a common housewife in the fast lane by prisonerofhope

Supreme Court Affirms Partial-Birth Abortion Ban

Court_front_med Today the Supreme Court decided that a 2003 ban on certain partial-birth abortion procedures does not violate a woman's right to have an abortion. The language used in the law could have dire consequences for second trimester abortions.

Partial-birth abortion, as defined by the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, is a procedure in which a physician:

[D]eliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother, for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus;

The definition appears to outlaw two of the most common procedures used in partial-birth abortions: intact dilation and extraction (IDX) -- which involves sucking the brain out -- and regular dilation and extraction (D&E) -- which appears to be a more systematic process of dismembering the fetus. IDX and D&E are used most frequently after the first trimester ends, at week 13.

The definition is lacking, though. Partial-birth abortions are generally considered to be those that occur after the 20th week of gestation, but the ban provides no such limit. Medical science says the fetal stage begins eight weeks after conception, so abortion opponents may point out that the law could be applied to an abortion occuring in any abortion using the above procedures -- provided that the pregnancy is at least eight weeks old. The way the law reads, it appears they would win.

The ban doesn't appear to outlaw self-induced abortions, which can carry significant risk for the mother. If this law stands, self-induced abortions and miscarriages may become more common.

The 2008 Presidential Candidates have, of course, already weighed in. Republicans support the action, while Democrats object.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When you support Partial Birth Abortion, THIS is what you are supporting:

Guided by ultrasound, the abortionist grabs the baby's leg with forceps.

The baby's leg is pulled out into the birth canal.

The abortionist delivers the baby's entire body, except for the head.

The abortionist jams scissors into the baby's skull.

The scissors are then opened to enlarge the hole.

The scissors are removed and a suction catheter is inserted.

The child's brains are sucked out, causing the skull to collapse.

The dead baby is then removed. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Yeah, well, Hillary, I was already mad atcha for using my Senate for your political gain...........this is just another reminder of why I would never vote for you for President or Vice President of the United States...............not including the fact that I don't want Bill anywhere NEAR that desk in the Oval Office again! *slaps hand on head*

Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Partial Birth Abortion Decision Reactions

Voices from all sides of the argument, local and national alike, are weighing in on the Supreme Court's decision affirming the legality of a ban on partial birth abortion.

"This decision marks a dramatic departure from four decades of Supreme Court rulings that upheld a woman's right to choose and recognized the importance of women's health. Today's decision blatantly defies the Court's recent decision in 2000 striking down a state partial-birth abortion law because of its failure to provide an exception for the health of the mother. As the Supreme Court recognized in Roe v. Wade in 1973, this issue is complex and highly personal; the rights and lives of women must be taken into account. It is precisely this erosion of our constitutional rights that I warned against when I opposed the nominations of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito,” said Senator Hillary Clinton.

"The Supreme Court reached the correct conclusion in upholding the congressional ban on partial birth abortion. I agree with it," said former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

“I strongly disagree with today’s Supreme Court ruling, which dramatically departs from previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women. As Justice Ginsburg emphasized in her dissenting opinion, this ruling signals an alarming willingness on the part of the conservative majority to disregard its prior rulings respecting a woman’s medical concerns and the very personal decisions between a doctor and patient. I am extremely concerned that this ruling will embolden state legislatures to enact further measures to restrict a woman's right to choose, and that the conservative Supreme Court justices will look for other opportunities to erode Roe v. Wade, which is established federal law and a matter of equal rights for women,” said Senator Barack Obama.

“The Court’s decision today is nothing less than a retreat from well-established Court precedent. The so-called ‘partial-birth’ abortion ban, for example, provides no exception if a woman’s health is in danger or if a doctor determines that the banned procedure is the safest for a woman’s health. Instead, the law subjects doctors to criminal penalty if they perform the banned procedure,” said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.

"I applaud the Court for finding that the Constitution 'expresses respect for the dignity of human life,' and hope that this decision signals the Court's willingness to revisit and reverse Roe v. Wade,” said Kansas Senator and Republican presidential candidate Sam Brownback.

