Shaka, when the walls fell, Part 2: Supreme Court upholds ban on a whole bunch of abortions but nobody’s sure which ones
“The ‘partial-birth’ abortion ban is a political scam but a public relations gold mine.”
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– Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue.
The Supreme Court has just voted to uphold a ban on something that doesn’t exist: so-called “partial-birth” abortions. There is no such medical procedure by that name. The whole thing is a boondoggle dreamed up by forced-pregnancy advocates who will stop at nothing to keep women from exercising control over their own bodies. It sounds awful — “partial-birth? yikes!” — and the fake diagrams published by forced-pregnancy advocates to illustrate it look even worse. That’s the whole point, to get people to react emotionally. That way they don’t notice that the actual purpose of the law is something entirely different.
So what is it that’s being banned here? Forced-pregnancy advocates have known all along that if they were honest about what the law actually does, they would run into all kinds of guff. That’s because most Americans don’t share their peculiar obsession with controlling the nation’s uteruses. So they’ve had to lie. They’ve had to pretend that the law bans only one type of rare, late-term abortion. The problem is that the law doesn’t actually do that. The wording of the ban is so half-assed, so broad, so confusing, that it could very well apply to almost all procedures performed as early as the 12th week of pregnancy.
Which, of course, is the point.
The law contains no exception for the sake of a woman’s health — though this shouldn’t surprise you once you understand that the whole purpose here is just to keep females from having any control over their own bodies. From a medical standpoint the language of the ban is such gobbledygook that many doctors, perhaps most, will simply stop performing second-trimester abortions altogether rather than risk finding themselves on the wrong side of the law. It is no accident that the ban has been opposed by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which represents more than 90% of ob-gyns, as well as by more than a dozen other major medical groups.
Legally, the decision is indefensible. Three lower courts found the ban unconstitutional based on 30 years of precedent. The Supreme Court itself found a similar law unconstitutional in 2000. What’s changed between then and now is that Shrub has packed the Court with right-wing ideologues. Back when Alito was confirmed (the occasion of my original Shaka, when the walls fell post), optimists were saying that the Dark Side still only had four votes on the Court since Kennedy wouldn’t vote to overturn Roe. It’s a moot point now. This Court has made it clear that even if Roe isn’t technically overturned, there are other ways to outlaw abortion.
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More information and background:
* Statement by Center for Reproductive Rights on Supreme Court ruling, 4/18/07
* Statement from Planned Parenthood on Supreme Court ruling, 4/18/07
* Statement from Feminist Majority Foundation on Supreme Court ruling, 4/18/07
* “The Inception Deception: ‘Partial-Birth’ Ploy Threatens Abortions, Forces Legal Challenges,” Village Voice, November 5-11, 2003
* Federal Abortion Ban FAQ
* Federal Abortion Ban Legal Backgrounder
* Federal Abortion Ban Health Backgrounder
27 Responses to “Shaka, when the walls fell, Part 2: Supreme Court upholds ban on a whole bunch of abortions but nobody’s sure which ones”
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will says:
Very disappointing.
Doesnt stop any abortions, just tells the doctor cant do the one that is the safest for the womanApril 18th, 2007 at 9:25 pm EST -
Violet says:
From the Village Voice article:
Even LeRoy Carhart, a plaintiff in both the current challenge to the ban and in the Supreme Court case that declared Nebraska’s ban unconstitutional three years ago, wouldn’t risk his career by breaking the law. “The bill would make most every procedure that I do from the 12th week on illegal,” says Carhart, a specialist in second-trimester abortions. The state could take away the doctor’s license based only on one person’s claim that Carhart performed a “partial-birth” abortion. “And I can’t jeopardize my ability to care for other women” who need abortions in the first trimester, says Carhart, one of only five abortion providers in Nebraska.
“It could definitely affect what I do,” says Paul Blumenthal, a provider of abortions and associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Johns Hopkins University. Even if he doesn’t begin with the intention of performing any of the steps outlined in the law, Blumenthal says, things can change quickly during the course of an abortion: “Something can happen and then I have to proceed in a way that can cross the line. I wouldn’t have time to call the legislature and get an injunction.”
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cicely says:
That there Supreme Court thingy you have in the U.S. is a fucking nightmare. From where I sit it’s indefensible in terms of democracy that politically appointed judges with virtually lifetime appointments can wield this kind of power. No doubt some good may have come of it in the past too, but that’s not the point. It’s too much power - end of story. Or - please, please tell me that if the Democrats sweep into power they can find ways in the system to fix this.
Maybe everyone stuck in the red states should pull up sticks and move to the blue ones - or something. I don’t know. What a mess. I feel so helpless, as so many people there must. Fucking, fucking bastards!!! Has any Supreme Court judge ever been assassinated? Maybe that’s going too far but Holy Shit, this is bad.
