Supreme Court Backtracks on Abortion Rights
One activist says the Supreme Court’s ruling ’swings the door wide open.’ A flood of legislation is expected.
WASHINGTON - Elated and emboldened, antiabortion activists in state after state are planning to push for stringent new limits on second- and third-trimester abortions in the hope of building on their victory Wednesday in the Supreme Court.By a 5-4 vote, the justices upheld a federal ban on a procedure that critics call “partial-birth” abortion, which involves partially delivering the fetus, then crushing its skull. The ruling included strong language that asserted the state’s “legitimate, substantial interest in preserving and promoting fetal life.” 
Advocates on both sides of the abortion debate predicted that the ruling would spur a flood of legislation.
“We’re moving beyond putting roadblocks in front of abortions to actually prohibiting them,” said Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, a national antiabortion group based in Wichita, Kan. “This swings the door wide open.”
He and other strategists said they hoped to introduce legislation in a number of states that would:
• Ban all abortions of viable fetuses, unless the mother’s life is endangered.
• Ban mid- and late-term abortion for fetal abnormality, such as Down syndrome or a malformed brain.
• Require doctors to tell patients in explicit detail what the abortion will involve, show them ultrasound images of the fetus and warn them that they may become suicidal after the procedure.
• Lengthen waiting periods so that women must reflect on such counseling for several days before obtaining the abortion.
It is far from certain that the Supreme Court would uphold all those proposals. But antiabortion activists clearly think momentum is on their side.
In particular, they are pleased that the court upheld an outright ban, with no exceptions, on a surgical procedure performed in the second trimester, when the fetus is too large to be evacuated through a suction tube.
For more than 30 years, the Supreme Court has required every major restriction on abortion to include an exception waiving the law if a woman’s physical or emotional health is at stake.
As a result, many abortion bans have been largely symbolic. At least 40 states outlaw abortion of viable fetuses. But because of the health exception, doctors can still terminate such pregnancies if they certify that the woman suffers depression or anxiety.
Abortion opponents consider that a major loophole, leading to what they call “abortion on demand.”
The ruling gave them hope for a new standard. The procedure at issue is used only rarely - it is more common in second-trimester abortions to dismember the fetus inside the womb - but abortion doctors had argued that they should be able to use it when they considered it better for the woman’s health. The justices disagreed.
“I’m ecstatic,” said Leslee Unruh, an antiabortion activist in South Dakota. “It’s like someone gave me $1 million and told me, ‘Leslee, go shopping.’ That’s how I feel.”
She spent the day conferring with lawyers on how to leverage the ruling to maximum effect in the states. “We’re brainstorming, and we’re having fun,” she said.
Abortion rights lawyer Katherine Grainger predicted that the ruling would “open the floodgates” in state after state.
“The state’s interest in the fetus has now been elevated above the woman’s health, whereas before the women’s health always trumped,” said Grainger, who directs state policy for the Center for Reproductive Rights. “States are going to push the boundaries and try to restrict access on all fronts.”
Because most state legislatures have only a few more weeks in session, Grainger said, she expects that the bulk of the proposals will come next year. When the bills are filed, antiabortion activists plan to pursue two strategies that won tacit endorsement in the Supreme Court ruling.
First, they intend to try stirring public discomfort about specific abortion techniques. The court opinion referred to the partial delivery of a live fetus during an abortion as shocking. Activists plan to argue that other, far more common, methods of ending pregnancy are just as distasteful.
“This procedure was outlawed because it was exposed. If every procedure were exposed in this way, they would all be deemed equally cruel,” said Terri Herring, an antiabortion lobbyist in Mississippi. She envisions introducing bans on one procedure after another in an attempt to build on the ruling.
That could be an effective strategy, said Ted G. Jelen, a political scientist who studies abortion politics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
“If they can shift the debate to what happens to the fetus, rather than who decides, that’s a useful frame for them,” he said.
The second linchpin of the antiabortion strategy is the testimony of women who have had abortions - and regret them.
The ruling cited affidavits from several women who said their abortion caused them lasting psychological trauma. Though the ruling said the court could find “no reliable data to measure the phenomenon,” it described abortion as “fraught with emotional consequence.”