"The Supreme Court decision upholding a law banning late term abortion shows the devastating effect of Conservative Republicans' attempt to take over the courts. The Bush Administration has filled the Supreme Court's recent vacancies with justices who believe in denying women their basic right to reproductive freedom,” said Bronx/Westchester/Rockland Democrat Rep. Eliot Engel.

"The Supreme Court has shown its anti-choice stripes. It is clear that Congress needs to act in order to affirm this nation's commitment to a woman's right to choose without governmental interference. Therefore, I plan to re-introduce, with Senator Boxer, the Freedom of Choice Act, which will write the protections of Roe v. Wade into law,” said Manhattan/Brooklyn Democrat Rep. Jerrold Nadler.

“By upholding the Federal Abortion Ban in its entirety, the Supreme Court has not only supported an abortion ban with no exception for a woman's health, it has given the green light to the anti-choice movement's plan to outlaw abortion entirely,” said Nancy Keenan, president, NARAL Pro-Choice America.

“Like many Hispanic Americans, I am delighted that Justice Roberts, Justice Alito, and three of their colleagues were able to rule in favor of defending the lives of unborn children. Partial birth abortion is a late-term abortion procedure where the child is partially delivered and then gruesomely killed. It is neither a rare procedure in the

United States

, nor is it done only for babies who are severely deformed or dying,” said Bronx Democrat State Senator Rev. Ruben Diaz.

“In playing politics with women's health, the Court has made a stunning, and irresponsible reversal by overturning more than 30 years of legal affirmation of a woman's right to choose. The justices have determined that abortions may be banned even when a woman's doctor finds it medically necessary to protecting her health,” said Manhattan Democrat State Senator Liz Krueger.

“We are deeply distressed at the implications today's decision has on the ability of women to access health care in America. The Court has elevated politics and ideology over women's health. The same motivation drove Congress to attempt to insert itself into health care decisions in the Terry Schiavo case, with tragic results,” said Lorie Chaiten, Director Reproductive Rights Project American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.

"This is a procedure that hurts women," said Feminists for Life of America president Serrin M. Foster. "After three days of intense, forced labor, the doctors stop the delivery, kill the child by stabbing it in the back of the head, drain the baby's brains, and discard the baby. At the end of this procedure, the woman has an empty womb, empty arms and a hole in her heart."

"This was an extreme decision," Kate Michelman, former President of NARAL Pro-Choice America argued. "It demonstrates a fundamental lack of respect for a woman's health, dignity and privacy, and it reflects a Court that has now put a woman's fundamental right to decide whether to have a child at great risk."

"It took just a year for this new Court to overturn three decades of established law. Today's ruling is a stunning assault on women's health and the expertise of doctors who care for them," said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights.

"While the Bush administration has been appointing justices to the Supreme Court who threaten women's health," stated Patricia A. McGeown, president of Upper Hudson Planned Parenthood. "Planned Parenthood has been focused on our top priorities: the health and safety of our patients. This decision does not bode well for the future reproductive health and rights of American women. We will work to ensure women are provided with the best and safest possible care under the law. We will also count on New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer to fulfill his commitment to guarantee, through state regulation and statute, that women in New York State continue to be able to access safe and legal abortion."

"We thank God that the Supreme Court has affirmed the value of human life by banning the Nazi-esque barbarism that is partial-birth abortion. A majority of justices have recognized what most Americans have long known: there is no constitutional right to slay a healthy, nearly-born baby by stabbing it in the back of the head and vacuuming out its brains – all without even anesthetizing the child,” said Focus on the Family chairman James Dobson.

“Elections matter: this ban is the consequence of a Republican, ideologically-driven president and Congress, which ignored the science-based opinions of such leading medical authorities as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in passing this ban and signing it into law,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of Feminist Majority.

Oh, by the way, Eleanor, you're right, elections DO matter. I'm glad you reminded this little psuedo-Amish girl about that.

