Partial-Birth Abortion
In many instances, the news media is using qualifiers to decribe yesterday's decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the ban on the federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. Many news outlets have been using words and phrases such as the "a ban on so-called partial-birth abortions" or something along the lines of "a ban on what opponents refer to as partial-birth abortions."
Regardless of how it's whitewashed, I find it hard to believe that there are those who can still support partial-birth abortions. Over at Writes Like She Talks, Jill is appalled that Cathy Cleaver Ruse of Family Research Council objected to the use of the partial-birth abortion technique in cases where the woman's mental health was listed as the reason for the abortion. And Jill connects the dots and concludes that, in wake of the Virginia Tech shootings, how can we not be concerned about a woman's "mental" health?
Jill apparently is unaware of the fact that, regarding abortion, mental health is not the same as well, mental health. We are not necessarily talking about defined mental problems or someone who is need of a stay in a hospital in order to cope. We're likely not talking about someone who is on medication for depression. Instead, we are talking about "health" as defined by the law in Doe v. Bolton, the companion ruling to Roe v. Wade. In determining whether a woman "qualified" for an abortion, the Court in Doe wrote: "The medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors--physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age-- relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health." The abortionist determines what is the qualifying factor. And if the qualifier isn't physical then it is mental.
And, remember, he gets paid for doing an abortion, he doesn't get paid for not doing one.
News articles and even statements by leaders of abortion groups have been very revealing over the years: the majority of partial-birth abortions are done on healthy mothers of healthy babies. In addition, if a woman were truly in dire circumstances, this would be the last abortion procedure she would want. It takes three days to do. The first two days, the abortionist inserts expanding laminaria into the opening of the cervix (the opening leading to the uterus) so he can perform the abortion on the third day. This is certainly not a time-sensitive, life-saving procedure.
2 comments:
Thanks for reading and linking to my blog.
I do not understand your point. Mental health isn't...health? Mental health concerns are inferior to physical health concerns?
I would like to understand why you make this distinction but I don't see an explanation of why mental health concerns for the pregnant woman should be discounted, downgraded or otherwise considered to be inferior reasons.
An explanation for why you believe that mental health concerns for the pregnant woman should be discounted, downgraded or otherwise considered to be inferior would be helpful. Thanks.
Don't think of mental health in medical terms-- under Roe and Doe it doesn't count.
"Health" is the legal term used by the Supreme Court and it was defined very broadly. Whether it is financial straits that may cause her stress or her need to continue school-- all of these things can be defined, legally, as having an impact on her health.
In Kansas, the likely "mental health" reasons for partial-birth abortions, based on what is known about the procedure and who has them, are likely due to stressors related to family or circumstances. One set of doctors in New Jersey, for example, attributed a large number of the procedures they did to teenagers who either didn't realize they were pregnant, didn't care or didn't want to tell their family. In some instances, the mental stress may be that the mother is carrying a child with a disability.
In fact, in the early years of debate over the issue, information provided by individual abortionists had to be checked for clarification because at question was whether each reason noted for an abortion equalled a single abortion. In other words, if "maternal mental health" is checked but so is "fetal cleft palate," did that equal two abortions or just one.
Just as an aside, think about the fact that if a woman is truly in a seriously debilitating state of mental health-- is an abortion going to make it magically better? Probably not. She needs serious medical attention from a licensed mental health professional. An abortion likely would provide her with little relief from whatever plagues her mentally. Pregnancy rarely leads to mental problems-- her problems likely stem from something else and an abortion will not rid her of this and may instead exacerbate her problem.
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