The Netherlands is rightly condemned internationally for permitting infanticide.  It has gotten so bad there that two separate studies published in the British medical journal Lancet reported that 8 percent of all Dutch infants who die each year are killed by doctors—between 80 and 100 per year.

Unfortunately, the United States has its own problem with infanticide; “partial birth abortion,” a procedure that ends the lives of anywhere between 640-5000 viable or near viable fetuses each year.  (Source: United States Supreme Court, Stenberg v. Carhart.)

“Partial Birth Abortion” is the popular term for “intact dilation and extraction” (D&X)—an act that is so violent and brutal it was rightly castigated by the late pro-choice Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan as “infanticide.” In a partial birth abortion, a pregnant woman late in the second (starting at about 20 weeks) or during her third trimester of gestation, is given drugs to cause her cervix to prematurely dilate.  After several days, the partial birth abortionist reaches through the birth canal into the mother’s womb, turns the unborn child to the breach position, and pulls most of the baby through the vagina, leaving only the head still within the mother’s body.

At this point, the baby is usually alive and only a few inches short of being born (hence the name, “partial birth abortion”).  The abortionist then takes scissors, breaks through the child’s skull at the back of the head, inserts a catheter, and suctions out the brain.  This collapses the skull so the head can be the rest of the way out of the woman’s body.  It is a sickening act of killing.

Supporters of partial birth abortion complain that the procedure is misnamed.  In a sense they are right, but not for the reasons about which they complain.  A D&X is often not an abortion at all: it is a delivery.  Williams Obstetrics, a premier medical textbook, defines abortion as occurring prior to the 20th week.  (Some other medical texts extend that time to the 24th week.)  Since most partial birth abortions occur after the 20th week, the act is, quite literally, an induced, incomplete delivery and killing of a living baby, i.e., infanticide.

Some abortion rights absolutists have defended PBA by claiming, for example, that it is rarely used, and when performed, it is primarily to save the life of the mother.  But Congressional testimony over the years disclosed a far different story:

• Only a miniscule number of partial birth abortions are undertaken for purely medical reasons;
• Most of the fetuses/unborn babies killed by having their brains sucked out are healthy;
• Most of the mothers are not endangered by their pregnancies with approximately 80 percent of partial birth abortions being purely elective. 
• The fetus is usually alive when the partial birth abortion takes place.  [Source: Diane M. Gianelli, “Outlawing Abortion Method,” American Medical News, November 20, 1998];
• At 20 weeks or higher gestation period, the unborn child may feel the pain of being killed; [Source: National Conference of Catholic Bishops, “True to Life,” citing medical studies published in the New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, and the British Medical Journal, August 28, 1998.]
• The American Medical Association, found that “there does not appear to be any identical situation in which intact D&X is the only appropriate procedure to induce abortion.” [Source: American Medical Association Report of the Board of Trustees, “Partial Birth Abortion Ban,” April 1997.] 

Despite these horrible facts, in 2000, the United States Supreme Court overturned Nebraska’s ban on PBA in a case called Stenberg v. Carhart.  It wasn’t as if the Court was unaware of the gruesome and cruel nature of the procedure.  Indeed, the Court’s majority ruling acknowledged that the description of PBA is “horrifying.”  Yet, despite the blood-curdling nature of PBA, the Court ruled that the Nebraska’s law was unconstitutional because it did not contain an exception permitting PBA to protect the “health” of the mother—which would mean no real ban at all since other court rulings have defined “health” very broadly in the abortion context to even include emotional wellbeing. 

If PBA proponents thought that Stenberg would make the partial birth abortion controversy go away, they were woefully mistaken.  Every once in a while an issue comes along in which the facts are so unequivocal, the truth so stark, the morality so clearly defined, that political advocacy about it cannot be suppressed.

Thus, in 2003, Congress outlawed partial birth abortion in a strong bi-partisan vote in which many pro-choice advocates (including Senator Hillary Clinton) supported the ban.  Moreover, the law formally declared, based on expert testimony, that such an abortion could never be necessary to preserve health.

Predictably (and necessarily), lower federal courts overturned the federal law, following the binding Stenberg precedent.  But the Supreme Court has now agreed to hear the case. Oral argument will be heard next fall with a decision expected about one year from now.

Opponents of PBA are optimistic.  Stenberg was a 5-4 ruling, with now retired Justice Sandra Day O’Conner providing the swing vote against a ban.  With the recent elevation of new Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., many PBA opponents hope that the center of gravity of the court will have swung in favor of the federal law.

Still, predictions of outcome are risky.  Both Justice Alito and newly elevated Chief Justice John Roberts are unknown quantities.  The Court could rule that abortion legislation belongs at the state level, and thus overturn the federal law on the basis of federalism.  Or, Justice Kennedy, who voted in the minority in Stenberg, could for some reason, swing the other way.

Whatever happens in the Supreme Court, democracy will eventually prevail.  With seventy-five percent of Americans in a recent poll supporting a ban on partial birth abortion, agitation to outlaw this obscene procedure will never cease until it is permanently outlawed throughout the United States. The PBA case will not be heard until next fall. That means the decision should come out about a year from now.

