New DI Column: Partial Birth Abortion Indefensible, Wrong
by Billy Joe Mills • Apr 27th, 2007 at 7:28 am •
The wonderful, the beautiful Brenda Kay has written a response to Eric Naing’s Partial Birth Abortion column.
But two days ago, Eric Naing covered the recent Supreme Court ruling upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Act of 2003, a topic I myself dealt with in these very pages during the initial hearings. Naing briefly glanced over the ruling, what partial birth abortion is and the implications the decision has for women, choosing to focus most of his column as a swirling tunnel of accusations pointed at (surprise, surprise) conservative Christians and George W. Bush…(read more)
Comment by Lally Gartel on 27 April 2007 at 2:36 pm:
Reposted from D.I., and the truth:
Lally Gartel
posted 4/27/07 @ 4:27 PM EST
I invite you, first of all, to read this post, which though written by a feminist academic, cites important statistics which I would not do well to steal: http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2007/04/supreme-court-declares-women-less.html
Brenda, consider before you declare that a woman’s privacy and body and choice about her family leads to “brutality” the facts about D&X, and its alternative when the child will die or be deformed, namely breaking up the fetus into parts while still in the womb and perforating the woman’s uterus.
Additionally, your caveat is strange: you oppose abortion in the first trimester, as well. So the statement that, oh, well, this is so brutal is HAS to be outlawed doesn’t work when you look at when and why it is used.
The real debate about whether a fetus is a life I’m sure we can have another time.
Comment by Brenda Kay on 28 April 2007 at 3:58 am:
I can play the reposting game too:
Lally, nice link. One question - if D&X is so preferable to dismemberment in terms of safety and ease, why is dismemberment used in 95% of late-term abortions and D&X so infrequently? I don’t understand the disconnect.
Here’s my link for you: http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/RusePBAonTrial.pdf
Not as concise, sorry, but it gives great insight into various late-term abortion procedures [My apologies for the bias but it's virtually impossible to find non-biased abortion information].
The main reason this Supreme Court ruling is a triumph is not so much because it will lead to so many fewer abortions - I’m not kidding myself here - but because it’s a step in [what I think is] the right direction about the real debate: whether or not a fetus is a life. When you’re half-delivering a creature that can kick, cry and, yes, feel very real pain, only to crush its skull and dispose of the thereafter lifeless body, is it really honest or fair to pretend you’re just making a decision about your own body, your own privacy, and that “fetus” only has the rights of a human being when you decide it gets them?
I hate talking about abortion because there’s no middle ground for anyone to stand on - either it’s a baby right away or it’s just a fetus until delivery and there’s no clear point in the pregnancy to draw any other sort of line. I’ve always been pro-life but of course I can see why “life at conception” doesn’t fly with a lot of people - just a bunch of cells, no feelings yet, etc. But to draw the pro-choice logic to its natural end is completely ridiculous - it’s only a fetus until delivery, so I could get an abortion one day before my due date and still say that I was not ending a life or destroying any potential. I honestly don’t understand how you could believe that - Lally, I’m being sincere here, please explain to me how that works in your head.
Comment by Brandon on 28 April 2007 at 11:45 am:
“But to draw the pro-choice logic to its natural end is completely ridiculous - it’s only a fetus until delivery, so I could get an abortion one day before my due date and still say that I was not ending a life or destroying any potential. I honestly don’t understand how you could believe that - Lally, I’m being sincere here, please explain to me how that works in your head.”
You seem to be a bit misled as to the position of the majority of those on the other side of the debate dear Brenda. Many pro-choicers do not believe in life at birth or that a child is only a child when it draws its first breath. Most seem to believe that it should be protected once it is viable, that is, once it can survive outside the womb. That usually occurs somewhere around the 7th month of pregnancy. Even many pro-choice people find certain types of abortion distasteful, others find all abortions distasteful, but it’s a question of health, safety, and choice. The health and safety of the mother, the potential child, and her ability to decide whether or not she can provide the type of life for the child she would like.
Abortion is not something most people take lightly. I am very close to a woman who has had an abortion and I respect her for the choice she made. I don’t have to agree with it, but I understand that it is a balancing of factors and that, unfortunately for that particular fetus, she decided she wouldn’t be able to give it the life she wanted. Hopefully, not having had that child, she will be able to better her situation (which she has) and the next time she is pregnant she can embrace it and give the next child a life full of opportunity and free of undue hardship.
There will always be those who use abortion to “correct” mistakes or irresponsibilities, but I doubt the majority use it as such. I’m not sure if you’ve been around much lately, but I remember some time ago one of our posters noting that even the birth control pill has a 4% chance of pregnancy every year which means that over a 5 year period a woman has a 20% chance of pregnancy even while being what most of us would consider “responsible.” Condoms break or get minute holes, the boys don’t always “pull out” in time, and generally shit just happens.
Comment by Brenda Kay on 29 April 2007 at 2:01 am:
Brandon,
Perhaps I am misled as to the majority opposing opinion. I’d like to think so, but I would feel better if you had some data to back up your claim - do you?
As I mentioned in my post, I feel it is a rare thing for people to take a stand an abortion and be anywhere in the middle - if this middle ground view is in fact so popular and pervasive, why don’t more politicians take it up? ‘Bama has just about the most extreme take on abortion possible, and no one bats an eye.
It’s all well and good to talk about “balancing of factors” and so forth but the problem [for those on my side of the debate] is that you’re only taking the wants and needs of the mother into the equation, and ignoring the potential and humanity of the child within.
Comment by Brandon on 29 April 2007 at 10:52 am:
I could try to find polls, but they’re not really available to answer that specific question. However, it is a reasonable inference if one looks at the opinion polls, you’ll find that most people think abortion should be illegal in some cases or even most cases. A small minority think it should be legal no matter what and a slightly larger minority think it should be illegal no matter what. Politicians play to the edges because the people in the middle aren’t going to single-issue vote over abortion, but the fringes will.
http://www.pollingreport.com/abortion.htm