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Mandos says:
Until recently, American liberals have generally held the court to be a net force for good.
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Steven says:
Well, I’m pro-life and don’t agree with abortion.
However, that said, if the woman’s LIFE (and not life STYLE) is at risk, she should be able to terminate the pregnancy.
I know I’m surely in the minority in my opinion, but I consider the unborn baby - an unborn baby.
By the way, fetus, is latin - it means “small person”. Not a glob of protoplasm.
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Kaitlyn says:
Steven, you’re a guy.
You don’t get pregnant, you can’t give birth, and you can’t have an abortion.
You can be pro-life all you damn well please, but you can’t tell another living human being what to do with her body.
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Violet says:
Until recently, American liberals have generally held the court to be a net force for good.
That’s depended on the makeup of the Court. The Warren Court was a net force for good, yes. The Courts that gave us Dred Scott, Plessy v. Ferguson, Korematsu — not so much.
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Steven says:
Kaitlyn said:
“You can be pro-life all you damn well please, but you can’t tell another living human being what to do with her body.But it is not only her body now is it? There is the ending of another human beings’ life involved isn’t there?
A fetus (latin for “small person”) can only grow to become a person. He/she does not grow into a kidney, or a dog, or larger multi-celled non-cognizant life form - it only can grow to be a human being.
So, the smaller person is dependant upon the mother’s body, but so are babies, are they not?
I know I am in the minority here, but I am responding on point, and in a polite way.
***40 million*** babies have been aborted in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade.
That doesn’t bother you?
Steven
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Violet says:
See, Kaitlyn, if you understood the Latin derivation of fetus then everything Steven says about the 40 million baybees would make perfect sense. It’s all in the Latin.
By the way, though, I think he’s wrong about the biology there. When I got pregnant my baby turned out to be a dog, a beautiful little Sheltie. That’s my Molly.
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Mandos says:
Your missing the fact that for many women, they find their abortion to be a relief. So that’s potentially 40 million relieved women. In general, I find it interesting that a lot of anti-abortion folk cannot comprehend that the women themselves might actually want their abortions.
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Mandos says:
Argh. You’re. Pff.
But on the subject of words, yeah, one thing about American conservatives in particular is their obsession with dictionary-definitions and etymology. In their minds, ancient words are True Words, the older the truer.
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simply wondered says:
there was some article over here in the independent (vaguely liberal centrist newspaper for our american readers) that some massive proportion of doctors are now refusing to do abortions on moral grounds. apart from the doctor who wrote that this was because many younger doctors are upper middle class and pretty well off without any experience (or understanding) of real life, my only thought was that this must be the only profession whose members are so pampered ad cosseted (not referring here to the ridiculous hours many of them have to work)that they seem to have universal permission to do only those bits of the job they actually like. i can’t think of any other profession who get this treatment; anyone working class who doesn’t want to do a part of their job get sacked fairly rapidly. actually come to think of it, loads of working class people who do want to do all of their job get sacked pretty regularly too…
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Violet says:
Pharmacists! It’s all the rage now: pharmacists only dispense those medications they personally approve of.
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simply wondered says:
‘i’m sorry, sir; i don’t approve of the way in which you got your headache - i will therefore be refusing to supply you with these aspirins’
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Burrow says:
Pharmacists! It’s all the rage now: pharmacists only dispense those medications they personally approve of.
Not in Washington according to a new state law.
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simply wondered says:
nope! don’t approve of them thar drugs. what you need is the power of prayer. that’s the only thing can cure what you got wrong wit yer, missy!
take two sky fairies every 20 minutes and come back when your knees are sore. -
Kaitlyn says:
Steven - No, it does not.
It is HER FUCKING BODY!
Not the fetus’s!
You said abortions to preserve someone’s ‘life STYLE’ were bad, while those to preserve someone’s life are good.
Why does the woman’s life matter over the babeeeeeeeez??? The baby is innocent, it shouldn’t die because giving birth/being pregnant could kill the mom. Duh!
My mom had a roommate in the early 80s that used abortion as birth control. She used no other kind.
My mom thinks that’s wrong.
BUT.
She’d never stop her from doing it through legistlation - it was not her body, it was her roommate’s. She could have bought her some condoms or something, I don’t know.
My sister thinks what mom’s roommate did was wrong, and thinks all abortions are wrong and should be banned. I respect the first half, but not the second.
No one has the right to tell another human being what to do with her body - besides her doctor.
If I got pregnant in college, I would have an abortion. (I’d be using 50 kinds of birth control, but still.)
Just because you’re pregnant doesn’t mean you’re suddenly a great mother. Just because you’re married doesn’t mean you’re ready to be parents.
Money is often an issue, a very serious one.
It’s her mental health.