“That’s very good, strong language, and I think it sets the foundation for future rulings,” said Anne Newman, policy director for Operation Outcry, which has collected 2,000 affidavits from women remorseful about their abortions. Their written testimony is making the rounds of statehouses.
Abortion rights supporters have tried to fight back against such tactics. They have told the stories of women who were raped, or who thought that they had no choice but to abort a severely deformed fetus. They have argued that abortion restrictions fall most heavily on the young and the poor. And they have tried to rally broad support for reproductive freedom.
“This is going to be a wake-up call for Americans who care about women’s health,” said Nancy Northrup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
Political scientist Alan Abramowitz at Emory University said it was too early to know how the debate would unfold - though he was certain it would be polarizing. As he put it: “This will exacerbate the divisions that already exist.”
Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times
IF the US held the moral highground for demonstrable showings of viable respect for life for the already living, the issue of abortion might be able to stand on solid ground. GRANNY D was absolutely brilliant in explaining that those who identify with the coiled up fetus, truly grieve for the lives they have forfeited to authoritarian control(s). They see in the symbolic innocence of the unborn, the lives they never let themselves lead. This group is often first to stand behind the Bible, and tragically, they demand capital punishment, believe in a “strong” military and gave Bush “license” to kill foreigners disguised (or rather “fixed in case”) as terrorists. Our nation has such a deep pathology, and much of it is based on the concept of God as flawed human-like patriarch. How many fundamentalist teachings both in Islam and Christianity (with Judaism not far down the way) focus on women’s wombs and control of THEIR sexuality? We all know that making safe abortions tougher to get is going to lead to back alley senseless deaths, unwanted children, and a continued culturally schizophrenic climate that completely sexualizes the young… movies, MTV, little girls paraded, teen stars whose lives are like trashy soap operas and religious zealots who think they can pray away homosexuality or work wonders with wasted government money aimed at “abstinence only.” You can see why Dan Brown’s book was popular… if Jesus did LOVE Mary, the whole celibacy thing gets tossed off, another inconvenient truth, like Galileo forcing the entire church to correct its earth-based cosmology when astronomical facts showed the arrogant to again be wrong. A nation that loves its guns, but wants its women home, barefoot and pregnant, possibly tied to the stove needs massive HEART therapy (I know a lot of guys are WAY beyond this… but look at whose writing the rules these days? CLUE: John Dean’s book Conservatives without Conscience. Or reread Susan Faludi’s Backlash.
Five Catholics on the Supreme Court, and the Democrats let it happen. They could have stopped it, but didn’t. I guess they got so used to caving in, that’s all they know how to do. And even with a majority, that’s still all they know how to do. They go around talking tough but when the going gets rough they wilt.
With no exception to save the mother’s life is an ominous ruling. It reminds me of a movie I saw as a child, where the doctor of a laboring woman told the father they could only save one life and his Catholic priest counseled him to sacrifice his wife to save the baby. And he did. She of course had no say in the matter.
I am 71 years old, old enough to remember when abortion was supposed to be illegal.
Back then, those who did not believe in abortion didn’t have one. For the others, those with sufficient money had a safe, albeit illegal, abortion. Those without money either had an unsafe and possibly fatal abortion or a child that was not wanted. The only way that the law was enforced was to remove the availability of abortions for poor people. Those with money could readily get around that. The same thing will happen again.
I am very opposed to banning abortion - not for reasons of morality but because the law will once again be enforced unequally. It will affect only against the poor.
I have seen comments from anti-abortion people that indignantly ask “How many abortions have been performed since Roe vs Wade?” My response to them is “How many were performed before Roe vs Wade?” My comments get deleted in a matter of seconds. “Moral” people don’t want questions like that.
William J. Brennan was a Catholic justice, but recognized that he was a justice in a country without an established church, and couldn’t in good conscience insist that those not professing the same faith be bound by Church law.
The four far-right Catholic justices now are indifferent to the non-establishment clause & indifferent to others’ rights. The woman’s rights of conscience & right to life are set aside.