Same story-different headlines

Scant Drop Seen in Abortion Rate if Parents Are Told

Study Suggests Parental Notification Laws Reduce Abortions - Texas Abortion Rates See Double-Digit Drop Among Teen Girls

Abortion Ban Exposes Competing Strategies

South Dakota's Abortion Ban Abortion-rights advocates immediately and sternly denounced the ban, scheduled to go into effect July 1. Planned Parenthood operates the South Dakota clinic. Their president, Cecile Richards, said, "Planned Parenthood will fight these attacks in court, in the state houses, and at the ballot boxes, to ensure that women, with their doctors and families, continue to be able to make personal health care decisions without government interference."
Even some leading anti-abortion activists panned the South Dakota ban. National Right to Life released a matter-of-fact statement in response to CT's request for comment: "Currently there are at least five votes, a majority, on the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold Roe v. Wade." Americans United for Life (AUL), a key architect of the incremental strategy, said the ban will boost fundraising for pro-choice organizations and politicians. Daniel McConchie, AUL vice president and chief of staff, also doubted South Dakota can successfully defend the ban before the Supreme Court. "As we say around the office, you have to be able to count to five," McConchie said. "We can't do that yet."

Christianity Today

Liberals Rethink Roe v. Wade

World without Roe?
The politics of abortion
by David Heim

Gearing up for a battle over the next appointment to the Supreme Court, groups like NARAL Pro-Choice America and the National Organization for Women have been warning of the imminent collapse of Roe v. Wade. Roe hangs by a thread, they assert, and a one-vote shift on the court will dismantle the 1973 ruling that defined abortion as a constitutional right.

The prospect of a world without Roe does concentrate the mind. But not just in the ways that the pro-choice groups imagine. A world without Roe might actually be one of the best things that could happen to liberal politics.

Consider: A world without Roe would mean that liberals would no longer feel compelled to defend abortion as an absolute right—a position that is hard to defend morally, politically and constitutionally. At a time when abortion laws were being reformed, Roe issued the sweeping judgment that abortion is a constitutional right at all stages of pregnancy and for whatever reason. Roe allowed abortion to be regulated in the third trimester, but only for the sake of the health of the mother, not for the sake of the fetus. It asserted this right on the basis of a "right of privacy" said to be implicit in the Bill of Rights. The court was vague about the source of this right of privacy, and silent as to how privacy could be plausibly extended to the case of abortion.

Christian Century

While most Americans remain firm in their opposition to partial-birth abortion, abortion itself remains controversial. Lamott's rant shows many remain deeply committed to Roe

Abortion evokes strong opinions. Last month best selling author, Ann Lamott, sounded off on the issue twice. The LA Times recently printed her opinion piece titled: The Rights of the Born. She wrote it to explain why her remarks made while on a pubic panel had been so "spewey". Faced with a question from the audience challenging the morality of abortion, Lamott got exercised.

"I said I could not believe that men committed to equality and civil rights were still challenging the basic rights of women. I thought about all the photo-ops at which President Bush had signed legislation limiting abortion rights, surrounded by 10 or so white, self-righteous married men, who have forced God knows how many girlfriends into doing God knows what. I thought of the time Bush appeared on stage with children born from frozen embryos, children he calls "snowflake babies," and of the embryos themselves, which he calls the youngest and most vulnerable Americans.

And somehow, as I was answering, I got louder and maybe even more emphatic than I actually felt, and said it was not a morally ambiguous issue for me at all. I said that fetuses are not babies yet; that there was actually a real difference between pro-abortion people, like me, and Klaus Barbie.

Then I said that a woman's right to choose was nobody else's goddamn business. This got their attention."

Perhaps unnerved by the audience response, Lamott felt compelled to write about the experience further qualifying her reaction and describing the response of a fellow panel member.

"A cloud of misery fell over the room, and the stage. Finally, Jim said something unifying enough for us to proceed — that liberals must not treat people with opposing opinions on abortion with contempt and exclusion, partly because it's tough material, and partly because it is so critical that we win these next big elections.

Maybe I could have presented my position in a less strident, divisive manner. But the questioner's use of the words "murder" and "babies" had put me on the defensive. Plus I am so confused about why we are still having to argue with patriarchal sentimentality about teeny weenie so-called babies — some microscopic, some no bigger than the sea monkeys we used to send away for — when real, live, already born women, many of them desperately poor, get such short shrift from the current administration.

Most women like me would much rather use our time and energy fighting to make the world safe and just and fair for the children we do have, and do love — and for the children of New Orleans and the children of Darfur. I am old and tired and menopausal and would mostly like to be left alone: I have had my abortions, and I have had a child.

But as a Christian and a feminist, the most important message I can carry and fight for is the sacredness of each human life, and reproductive rights for all women is a crucial part of that: It is a moral necessity that we not be forced to bring children into the world for whom we cannot be responsible and adoring and present. We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society."

For Lamott it seems the sacredness of human life has serious qualifications. Each human life is sacred only if someone agrees to be responsible for and adoring of it. The unwanted or resented apparently do not qualify.

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