Supreme Court Moves the Anatomical Landmark
The Supreme Court last week upheld the first restriction of any kind on abortion since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion for any reason in all fifty states during all nine months of pregnancy in January, 1973. Previous to that date each state was free to choose its own abortion laws. Just months before Roe, voters in Washington State installed by referendum the most extreme abortion law in the country. Mostly the abortion procedure was restricted to certain specific circumstances in the vast expanse of North America, but a few states like Washington, California and New York had very liberal abortion laws in 1973.
Thus, it is incorrect to say that Roe v. Wade ‘legalized abortion’ and that overturning it will ‘criminalize abortion.’ Unless the Supreme Court determines that the fetus inside the woman is a ‘person’ under the Constitution (very unlikely), overturning Roe will just send the issue back to each state to choose its own abortion law, and Washington State will revert back to its extremely liberal abortion law that was in force before January 1973.
Although Washington State’s abortion law prior to Roe was very liberal, it still banned the practice known as ‘dilation and extraction’ or ‘partial-birth abortion’ which was at issue in The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The Supreme Court upheld the Act last week in deciding two related cases, Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood. The issue in the cases was where abortion ended and infanticide began. In oral arguments in Carhart, Solicitor General Paul D. Clement defined the issue as to ‘whether fetal demise takes place in utero, which is, of course, the hallmark of all abortions, or whether fetal demise, the lethal act takes place when the fetus is more than halfway out of the mother.’
In many media vehicles, the description of the ‘dilation and extraction’ (D&X) or ‘partial-birth’ abortion procedure is not allowed to be published or broadcast. Arbortionístas want to hide the details.
In two Associated Press (AP) articles written within hours of the decision, the same descriptive phrase is used in both articles to hide the most important detail of the now banned abortion method. Both AP articles describe the ‘outlawed’ procedure as ‘partially removing the fetus intact from a woman’s uterus, then crushing or cutting its skull to complete the abortion.’ The key word alive is omitted from the description. The banned abortion method which was upheld by the Supreme Court involves the partial delivery of an alive and intact fetus.
In the Court’s majority opinion, Justice Kennedy memorialized a description of what Congress called in the Act ‘a gruesome and inhumane procedure’ by quoting a nurse’s eyewitness testimony in the case regarding an event involving a 26 ½ week old fetus:
‘Dr. Haskell went in with forceps and grabbed the baby’s legs and pulled them down into the birth canal. Then he delivered the baby’s body and the arms—everything but the head. The doctor kept the head right inside the uterus….
‘The baby’s little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head, and the baby’s arms jerked out, like a startle reaction, like a flinch, like a baby does when he thinks he is going to fall.
‘The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a highpowered suction tube into the opening, and sucked the baby’s brains out. Now the baby went completely limp….
‘He cut the umbilical cord and delivered the placenta. He threw the baby in a pan, along with the placenta and the instrument he had just used.’
Previously the ‘anatomical landmark’ determining the difference between abortion and infanticide was the fetus’s head. In the Act, Congress moved the anatomical landmark to the fetus’s navel. In oral arguments, Solicitor General Paul D. Clement spoke to the Court in favor of the Act: ‘…it’s important to draw a line here [at the navel], and say that fetal demise that takes place in utero is one thing. That is abortion as it has always been understood. But this procedure, the banned procedure is something different. This is not about fetal demise in utero. This is something that is far too close to infanticide for society to tolerate.’
All that the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act requires is that the fetus be killed before being partially removed from the woman past the anatomical landmark of the fetus’s naval. That should not be too much to ask. No evidence was presented by either side that even a single abortion would be prevented by the Act or that the procedure is ever medically required, but arbortionístas are in a tizzy.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg set the agenda in her dissent from the majority opinion. ‘Today’s decision is alarming,’ she wrote. The decision contains ‘no exception safeguarding a woman’s health.’ The majority decision, she wrote, will ‘chip away’ at abortion rights. She worries about Roe because the majority opinion did not ‘retain’ or ‘reaffirm’ the 1973 abortion decision.
On the day after the decision, Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, took the lead from Justice Ginsburg and said that the Supreme Court’s decision is ‘alarming,’ it ‘contains no exception for a woman’s health,’ and gives ‘the green light to anti-choice politicians’ to work against abortion. She called it the ‘Bush Federal Abortion Ban.’ No mention of D&X or ‘partial-birth’ or hanging the live fetus out of the womb with the head inside, snipping its backbone and sucking its brains out. Nope. It is an issue of ‘personal, private medical decisions,’ and ‘a woman’s right to choose,’ she said.
NOW president, Kim Gandy, said in a press release that the decision was a ‘clarion call’ (a synonym for Ginsburg’s ‘alarm’), contained ‘no exception…if the woman’s health is in serious danger,’ and worried that the decision was ‘chipping away’ at Roe. Never mind that the Act contains an exception to save the life of the mother and that no evidence was presented that indicated that the D&X procedure was ever needed for any medical problem. Arbortionístas demand the ‘health exception’ because they know that the abortion doctor can drive an 18 wheeler thru it and will always claim that any abortion is for the health of the woman.
Will Roe fall? Norma McCorvey (the ‘Roe’ in Roe v. Wade) has renounced her part in the landmark abortion decision of 1973. ‘I do not want any more women to be injured by abortion, nor do I want any more children to die,’ she said. At a news conference in front of the Supreme Court building in 2005, she said that she feels responsible for ‘the deaths of millions of children’ that have been aborted since 1973.
At the same news conference, Alveda King, the niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke about her experience with abortion. ‘I made the choice to have my second abortion right after Roe v. Wade. The real truth is that abortion hurt me, it hurt my living children,’ she said. ‘They often say, “Well, mommy, you killed our brother or sister—did you want to kill me too?” I have to answer that…’
Arbortionístas may have gone too far in their defense of the D&X partial-birth method of abortion and in the process may have endangered the continued viability of Roe v. Wade. The arbortionístas contending about Congress’s moving the anatomical landmark from the fetus’s head to its navel reveals their inhuman and fiendish view. Planned Parenthood is revealed not to be planning parenthood at all, but something very different.
Usually abortion activists minimize the psychological effects on women of the procedure and attribute any grief, sorrow or regret to their finding religion, but in oral arguments, Eve C. Gartner, the attorney opposing the Act in Gonzalez v. Carhart, was asked by Chief Justice Roberts, ‘What are the psychological reasons’ for opposing the Act?
‘If she would prefer that the fetus undergo demise before the extraction begins,’ she replied, ‘some women may feel better about that. The testimony was also that other women absolutely don’t want that. And you know, feel that they – you know, it’s a very personal question that really goes to the heart of his case. It’s a very personal decision how the woman has made this very difficult moral/religious decision to end her pregnancy, often for very tragic reason, how does she want the fetus to undergo demise? Different people will have different views about this. But here [in the Act] Congress has legislated that for the woman…’