I’m a very traditional Catholic, and I believe that the death of a soul is far worse than the death of the body, yet I don’t believe that a secular state can outlaw non-Catholic or anti-Catholic books or institutions. What pregnant woman is going to listen to the moral counsel of the Church when the Church lets political thugs engage in election fraud, torture, massive crimes against international law, in order to eliminate one moral evil by underhanded subversion of our courts?
Most people would be delighted if no one ever resorted to abortion, but to trade all moral rules against deception, coercion, and injustice in order to achieve a goal is emphatically against Catholic moral teaching.
It’s hard to believe that this is 2007 and not 1945, given this appalling decision. We don’t need this administration or any administration telling us what we can and cannot do with our own bodies - that’s between a woman and her physician, period. Will those who oppose abortion as an option be willing to raise the babies they won’t be having? I don’t think so, somehow - so why are they involved in the issue at all? No woman WANTS to have an abortion, but often it is the appropriate and essential way to go, given individual circumstances. I am appalled by our Supreme Court, though not surprised - this is why Bush has stacked the court as he has, and it needs to be stopped right away. Justices should not serve until retirement or death - and this is one reason why that particular law should be changed forthwith.
Siouxrose April 19th, 2007 10:48 am
“IF the US held the moral highground for demonstrable showings of viable respect for life for the already living, the issue of abortion might be able to stand on solid ground.”
How true, and how sad that so many identify with hypocrisy.
Leslee Unruh, an antiabortion activist in South Dakota..
“We’re brainstorming, and we’re having fun,” she said..
It is most often these same “Bible” quoting, God fearing, fire and brimstone threatening, “we know/gods told us what is better for you” types, who are the staunches, most fervent (and loathsome) supporters of bombing, blasting and otherwise destroying (etc) the lives and souls of other extent people and cultures.
They are the unthinking grass roots behind “el presidento” and his cronies.
Such an extraordinary double standard leaves me almost incapable of a rationale response. For it is almost always impossible to counter religious delusion and dogma (which itself fills a powerful psychological need) with scientific, logical and humane discussion. There is no way you can convince somebody who holds a delusion that they are deluded..
I always wondered how such self righteous people with such extraordinary double standards ever “had fun”.. Now we know. They get their jollies, their warm inner glow of sanctimonious self righteousness, by interfering in other peoples lives and problems.
The real Problem is, all of these self motivated bleeding hearts will be safely and smugly long gone from the scene whilst the parent(s) and sibling(s) of any such affected infant are left with a life time of hard work, real sacrifice and very often failure of self fulfillment. Why?? Because of a failure of biology beyond their control. Hardly seems right, does it?
If they want to impose their wishes and their dodgy theological principles on others, they should take FULL responsibility for the human life they “save” for however long that human life requires close and continuous support. Pass that legislation and I believe you would find these caring types suddenly have another pressing, god pleasing, cause to attend to.
But Hey….. Leslee (whose parents couldn’t spell) Unruh is having “fun”..
There is a collision course here: on the one hand, there are more and more information emerging about genetic anomalies, and more and better scanning techniques emerging. This will put more and more pressure on allowing ‘fetal termination’ for ‘quality control.’
On the other hand, these ‘compassionate conservatives’ are obviously going to try to put an end to post amniocentesis abortions (which generally occur in the second trimester) even when the amnio reveals a serious anomaly.
People can’t have it both ways.
NOW is the time to make it PELLUCIDLY clear to any and every politician that non-support for abortion rights guarantees YOUR non-support.
Expect Halliburton to get a big no-bid contract to make coat hangers
Who will arrest the government of the United States for dropping depleted uranium all-over Iraq, forcing radiation abortions on women who didn’t even want an abortion.
Why aren’t the christians protesting at the pentagon because the military has performed hundreds of thousands of abortions (on Iraqis) and will perform millions more over the next 4 billion years ( the half-life of depleted uranium)
Who will arrest the government of the United States for giving radiation abortions to the wives of thousands of U.S. soldiers……the soldiers who absorbed depleted uranium into their systems in Iraq, came home to their loved ones and reproduced…… deformed or dead children. The percentages are frightening
I think you’re on to something there, Peace Warrior: If we simply characterize the civilian war deaths in Iraq as “retroactive abortions” maybe the religious right would be able to appreciate the moral magnitude of the war crimes we have committed there.
