Will Your Congressman Deliver Your Baby?
If you're a woman in Michigan, and you need medical attention, try a novel approach: consult your local legislator instead of your doctor. The Detroit News' Laura Berman makes a great case for why legislators have no business trying to ban partial-birth abortion, or abortion of any other kind:
The procedure that's said to be the target of the law -- intact dilation and extraction -- is so rarely used in Michigan that even Michigan Right to Life fails to document a single case of it in the organization's exhaustive 2003 analysis of state abortion statistics....The absurdly worded Legal Birth Definition Act sitting on the governor's desk could easily pit the life of a newly-coined perinate up against the health of a woman who might be your daughter, sister, wife, best friend or just plain you.
If the governor signs this bill into law, the sight of a tiny toe will create peculiar dilemmas for doctors, who will have to decide whether to intervene on behalf of a pregnant patient or avoid criminal prosecution by trying harder to save a dying fetus.Dr. Timothy Johnson, who heads the University of Michigan's obstetrics department, says fetal parts are often visible during late miscarriages. Providing proper care, he has written, would often result "in the death of the nonviable fetus."
Now, I find abortion troubling, and partial birth abortion certainly sounds creepy, but I still maintain that women must not be forced to be baby pods against their will, and that whether to perform or not to perform any medical procedure should be between a woman and her doctor.
"Partial Birth" is a politically charged term designed to spin the truth. This isn't about cavalierly deciding not to have a kid at 7,8,9 months and pulling the plug. The fetus is dead.
The mother's health should always be parmount.
Attention right to lifers: No woman aborts without feeling the fore and aftershocks. It is never a casual decision, no matter how casual it seems. Pro choicers respect life, too -- probably more than you.
I am, however, for extending abortion to age 14. This is when kids are really trying pains in the ass and we should be able to give them back no questions asked.
Bob at October 3, 2003 10:03 AM
Heh heh...Bob, I like you. I call that a "post-birth abortion," and I see dozens of people who qualify every day! Regarding the process -- almost none are done, but we can't speculate as to whether or not they're hypothetically necessary or unecessary for a hypothetical case. I leave that to the mother and the doctor treating here. Moreover, if the fundamentalists running the country didn't idiotically promote abstinence only (leading kids who've pledged unprepared to protect themselves when they ultimately have sex anyway, as so many of them do)...if we had contraceptive education -- maybe we'd have fewer abortions!
Amy Alkon at October 3, 2003 10:09 AM
interesting views. Did you know that in ancient Rome, before doctors were allowed to begin their practice were forced to sign a contract with the state aggreeing not to asist in suicides (euthenasia) or aid in the killing of the unborn (abortion). This was all on account of its being "barbaric". It obviously took a lot for them to use that word, since Nero would cover Africans and Christians in pitch and use them to light his gardens...since the masses loved to watch lions and bears disembowel and unlimb blacks, Christians and Jews. This all of course in a society that bosted the freedom of its people.
Just one last thing. Abortion comes down to one issue, the womans right to choose verses the unborn's right to life. Well, slavery comes down to one issue also, my right to own a slave verses the slaves be free.
-Ben
ben at April 27, 2004 5:40 AM