By the way, these quotes are just in case you thought this was a Republican/Democrat issue:

"I will follow that method of treatment, which according to my ability and judgement, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; furthermore, I will not give to a woman an instrument to produce abortion."
Hippocratic Oath
Hippocrates/Father of Modern Medicine circa 460-377 BC

"Guilty? Yes. No matter the motive, love of ease, or a desire to save from suffering the unborn innocent, the woman is awfully guilty who commits the deed. It will burden her conscience in life, it will burden her soul in death, but, oh, thrice guilty is he who drove her to the desperation which impelled her to the crime!"
Susan B. Anthony/Mother of the Womens Liberation Movement

"We KNOW that it is KILLING but the state allows KILLING under certain circumstances."
Dr. Neville Sanders/abortionist
(okay, sorry, the captials are mine--couldn't resist)

"While the deep concern of a woman bearing an unwanted child merits consideration and sympathy, it is my personal feeling that the legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life. Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at it's earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized, the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old.
I share the confidence of those who feel that America is working to care for it's unwanted as well as wanted children, protecting particularly those who cannot protect themselves. I also share the opinions of those who do not accept abortion as a response to our society's problems--an inadequate welfare system, unsatisfactory job training programs, and insufficient financial support for all it's citizens. When history looks back to this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family and to fulfill it's responsiblity to it's children from the very moment of conception."
SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY AUG. 3, 1971
(so much for the left!--sorry couldn't help myself again)

(CHECK THIS OUT!)
"I am opposed to abortion and to government funding of abortions. We should not spend state funds on abortions because so many people believe abortion is wrong."
BILL CLINTON SEPT. 26, 1986
(too bad these men didn't keep their opinions to themselves--amazing what comes back to bite you)

"There are those who argue that the right to privacy is of a higher order than the right to life. That was the premise of slavery. You could not protest the existance of treatment of slaves on the plantation because that was private and therefore outside your right to be concerned.
What happens to the mind of a person, and the moral fabric of a nation, that accepts the aborting of the life of a baby without a pang of conscience? What kind of person and what kind of society will we have twenty years from hence if life can be taken so casually? It is that question, the question of our attitude, our value system, and our mindset with regard to the nature and worth of life itself that is the central question."
Rev. Jesse Jackson Jan. 1977

"Many of us are hunting mice--while lions devour the land"
Leonard Ravenhill

Our illustrious mothers of the Women’s Movement in modern society, going back as far as the mid-1800’s have opposed abortion, not supported it. It was only in the 1960’s that this was twisted and turned into something that it was never meant to be. I do not believe that the women who fought so hard for women’s equality in the legalities of marriage and family, in the voting booth, and in the workplace (equal pay for equal work) ever intended for the abortion question to become part of the mix. In their day women were historically considered ‘property’ of either their fathers or husbands which is where the tradition of the father ‘giving away’ the daughter in marriage comes from, and this is what they were fighting against.

Let’s go back to what the women who were the foundation of feminism thought about abortion:

“Every woman knows if she were free, she would never bear an unwished for child, nor think of murdering one before it’s birth.”

Victoria Woodhull—first female Presidential candidate who ran under the banner of the Equal Rights Party 1872 Wheeling, West Va. Evening Standard 11/17/1875

“When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton in a letter to Julia Ward Howe 10/16/1873 as recorded in Howe’s diary at Harvard University Library

“Abortion is infanticide”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton in The Revolution, 1(5):1 2/5/1868

“There must be a remedy even for such a crying evil as this.”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton in The Revolution, 1(10):146-7 3/12/1868

“We are aware that many women attempt to excuse themselves for procuring abortions upon the ground that it is not murder. But the fact to resort to so weak an argument only shows the more palpably that they fully realize the enormity of the crime. Is it not equally destroying the would be future oak to crush the sprout before it pushes it’s head above the sod, as to cut down the sapling or cut down the tree? Is it not equally to destroy life, to crush it in the very germ and to take it when the germ has evolved to any given point in it’s line of development?”

Victoria Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin’s Weekly 6/20/1874

Supreme Court Affirms Partial-Birth Abortion Ban

Partial Birth Abortion Decision Reactions

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