Supreme Court Backs Ban on Partial Birth Abortion - Page 2

Actually, a ban shouldn't make the procedure more expensive and difficult to obtain. It should make the procedure entirely unavailable.

I appreciate your outrage, but your friend was put into a difficult situation by an unconstitutional law enacted at the level of state. The Supreme Court's decision in the current case would have no bearing on her situation otherwise. Hopefully, Oklahoma's position can be, forcibly if necessary, brought into line with federal policy in this matter.

Currently, under that federal policy, your friend would have access to reproductive choice up to and including the third trimester of pregnancy. However, a partial delivery of the child for the purposes of termination would not be allowed.

I appreciate the increased pain and recovery time involved with abdominal surgery. However, I believe that this pain is offset by the pain endured by the fetus/child during the process of partial birth abortion. Person or no, the fetus eligible for partial birth abortion is a living entity with the anatomical and functional processes necessary to the perception of pain. Because of the existence of alternative methods, however distasteful, and the very real concerns regarding the inhuman treatment of the fetus, the findings of Congress concluded that partial birth abortion is "never medically necessary". Indeed, if your friend had the fetus fully delivered, a common approach to catastrophic genetic deformity, the child would have died naturally (most likely within seconds) without the added pain of surgical scissors stabbed into the base of the brain.

According to google, the bill did not maintain access for life-threatening pregnancies as the result of the AMA, which stated that partial birth abortion was irrelevant or even potentially injurious to the health of the patient. The AMA is not, to my knowledge, a religious organization.

Here are the findings of Congress, according to wikipedia.

I see in Scotts article posted above that the court disputes these findings or, at least, does not hold them as "dispositive". Their consensus seems to be that there is not conclusive proof that the procedure is medically necessary.

As for your comment about the "private decision", here is another quote taken from the comments on the blog posted aboe:

I'm about as anti-religion (not non-religious, but anti-religious) as they come. I'm generally pro-choice, but I have had moral qualms about the procedures and practices involved in "partial birth" abortions. Sadly, religious rhetoric polarizes and distorts the ability to rationally discuss the issue, with pro-lifers feeling that any discussion creates a beachhead for banning abortions, and religious zealots agreeing.

Otherwise known as the Christopher Reeve procedure.

How does that apply to a child with no brain or that is already dead?

I looked it up. A child born with Anacephalus usually has some lower brain, at least, or a brain stem that is often exposed due to the deformity of the skull.

As to the death, he may mean to say that the child died during the two-to-three day dilation period prior to the abortion, which often introduces infection or terminal stress into the delicate ecology of the womb. Because of these factors, one article I saw suggested that around a fifth of the fetuses undergoing partial birth abortion are dead prior to the partial delivery or die before the scissors are inserted into the base of the brain. Otherwise, it would seem more like a miscarriage. I don't know.

So what? It's between doctors and their patients.

So what? It's between doctors and their patients.

Nice encyclopedia.

More and more every day I wish there were more abortions.

Well that's completely different then.

In the end this sounds like a fairly reasonable bill.

And who decides? How many opinions are needed? How long is it going to take?

Just adds a level of bureaucracy that shouldn't be there.

Not to trivialize the discussion, but SIGGED.

I'm really confused by alot of this. I'm just going to grab Necessiter's post because he touches on multiple ideas expressed by numerous people.

I've never understood the sentiment of having different feelings for the termination of a fetus/baby/infant/child/zygote/whatever depending on its location (in or out of womb). Whatever IT is, pulling it out of the mother doesn't change it at all. If it is ok to terminate/kill/destroy/slice/dice/whatever inside the womb, it should be just as ok outside, right?

Like I said above, I completely disagree. Something is a human life deserving of protection or it isn't. Shouldn't this be based on the organism itself? Perhaps some measure of brain functioning (which I believe is how we legally define whether an adult is a live, human being or not)?

I completely agree. This could serve to set in place the birthing process as the defining point between human life and disposable tissue, which would completely halt the pro-life movement in its tracks.

I think there is a happy median somewhere, but I don't think this is it.

I wish people would move the abortion debate more into the realm of science, logic, and ethics and out of the realm of emotion.