The Future of Choice
Not too long after Gonzalez v. Carhart, states are already beginning to impose troubling restrictions on abortion.By Cara Boekeloo, Calvin College
July 16, 2007
Continuing a trend initiated by April’s Gonzales v. Carhart Supreme Court decision, on July 6 Missouri Governor Matt Blunt signed a troubling new law. The measure places abortion clinics under government oversight by classifying them as ambulatory surgical centers. Planned Parenthood has said that the law could force it to spend up to two million dollars to remodel one of its clinics and could halt medical abortions at another site.
The law also directly affects students, allowing schools to offer abstinence-only educational programs. In addition, the law bars people affiliated with abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, from teaching or supplying materials for public school sex education courses, effectively blocking those most concerned for women from educating them.
“This law is dangerous to women,” said Lisa Barton, Senior Counsel for NARAL Pro-Choice America. “It is limiting pertinent information to our young people that would allow them to make informed decisions about their health.”
This setback comes shortly after Michigan pro-choice advocates celebrated the overturning of a law that would have enacted broad restrictions on abortion. The measure, known as the Legal Birth Definition Act, sought to change the legal definition of birth to the first moment any part of a fetus is outside a woman’s body.
U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood had approved a temporary restraining order preventing the measure, which became law in June 2004, from being enforced, calling it confusing and vague. This June, a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Court of Appeals agreed, declaring the law unconstitutional. The panel ruled that the Michigan law was broader than the federal law upheld in April and could potentially apply to abortions using other methods earlier in pregnancy.
The ruling was lauded by groups like Planned Parenthood and the Center for Reproductive Rights. “It gives us hope that the recent Supreme Court decision won’t necessarily dictate all the rulings from now on, even in a conservative court,” said Lori Lamerand, CEO of Planned Parenthood of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
“The way that the Michigan law was written, in addition to a ban on intact dilation and evacuation [a midterm abortion method], it could lead to a ban on all abortions,” said Jessica Arons, Director of the Women’s Health and Rights Program at the Center for American Progress.
Despite the small victory in Michigan, the recent developments in Missouri illustrate that April’s Supreme Court decision is still reverberating and providing ammunition to anti-choice groups. “Doctors now have to be very careful about their intent,” she said. “Instead of the health of the woman taking precedence they now have to worry about themselves.”
In Gonzales v. Carhart, the Supreme Court reversed lower court decisions and upheld the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, which was signed into law by President Bush in 2003. The law bans intact dilation and evacuation. The law contains no exception allowing for this procedure to be done when an ongoing pregnancy threatens a woman’s health.
“For 30 years there has been an exception for women’s health,” said Arons. “Now the court has said that women would have to bring their case to court on a case-by-case basis in order to get an exemption for the procedure.” By then it would most likely be too late for most women.
And contrary to what many believe, the April decision won’t reduce the number of abortions at all. The ban on intact dilation and evacuation will simply lead women to get other second trimester procedures even if they are not as safe for their particular circumstances.
“They believe this ruling will prevent ‘many’ abortions,” said Lamerand. “To the contrary—it will simply make physicians sometimes have to choose between saving a patient’s health or committing a federal crime—an untenable position for any doctor and an unprecedented situation. It won’t make abortions less numerous, but it may make them more dangerous in some instances.”
Due to the climate in the Court, reproductive rights advocates are anticipating further challenges to reproductive choice. Planned Parenthood and other reproductive freedom advocates hope that the courts rule as they did in Michigan. Said Lamerand, “This decision does seem to help define one level of interference in the right to an abortion that this particular court was not willing to cross.”
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Comments
I’m sick of the Left attempting to promulgate uncontested abortion rights based on the small percentage of abortions that occur due to rape and the care for the life of the mother, while simultaneously pointing to the small portion as a means to allay concern about certain procedures.
I am sick of the Right pointing to religious conviction as the reason for occluding the action of a woman, in concert with a doctor, from ending a pregnancy—as religious conviction has no place in governmental action of such an important nature affecting believers and unbelievers alike.
Finally, I am sick of the lack of articulation that the careful regulation of abortion is a liberal cause if one considers the fetus a person. This is why McCain, in one of the early debates, received my praise for indicating that he has always stood for the rights of the unborn. This is not a religious contention, which does not belong in government, but rather a liberal principle so instilled in this country as to pass by our attention.
If, on the other hand, you believe that a fetus is not a person with the rights conferred by humanity’s contractual relationship, you must precisely enumerate the criteria used for such an exclusion that takes into account all the substantive ethical hypotheticals that call into question such criteria. Since I believe such an enumeration to be unattainable—as I have attempted the extremely arduous task to no avail—I am pro-life.
I am for a carefully designated panel of doctors, psychologists, ethicists, and legal experts (probably judges), who will be appointed the very sacred task of delineating when an abortion would be permitted, given the supposition that the fetus is a person protected by our normal course of ethical conviction and legal due-process. And, of course, I would leave to the expediency of doctors, the power to perform emergency procedures just like they have in numerous other situations—with the caveat that their actions, as in other similar situations, can be reviewed and sanctioned or exonerated accordingly.
The argument rests solely on the personhood of the fetus. This is the essential decision society needs to make—and as of now, has made in favor or a woman’s right to choose. The other sophistry is nauseating.