Steven - would you be willing to wear a robotic womb? The ‘little person’ would eat everything you ate, and it comes in one size - 9 months and big as a fucking house, so the weeks old ‘little person’ has room to grow.
I’m assuming you’ve adopted many babies and work hard for contraceptive education in our schools and you donate money or time to your local Planned Parenthood?
They don’t just do abortions - my mom knows this for a fact. The military docs weren’t giving her the right infortmation on birth control and sexual health, so her friend took her to the local PP. Her friend was 8 months pregnant. She told the protestors, “Does it look like I’m going to kill my baby?”
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Kaitlyn says:
As for pharmacists - I’m waiting for these sanctimonious asses to deny an unmarried man erectile disfunction medication. Or condoms, for that matter.
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Violet says:
Kaitlyn, your wish has already come true:
More proof that pharmacists are just people who were too dumb to get into medical school
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Kaitlyn says:
Damn! Awesome
Equal stupidity. Equal discrimination.
I use a non-chain pharmacy, and have for years and they have no problem giving me my prescriptions - including birth control.
And I saw condoms on the shelf as well.
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will says:
hey now. Easy on the pharmacist. There are many, many pro-choice, highly ethical, highly intelligent pharmacists.
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simply wondered says:
you’re a pharmacist, aren’t you?
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Rita says:
“this shouldn’t surprise you once you understand that the whole purpose here is just to keep females from having any control over their own bodies.”
NO IT”S TO SAVE THE LIVES OF THE UNBORN CHILDREN YOU FEMINIST QUACK.
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Violet says:
Bless its heart, a tool of the patriarchy.
Rita, I’m going to assume you really are female and extend to you the enormous courtesy of pointing you to an article that might help you start to emerge from the vat of koolaid in which you’re obviously swimming. Jill Filipovic wrote an excellent piece on the ruling at Huffington Post: Terminating Women’s Rights.
An excerpt:
What most anti-choice organizations also won’t tell you is that so-called “partial birth abortions” are often performed on women whose wanted pregnancies went tragically wrong. The image of the selfish woman, too lazy or irresponsible to end her pregnancy sooner, is what anti-choice activists would prefer we believed the women who have “partial-birth abortions” look like. In fact, the face of the outlawed procedure is more like this. And this. These are women with wanted pregnancies — women who may have bought a bassinet, picked out a name, decorated a nursery — when they receive the tragic news that they are carrying a fetus with abnormalities incompatible with life, or a fetus that is already dead or dying.
This law isn’t about saving babies. It’s about reinforcing the patriarchal view that women — adult women, mothers — are mentally incompetent to make decisions about their own reproductive lives and medical health.
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Violet says:
Actually, it occurs to me that what I just said above is the kindest interpretation you can put on what the supporters of this law want to happen.
Let’s say a woman is carrying a fetus which is already dead or so deformed it can’t survive outside the womb, and the woman’s health is being endangered by the pregnancy. That’s a typical case for late-term abortions. Obviously an abortion needs to be performed, and in many cases the safest procedure is the one proscribed by the Partial Birth ban (at least as much as the non-medical terminology in the bill can be understood). That’s the procedure the doctor is going to want to do. But the PBB says no, the doctor must perform a more dangerous procedure, dismembering the fetus in the womb before extraction. This puts the woman at greater risk of injury or even death.
So I guess really the supporters of this ban want as many women to die as possible. That’s because they’re “pro-life.”
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simply wondered says:
it sems like ages since we had some fuckwits to abuse round here.
steven - the derivation of the word foetus/fetus is i suspect not entirely the point for pregnant women whether they want abortions or not, but let’s just have a think, shall we?
You say:
‘By the way, fetus, is latin - it means “small person”. Not a glob of protoplasm.’Well according to the OED (and it has been wrong)fetus is middle english from the latin and given as ‘offspring’. the very fact that the definition specifically includes animals other than humans means your imaginative ’small person’ is accuracy lite. if you’re going to come up with shite logic, you could at least try and get some underlying facts to distort along the way in service of your skyfairycentric view. still i must concur with you in as much as the definition does not include any hint that it might be ‘a glob of protoplasm’ as vi probably thinks even if she didn’t write it down anywhere.
and ‘rita’ (’feminist quack’) thinks you’re a real doctor, vi (like what makes ya well when ya got sick)… i thought it was just me.
unless, of course, she is a duck. with a computer.that bloody stick is useless.
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Infidel says:
…but we’re all just gelatinous goo wrapped around structured ossifications with a will somewhere centered in a bone-a-fied chamber consisting of some wormy cerebellumium, cerebro spino stuff sulci fissured convolutions. Glob of protoplasm- nahh! The derivation of protoplasm is from protus plasimus or “for flatworms”, advocating the division and subsequent seperate existance of what was once one.
