would not have been turned into such a powerful political weapon...a weapon that has been instrumental in allowing people like Bush and Cheney into the White House.
I *know* this kind of thing might result in a lot of problems for a lot of women...but you could make an argument that allowing abortion to become a political weapon of the Right in this country has made life far worse for all women than nationalizing the debate made life better for them.
I say, along with a number of other noted writers on the subject: let's have the SCOTUS overturn Roe and put the entire business back in the lap of the States. Even better, let's have the Court outlaw abortions for awhile.
How long do you think the GOP could hold out against that? Their entire political strategy for over 30 years has been to use abortion as a weapon to bash Dems and raise money, but no GOP politician has ever had to *defend* that actual outlawing of abortion on the Federal level. I think that alone could well be worth the cost. It might well destroy the GOP completely as a political party. That is something worth fighting for, at this point.
It's time to call these fuckers on their grotesque and cynical hypocrisy. I truly believe that if abortion law had not been nationalized the way it was in 1973, the GOP would not have ruined our country now. The law of Unintended consequences is a hard law.
Short of that national battle, the SCOTUS could simply turn the problem back to the States...and now each local legislator would have to defend the outlawing of abortion. This kind of thing could transform our country...the way it should have 30 years ago, if we liberals had not overreached, and given the Right the perfect weapon with which to assault us for the following 30 years.
I say, bring it on. Let the SCOTUS overturn Roe. And watch the entire GOP start squirming. There would still be legal abortion in this country, for the cost of a car trip or a plane ticket to New York or California. Or other states with legal abortion. No, that's hardly ideal. Not by a long way. But that wouldn't last long, I don't think.
Sometimes, you have to suffer some serious pain for some serious gain. And I know, it's not my pain. I'm an XY chromosome-type, and I understand I don't have the skin in this fight a woman has. But, consider all the alternatives, consider the present and past, and consider the way the nationalization of abortion law has utterly poisoned our political life.
It's time to have a real knock-down, drag-out fight over a woman's right to choose, and to have that fight end in victory for choice, as it inevitably will, once the issue is no longer nationalized..