— michael - Jul 19, 01:43 PM - #Was the number of “intact dilation and evacuation” (partial birth) abortions deleted from this article since a few days ago? I believe I left a comment about it.
— Kevin - Jul 19, 02:53 PM - #Look Michael- while I agree that the perceived basis of legalized abortion stems from the question: “when does life begin?”, the legal precedent that Roe v Wade cites is the right to privacy- not the right to life.
Whether or not you agree that a constitutional right to privacy really exists or not, you can take that up with Bush’s Supreme Court- I’m sure they’ll agree with you that the right to privacy does not exist for the people of this country in this situation, or in any other situation on the Republican PUBLIC agenda—wire-tapping in the name of national security, etc… I’m sure Bush’s Supreme Court would explain, however, that this constitutional right to privacy exists solely for the Executive Branch, those Republicans that would be completely screwed by campaign finance reform, and of course, huge corporations with billions of dollars to invest in “policy reform” instead of their lowest paid employees.
If you want to talk about legally defining life, tell your pro-life protestors to stop harassing pregnant teenagers and start investing in a scientific solution that provide some LEGAL means of regulation. Tell them to find a way to give birth certificates to fetuses. Until we can legally regulate when life exists, abortion should not be a political issue that costs Democrats and progressive Republicans, willing to make tangible commitments to domestic improvements instead of manipulating the masses to vote solely on these backwards cases for “moral issues” with the knowledge that they can’t legally deliver, not only elections on all levels, but national progress, which includes the LIVES of all those lost to poverty, drug abuse, crime, and other social ills.
— Anna - Jul 19, 03:44 PM - #Anna-
With all due respect, you are engaging in the type of sophistry that I find nauseating. While I am a philosopher and political scientist, I do not have a degree in law. So, I conferred with my girlfriend—who is a lawyer—and she told me what I was already convinced of: Roe v Wade, while still a legal precedent, has taken a back seat to Casey v Planned Parenthood. Why did this happen? It happened because ‘Casey’ was a challenge to the spirit of the law that stemmed from ‘Roe.’ The legal and ethical discussion of abortion does, OF COURSE, center around the personhood of the fetus. It is thoroughly ridiculous to think otherwise. The right to privacy never supersedes the right to life. If it did, then child-molesters could remain protected in their home and claim the right to privacy as they torture a child. If the fetus is a person, then privacy is a moot point. This is so obvious, even the Supremes came around to this conclusion. So, let’s drop the ‘it’s a question of privacy’ business.
I will not grace your sophistry, regarding the Bush administration’s activities over the last several years, with an answer. I am very liberal on these issues, and am not entirely sure Bush shouldn’t be impeached (so the Senate can at least fully investigate) with regards to the wire-tapping issue. But this is the totally irrelevant sophistry of someone who cannot find a decently rational response to my points.
I could not agree more that people who are pro-life should not be harassing teenagers. That said, if you believe, like we do, that abortion is a morally-depraved activity, then you would agree that something must be done. You would probably agree with me (I think) that the torture taking place during interrogations of Muslims suspected of terrorist activity is morally-depraved. Would you then tell the liberals protesting these activities to stop harassing people? I do agree, though, that there is a way to be decent about it—especially to teenagers who are already enduring a difficult ordeal. It’s a tough line to toe. I tell pro-life conservatives that they only hurt their cause by engaging the situation is such a radical manner.
Your final point, though disjointed and difficult to decipher, seems kind of silly. The ethical hypotheticals that I mentioned in the first comment include the absurd situation in which we confer personhood on an entity just after it is born. Do we really think that when an entity moves through the birth-canal, somehow it becomes a person when it wasn’t a few seconds prior? Could anything be more ridiculous? What about the placenta? Are we allowed to throw that away, or is it a person if traveled through the same magical tunnel? Also, what about a C-section? And if this arbitrary standard were not allowed, than killing a 2 month old baby might be okay too, right? So, pro-choice advocates must cling to this idea that an entity is a person when it makes that wondrous journey out of the woman. And those who are more moderate attempt to establish the viability of a fetus as a reasonable demarcation. This, due to the advancement of modern science, is becoming more and more arbitrary as well. So, what is left? Conception. It is the least arbitrary situation I can locate. I am not a Christian—not even a theist. It is simply the most RATIONAL point I can find.
But if you do not think it is wrong to kill a fetus, and you think that the magical journey out of a woman can only be a socially-constructed reality regarding the personhood of an entity, then you must find some other point in which an entity becomes a person. I believe you will find it frustratingly difficult to find anything that would not allow a discontented mother to kill her 2 month old child based on the same principles.
Finally, I just want to say, please don’t confuse legality with correctness or righteousness. There have been numerous laws in the history of humanity that were abhorrent. Just because abortion is legal, does not mean that it is not abhorrent.
I apologize if some of my comments seem condescending…I had an extra cup of coffee this afternoon, and I do not have time now to correct my abrasiveness. I respect your views, and appreciate you voicing them.
— michael - Jul 20, 01:08 PM - #Thank you Michaael, it’s nice to see that I’m not the only progressive pro-lifer out there!
As a side note, I think it is very interesting that pro-choicers claim to be all about making abortion safe, but then get all up in arms when the government wants to regulate abortion as a surgery. Surprise- it is! Wouldn’t such oversight ADVANCE women’s health? Or is this really just about the money pouring into the abortion industry?
— Kelsey - Nov 18, 09:32 PM - #