Absent that, I wonder if we could grant Barbara Bush a retroactive abortion?
The reason why the Bush gang and its Catholic-dominated Supreme Court oppose abortion is because an exploding human population supplies their corporate friends and sponsors with all the masses of underpaid workers they need to expand their ecocidal wealth and power around the World and onward to the stars, like the cancer they are - but the cancer always dies with its host, in this case the Earth. So, we are dealing with madmen, insane criminals who refuse to see the consequences of their aggressive delusions of grandeur. Better impeach them now while there is still time.
If men could get pregnant,
Abortion would be a sacrament.
We now understand the total corruption of our Department of Justice under Gonzales and Bush —
And our Supreme Court which “appointed” Bush president.
Clarence Thomas, a known “lover of hard core pornography” allowed to sit on the court.
Scalia keeping his sons employed –
and his involvement with Cheney.
Right-wing religious fanatics we are supposedly opposing throughout the world, yet embracing at home a Christian Taliban.
The Vatican doesn’t recognize the full personhood of females as it recognizes the full personhood of males.
Evidently, neither does this Supreme Court.
Our entire system of creating a people’s government has been corrupted and overturned.
“If they can shift the debate to what happens to the fetus, rather than who decides, that’s a useful frame for them,”
Exactly! It astonished me to learn the reactions of some people who have seen publicly displayed images of aborted babies. They called the “messenger” (the ones displaying signs) disgusting and called their behavior appalling……Am I missing something? It’s disgusting and appalling not because someone is showing you but because IT IS DISGUSTING AND APPALLING. The pictures I saw that were displayed were all or mostly very early in pregnancy. You want a real wake up call? “Google” partial birth abortion, then click on images at the top of the page. There are HEADLESS babies. Babies. Not blobs of tissues or whatever they’re calling it these days. They are miniatures of my own children, but their bodies are mangled, dismembered, beheaded, scarred, burned; MURDERED.
And if you want to know the real truth why, look into the market for baby body parts. That is where the real money is. How did we let it come to this? The most vulnerable and without question most innocent on earth and this is what we do to them. We, as a country, are WATCHING this happen, or are we turning away and LETTING it happen?
Dear God, lately we care more about the President stealing oil than murderd babies. I am as guilty as the next person.
I’m sorry I know I already commented here, but I have one other thing to say. Some say that no one should be able to tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her body and I completely agree.
If you would like to rip your own arms and legs off, go ahead. If you would like to burn your skin with salt, go ahead. If you would like to stab yourself in the back of the neck and suck your brains out with a tube, you go right ahead!!
To- faithhopelovep91
So tell me….how does a husband, wife and child live on 1 income of $7-9 an hr. and pay for healthcare too?
Minimum wage should be $25 an hr just to support a family of 1.
Why should women be forced to come to term so someone else can adopt the children and force their brand of religion, discipline/abuse on them?
How come you don’t have the same passion when the baby turns into an adult and needs food, shelter, clean clothes, a shower and some one to love them?
You just like puppies, thats all, cute little puppies.
Golddogs,
If by puppies you mean my 6 children, then yes I love them!
And I’m sorry but the problems that you stated are no argument for killing a baby. The solution for the problems you said the child may face is definitely not death. We all have challenges in life and most of us don’t kill ourselves, nor would we want to be killed “for our own benefit”. We are not guaranteed a great or even good life; that is not a right. But each life belongs to the individual (not their mother). One might think that life is the only inherent right we have. Abortion strips even that
P.S. My husband currently makes about $11/hr and that is our only income for 8 people. We do have medicaid and wic for our children for now. My husband will finish college in about 2 years at which time we won’t qualify for (or need) gov assistance. We did things backwards and mixed up and we are paying for that. It’s hard believe me. But we did not kill any of our children “for their own good” because things were rough. We are also planning to foster and/or adopt in the future.
And anyone who has a harder life due to keeping a child that they wanted to abort may come to my home (pregnant or postnatal). Sleep, eat, shower.. Anyone may email me if you know of anyone in need of help. faithhopelovep91@aol.com
Thank you