'Partial Birth' Abortion Procedure Banned

by Mush on April 18, 2007 · 1 Comment · in Blurbs

In which there is now a nationwide ban on a particular type of abortion procedure.

The term ‘partial birth abortion’ was coined by a right-to-lifer (Congressman Charles Canady, R-Fla) expressly to fuel an already volatile debate. However, as much as I hate to admit it, the term is a fair description of a fairly horrific procedure.

(—don’t read the following paragraph if you’re squeamish!—)
IDX is a procedure in which the cervix is dilated and the fetus turned breach and pulled out legs first. With its head still in the womb, an incision is made in the back of the skull and its brain is vacuumed out (in order to crush the skull so it will pass through the cervix). It must be assumed that in some cases the fetus is alive when the incision is made. It’s a late-term procedure, only performed after the 20th week of gestation (human gestation is 38 weeks), and makes up a very small percentage of the types of abortions performed annually (out of 1 million abortions in the year 2000, late-term abortions accounted for 2,200 and not all of those were IDX).
(—the squeamish! may resume reading now—)

IDX is apparently intended for use in unusual circumstances such as hydrocephalus (where the fetal head expands too much to pass through the cervix) or when the woman cannot survive deep abdominal surgery. (Here’s an article about why someone – a devout Christian, even – would actually need the procedure.)

I’m certain that IDX has been performed for no good reason. There may be women who just can’t be bothered to get down to the clinic until their 20th week. There may be surgeons who feel it’s better to perform an IDX (and collect the fee) than bring another unwanted kid into the world. Who knows. All I’m saying is that I don’t doubt that the procedure has been abused, and I agree wholeheartedly that using IDX as birth control on a viable fetus older than 20 weeks is beyond terrible… on the other hand I can’t find any statistics but I assume it’s used mainly on already-dead fetuses for the purpose of providing parents with a fairly intact body to grieve over.

So I’m not pro-IDX. I don’t even like IDX, and were I designing the world I’d decree that it would only happen in extreme cases where the fetus wasn’t viable and the mother absolutely needed to have it performed.

But.

Yesterday the court has banned the procedure entirely, and in the ban there is no exception that would allow the procedure if it was needed to preserve a woman’s health. If a woman discovers in her 21st week her baby was hydrocephalic, she’s having deep abdominal surgery. Period. Which means that abortion rights are slipping. And that, my friends, bothers me a great deal.

In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called the decision “alarming.”

It “cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court,” she said.

The ban on this procedure is completely and expressly an attack against abortion rights. I say so because banning just one of several late-term procedures doesn’t make a significant impact on reducing the number of abortions! 80 to 90% of abortions are performed in the first trimester, when IDX is not used. This ruling doesn’t do much more than set the stage for further rights reductions.

Kennedy said the ban on partial-birth abortions may “encourage some women to carry the infant to full term, thus reducing the absolute number of late-term abortions.”

The idea of black market IDX terrifies me, but if I were a woman requiring a late-stage abortion I’d opt for IDX long before I’d opt for other procedures that require the repeated insertion of curettes or other uterus-puncturing instruments.

The government has “an interest in promoting respect for human life at all stages in the pregnancy,” said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, speaking for the court. “The law need not give abortion doctors unfettered choice in the course of their medical practice.”

Yeah. We’re banning a procedure because the law knows ever so much more about medical practice than doctors do, I assume.

This ruling, simply put, is not good. This country is freaking me out.

 
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One Response to 'Partial Birth' Abortion Procedure Banned

  1. 80 says:
    April 20, 2007 at 4:32 pm

    From an article in Salon:

    “And the more you look at what Wednesday’s ruling says about our highest court’s view of women’s rights and autonomy, the worse it gets. Over at the American Prospect, National Alliance for Pregnant Women prez Lynn Paltrow makes the obvious connection: If fetal rights are more important than maternal rights when it comes to abortion, you can probably argue that fetus trumps mom in other areas, too, like forcing C-sections on reluctant mothers in the interest of fetal health, or penalizing pregnant women for not practicing optimal prenatal care.

    Sounds extreme, doesn’t it? Well, Paltrow writes, “this argument is already being used to justify court-ordered Cesarean sections in cases where physicians believe that a c-section will prove more beneficial to the fetus (this despite the fact that c-sections constitute major surgery and pose increased health risks to the pregnant woman and in some cases the fetus as well).” As of now, she says, the practice is rare, but “at least one federal court has said that sending police to a woman’s home, taking her into custody while in active labor and near delivery, strapping her legs together and her body down to transport her against her will to a hospital, and then forcing her, without access to counsel or court review to undergo major surgery constituted no violation of her civil rights at all. The rationale? If the state can limit women’s access to abortions after viability, it can subject her to the lesser state intrusion of insisting on one method of delivery over another.”

    Holy shit. -m