Will Your Congressman Be Removing Your Appendix?
Terrific analysis of the so-called "partial-birth" abortion bill on the blog A Well-Timed Period.
UPDATE: William Saletan also explains on Slate that it really isn't birth they're talking about:
This procedure doesn't take place anywhere near the appointed hour of birth. If you paid close attention to the Senate debate, you might have noticed the part where Santorum said the procedure was performed "at least 20 weeks, and in many cases, 21, 22, 23, 24 weeks [into pregnancy], and in rarer cases, beyond that." He didn't clarify how many of these abortions took place past the 20th week. A full-term pregnancy is 40 weeks. In 1992, the Supreme Court mentioned that viability could "sometimes" occur at 23 or 24 weeks. Santorum described a 1-pound fetus as "a fully formed baby," noting that while it was only at 20 weeks gestation, it had a complete set of features and extremities. But according to the National Center for Health Statistics, the survival rate for babies born weighing 500 grams or lessóthat's 1 pound, 1 ounce or lessóis 14 percent.
In other words, what we're really talking about is partial-truth legislation.
Read the link. What else is there to say? Are we a nation of sheep to be led by wolves who have our best moral interests at heart. I can't believe this crap is happening and being allowed to happen. Who elected these incompetent self-righteous fucks? Partial birth is a nonsensical term, a political strategy, a gross manipulation. How does one get so stupid and corrupt? Arrgghhhh!
Bob at October 22, 2003 6:45 PM
Bob, "one get(s) so stupid and corrupt" by imagining that body weight and humanity correlate in some meaningful way.
You talkin' to me?
Birthweight (Feb '59): 8 lbs, 2 oz.
Fighting (college) weight: 128
Present (middle age lethargy): 177
Paglia, who thinks the Big Thoughts, acknowledges that the left has ceded moral leadership on this issue. Luke Ford's pal Prager puts it like this: "These women call it a part of their body over which they are sovereign, but they are not clipping toenails." Just yesterday I heard a '97 interview with Hitchens wherein he cops to "squeamishness" about this abortion... He, the continuing challenger of the freshly beatified Theresa.
Trifecta.
Crid at October 22, 2003 10:35 PM
Crid, if you read Saletan's words, you'll note that it's not what legislators and various fanatics have lead you to believe. I find abortion troubling; nevertheless, I advise those who are against it to avoid having one, but not to press for legislation to turn women into baby pods who don't have say over their own bodies.
Amy Alkon at October 22, 2003 10:43 PM
No one will get an argument from me about abortion being troubling. No woman escapes the emotional agony of terminating a pregnancy even if she clearly wants to. And many men, myself included, are squeamish and deeply affected by abortion. But it's still a woman's right to control her body up to a certain point .... It's just that these legislators are not doctors, their logical would drive Mr. Spock to step out of an airlock, and there is no such thing as "partial birth" unless one defines sliding down the vaginal canal as "birth" even when fetus is incapable of living on its own -- or with the help of an ICU. Birth means a fighting chance, which sometimes works. I don't for a second think that women -- toenail clippers or not -- are so cavalier as to wait until the fetus is so far along to decide to abort. This is not about lifestyle choice or the mother's convenience. This is sheer political hucksterism by hypocrites.
Bob at October 23, 2003 9:21 AM
Truth is I didn't follow the link. I think abortion is essentially over now... Americans as a whole don't like it but think it should be legal and safe. Now, some people think it should be punishable by hanging. Others think abortions should be freely and silently provided in the high school nurse's office every day after band practice. And those two wingtips will be flapping fecklessly at each other until the end of time. But I think the People have made their feelings clear... Why else would they have embraced such shitty law as Roe vs Wade? The date the issue died was around 1990. Babs "Silver Fox" Bush was slipping into a limo somewhere and a reporter shouted to ask whether she supported the Republican stance against abortion. I fergit her words, but she was not too coy about saying no. Five years later I proudly called myself a conservative. Abortion is over... Move along folks, nothin' left here but the shouting. The fact that this or that person in society still gets ugly about it does not mean we're living in 1957.
Cridland at October 23, 2003 9:58 AM
True, the twain on abortion shall never meet -- either the hanging judges or the free dispensary -- but to say the issue is over is to ignore the whole point of the item posted: ie, IT'S NOT OVER. The Congress is still legislating morals, telling women in a phony law what they can do with their bodies. I'd be happy to move on if those who want to change the channel don't tell everyone to change the channel. Don't tread on me.
bob at October 23, 2003 11:09 AM
Granted, but sometimes it seems like people (on both sides) are continuing the fight because it used to be so much fun to be ugly and self-righteous.
Crid at October 23, 2003 6:16 PM
Self-righteousness might feel good, but it's very, very un-sexy.
Lena Cuisina at October 26, 2003 9:11 AM
i blogged this a few weeks ago. it's how i feel.
* i am a 23-yr-old female (pro-life)
Wednesday, 22 October 2003
yesterday the U.S. Senate voted to pass bill banning partial birth abortion. predictably, there are opposers. the democratic senator for NJ was quoted as saying, "President Bush will become the first United States President to criminalize a safe medical procedure."
safe. what an interesting term used to describe a procedure in which one out of every two patients dies. hm...
for those of you who don't know what partial birth abortion is, let me give you a quick little rundown. during a partial birth abortion the "doctor" literally drags the unborn child out of the womb with forceps. he pulls the entire body out of the woman, all except the head. he then takes a pair of surgical scissors and punctures the neck of the baby at the base of the skull and then opens the scissors, basically severing all kinds of important things that the baby needs to live and spilling his/her brains out onto the operating table.
i don't know about you, but Americans whine and cry about the mistreatment of KFC chickens and they are allowing this to happen day after day to thousands of our own! if someone did this to a cow, oh my goodness, the humanity! but a fetus? a baby? no one says one word b/c it's the woman's right. it makes me sick.
"It is a poverty to decide that a child must die so that you may live as you wish."
~Mother Teresa
tami at November 12, 2003 2:27 PM