“Filed at 8:40 a.m. ET
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress is set to ban a specific abortion procedure, a legislative landmark that could lead to a fierce legal fight affecting a woman’s right to end a pregnancy. The ban on what opponents call partial birth abortion is likely to pass by a wide margin when it comes up for a vote scheduled in the Senate on Tuesday. Three weeks ago, the House passed the bill with a 281-142 vote, and Senate action would send it to President Bush, who strongly supports the ban.”
Partial birth abortion, or dilation and extraction, is a later term procedure involving the partial delivery of the fetus, then the crushing of its skull. It’s gruesome and horrific.
However, this bill does not include a single proviso for the health of the pregnant woman — if there were a case in which a woman’s life was in jeapordy and could only be helped by this procedure, any doctor performing it would be subject to two years in jail, if a doctor could even be found who would be willing to take that risk. The authors of the bill claim there are no cases in which a late-term abortion is medically necessary for the health of the pregnant woman.
I think maybe the authors of the bill are just more interested in valuing the rights of the fetus over the rights of the person carrying it — that is to say, the woman. A fetus is, at this point, not a citizen of the United States. To make a fetus a citizen, and this bill implies but does not state that the fetus is a citizen, would be to acknowledge two people with legal rights in one body — a fetus and a woman. In that case, which one’s legal rights would trump the other’s? The woman, who has a life and plans and goals and expectations and obligations and needs and wants and desires? Or the fetus, who is not yet independent of the woman, yet who dictates her life increasingly?
I think I know the answer to that question, and it scares me. Already the door to the legal rights of the fetus, not the woman, is open. The Supreme Court recently upheld a South Carolina ruling of homicide by abuse in the case of a woman who gave birth to a stillborn baby. The woman is going to prison for the homicide of a fetus because of her use of cocaine during pregnancy. Of course, we would all prefer that the woman didn’t use cocaine while pregnant, or at all, but here’s the rest of the story. The woman, according to the article, is of markedly low intelligence, and was helped with everyday tasks by her mother until her mother’s death in 1998; then the woman became homeless, cocaine-addicted, and pregnant. If she needed help with activities of daily living, she was not legally able to give proper consent to sexual intercourse in the first place, and may not have even understood that she was pregnant or how she got to be pregnant. This woman, legally, is a victim of rape. The fetus in question was conceived in rape. Yet the woman is going to prison for the death of the fetus, when in all likelihood she didn’t even understand that cocaine was bad for the baby. Who had rights here? Legally, the woman did. Whose rights were upheld? Those of the fetus.
If this bill banning later-term abortion is passed, and it surely will be, the door to the legals rights of the fetus will open a little bit wider. How long before legislation is passed dictating what women should eat when pregnant, what women can do while pregnant, that pregnancies cannot be terminated, that birth control is not allowed, that women can’t work and need to stay at home producing babies? Is a person’s destiny dictated by her mind or her body? Are there choices left? Is anyone else frightened?
In the past, whenever the NJ legislature tried to pass a partial-birth abortion ban, it was on third trimester abortions and ALWAYS included a provision for rape, incest, or the health of the woman. Just in terms of social value, new life is not worth as much as existing life. Therefore the rights of the fetus do not trump the rights of the woman. Pro-choice groups claim the right to an abortion as a result of Roe v. Wade, but it is true that this right is not laid out in the Bill of Rights. Many other countries recognize the right to an abortion as inherent in any social system seeking to establish equality between men and women. As long as what is in a woman’s body can be considered as having legal status, women will always be second class citizens, subject to their ability to give birth. That all being said, debate amongst yourselves whether you think abortion is morally right or wrong, cause frankly, I don’t give a damn. What I do give a damn about is the federal government assuming that they have yet another arena in which they get to dictate terms. I’d rather Congress concentrate on the common defense and welfare and not waste my time and money debating abortion(which eats up both every year while providing no useful service to the people). Instead I would argue that abortion rights is a determination to be left to the states. Cause the states are a whole lot more reasonable.
October 21st, 2003, at 2:33 pm #