The Supremes vs. My Body
I'm not going to shut up about the U.S. Supreme Court's recent decision on "partial-birth abortion." And I shouldn't."Partial-birth abortion" is a term that was created by abortion foes. It's not a medical term and it's not a specific description of one abortion procedure. In fact, there's plenty of argument over what exactly constitutes a "partial-birth abortion," and many doctors believe the term could include all second-trimester abortions.
If you read the court's opinion you'll notice extensive, graphic descriptions of abortion procedures. The court, conveniently, does very little in the way of describing the circumstances in which those procedures are used. If you don't know why a woman might want a second-trimester abortion you ought to read this. It describes just a few instances when a second-trimester abortion is necessary, and there are others.
The major, glaring, cruel error of the Supreme Court's Gonzales vs. Carhart decision is that there's no exception for an abortion to protect the health of the mother. The high court's majority contends that there's never any such circumstance. Doctors, particularly, the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, disagree:
"Decisions involving pregnancy termination are among the most serious and personal that a woman will make in her life. As the medical specialists in women's reproductive health, we will continue to fight attempts to criminalize legitimate medical procedures."The idea that I — or you, or your sister, your daughter, your friend — would be forced to forgo medical treatment for a sudden illness or carry a fetus conceived during a rape to term. It's enough to stand up and shout.
Here's a brilliant bit from Mahablog via Digby:
"The anti-abortion rights position is based on an assumption that women aren’t real people — especially women who get abortions. Oh, they’re human in a scientific sense, but they aren’t people. They are archetypes who live in the heads of the anti-abortion righters — Careless Woman, Selfish Woman, Woman in a Vacuum. The same people who imagine embryos can think and feel emotions — and therefore deserve protection — must believe a pregnant woman is just a major appliance.There are copious anecdotes from abortion providers who say that often the same people protesting outside the clinic one week are patients (or parents of patients) the next week. These people assume that their situations are unique and should be the one exception. They often want the abortion staff to know they aren’t like those other women who get abortions. This inspired the bitter joke that the legitimate reasons for abortion are 'rape, incest, and me.' Such people recognize their own humanity (or their daughter’s), but those other women who get abortions are just archetypes who don’t deserve respect or consideration.
I’ve long believed that whether one is pro-choice or anti-choice does not depend on whether one thinks embryos are human beings. It depends on whether one recognizes that women are human beings. Not archetypes, but real, individual human beings. Including women who get abortions.
My body, my choice, my outrage. My choice, your choice, our reproductive freedom dashed away bit by bit. It's an outrage.
