This Nevada LIFE's op-ed on Partial Birth Abortion that was recently published in the Reno Gazette Journal. It may be available at the RGJ or you can access it at our site.
Opinion-There's No Defending Banned Procedure
May 18, 2007
In the weeks since the partial birth abortion decision, it's clear that abortion proponents are sticking to their game plan: don't say anything about the unborn child. The reason is clear: partial birth abortions are so revolting that even a clinical description causes us to shudder.
In a partial birth abortion, the unborn child is pulled feet first from the womb until only his head is left inside. The abortionist punctures the skull with scissors, inserts a tube and sucks the brains out.
Nurse Brenda Shafer's testimony of the partial birth abortion she witnessed was cited by the court. "The baby's little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks that he might fall. The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby's brains out."
How can anyone defend a procedure where a doctor kills a child dangling from the womb inches from birth?
That question led Congress to act. Congress argued that "implicitly approving such a brutal and inhumane procedure by choosing not to prohibit it will further coarsen society to the humanity of not only newborns, but all vulnerable and innocent human life, making it increasingly difficult to protect such life." And "partial-birth abortion " confuses the medical, legal and ethical duties of physicians to preserve and promote life, as the physician acts directly against the physical life of a child, whom he or she had just delivered, all but the head, out of the womb, in order to end that life."
The court agreed that a description of the procedure "demonstrates the rationale" for the ban and that Congress can use its powers "to promote respect for life, including life of the unborn." Substantial majorities, pro-life and pro-choice, agree.
Abortion advocates usually respond that partial birth abortions happen as a result of "wanted pregnancies" going horribly wrong. But partial birth abortionists say that almost all partial birth abortions are performed for women whose unborn child poses no risk to her physical well-being.
Justice Ginsburg's dissent argued, among other things, that women's "ability to realize their full potential, the Court recognized, is intimately connected to 'their ability to control their reproductive lives.' ... Thus, legal challenges ... center on a woman's autonomy to determine her life's course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature." The "Casey Court described the centrality of 'the decision whether to bear ... a child,' to a woman's 'dignity and autonomy,' her 'personhood' and 'destiny,' her 'conception of ... her place in society.'"
Here Ginsburg makes the leading abortion feminist argument that partial birth abortion and abortion are necessary to fulfill a woman's potential and to achieve or protect her equal standing in society. That has to be news to most women. Ginsburg's argument is dangerous because it says that equality is not a property inherent to women. It also says that children are obstacles and expendable in the pursuit of these ends.
The gruesomeness of partial birth abortion and the arguments for it are the reasons large majorities of Americans oppose it. It's about time the court got something right on abortion.
