Posts with the tag abortion

The Senate Doesn't Wear 'I'm With Stupak' T-Shirt

Kay — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:27:40 EST

Today, Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) is smiling. (Flickr/jdlasica)

The Senate released its health care bill last night, named the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (you can read it yourself, in PDF form). The Senate bill has some things about abortion that give the pro-choice community hope after the Stupak-Pitts amendment.

The New York Times has a nice side-by-side comparison of the two bills, and on abortion, the Senate bill looks much closer to what the pro-choice community was pushing for initially in the House bill -- closer to what's called the Capps amendment. Huffington Post reports that Capps herself is somewhat happy with the Senate compromise. "'I am pleased that the Senate has adopted a reasonable, common ground approach on this difficult question,' she said in a statement."

The Senate bill allows insurers to decide if they want to include abortion in each plan (much as they do now, and 87 percent of private plans already choose to provide such coverage). The Senate plan also says that private plans that receive federal subsidies to make the plans more affordable to individuals can provide abortion coverage, so long as they don't use the federal money to pay for the abortion coverage. The Senate bill also allows the public option to provide abortion, again, as long as it federal dollars aren't used to pay for it.

Under the Senate bill, each state is required to have at least one plan that provides abortion coverage and at least one plan does not include abortion coverage.

But, as Eleanor Clift pointed out at Newsweek, the abortion fight isn't over yet:

There are two numbers to watch: (1) Can an anti-abortion amendment offered by, say, Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, or pro-life Democrat Bob Casey, get 60 votes? Probably not, but Reid will have to get 60 votes to even proceed with debate on the bill. (2) Getting that 60 could mean putting stronger anti-abortion language in the bill to get those red-state Democrats.

But in the meantime, the pro-life community is pretty mad. The National Right to Life, one of the biggest pro-life groups in America, said in a statement that the Senate bill "substituted completely unacceptable language that would result in coverage of abortion on demand in two big new federal government programs ... National Right to Life will continue to fight for the Stupak-Pitts Amendment."

There's also funding set aside for abstinence only education:

Leave it to the United States Senate to ... restore a program called Title V, which, since the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, has allocated a yearly $50 million in grants to abstinence-only education programs. Obama let the program lapse in June, leaving some abstinence-only groups in dire straits. So in September, Sen. Orrin Hatch offered an amendment to restore Title V via heath-care reform, which (much to the outrage of liberal groups) just squeaked through the Senate Finance Committee with a 12–11 vote. A similar amendment, offered in the House by Rep. Terry Lee from Nebraska, died in committee.

If the Senate language survives reconciliation, the Title V program will be extended through 2014. This will not, however, bring abstinence funding back to the levels of the past decade. In 2008, Title V grants accounted for just under 25 percent of the federal abstinence budget (the rest of the budget came from other abstinence-only funding sources not restored in the Senate bill, including Community Based Abstinence Education Grants and the Adolescent Family Life Act).

On another reproductive health front, abstinence only groups are declaring victory. “It is encouraging that the hard work of grassroots constituencies from across the country have prevailed to ensure these common-sense programs will continue,” said executive director of the National Abstinence Education Association, Valerie Huber to The Americano. But abstinence-only programming has been scientifically proven to be ineffective.

UPDATE: Jodi Jacobson over at RH Reality Check has a more in-depth look at abortion in the Senate health care bill.

More Trouble with the Stupak Amendment

Kay — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:50:19 EST

This morning E.J. Dionne, a columnist that I generally have a lot of respect for, dismissed the objection over the Stupak amendment as a minor "skirmish" (via Igor at the Wonk Room). Dionne is perhaps thinking that the Stupak amendment is minor because the New York Times misreported the following facts about abortion:

Not many women who undergo abortions file private insurance claims, perhaps to avoid leaving a record. A 2003 study by the Alan Guttmacher Institute found that 13 percent of abortions were billed directly to insurance companies. Only about half of those who receive insurance coverage from their employers have coverage of abortion in any event, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

This is wrong on both counts. Guttmacher itself has had to correct the record on the 13 percent statistic:

Our study included all women who obtained abortions in 2001, including women on Medicaid and those who are uninsured. If one looked only at privately insured women, the percentage of procedures billed directly to insurance companies would be substantially higher than 13 percent.

Perhaps even more importantly, the 13 percent statistic does not include women who pay for an abortion up front and then seek reimbursement from their insurance provider. This is common when a medical provider does not participate in a patient’s insurance plan, as is often the case with small, specialized providers, including abortion providers.

Lastly, some of the women whom our study identified as paying out of pocket likely had insurance coverage for abortion care, but may not have known they had it or chose not to use it for reasons of confidentiality. Given the stigma that still surrounds abortion, many women might not have wanted their insurer or employer—or their spouse or parent who may be the primary policyholder—to learn that they had obtained an abortion. That antiabortion activists who have worked for decades to perpetuate that stigma are now turning around and using it to argue why women should not be able to purchase insurance coverage for abortion is deeply cynical.

Furthermore, the fact that "only half" of women who receive abortion coverage from their employer's insurance plan is also misleading. It's true that a Kaiser study showed that 46 percent of employers said they had plans that covered abortion, but a similar study conducted by Guttmacher showed that a "typical plan" covers abortion 87 percent of the time. Guttmacher had this to say about the differences between the surveys:

The Guttmacher study queried the medical directors of insurance companies and asked them about the typical insurance policy they wrote for employers.

KFF queried employers’ human resources staff and asked about their firm’s coverage.

Guttmacher admitted that there might be problems with both studies.

Guttmacher’s study asked about “typical plans” and might not account for the fact that some employers may purchase atypical plans, such as plans with high deductibles that would not cover a range of services, including abortion.

The KFF study surveyed human resources staff, who might not know this level of detail about their coverage, and, in fact, it received a disproportionately high level of “don’t knows” (26 percent) in response to this specific question.

It's not unusual that we wouldn't know exactly how many abortions are covered by insurance, since part of the ruling in Roe v. Wade had a lot to do with privacy. These privacy rights are already under attack in Oklahoma, where new laws are expected to have disastrous results:

One law would require women to fill out a lengthy survey that asks, among other things, about their race, education and reason for seeking an abortion. It asks women whether they're having relationship problems, whether they can't afford to raise a child or whether having a baby would dramatically change their lives.

Another section requires doctors to provide detailed information about complications that arise as a result of the procedure. The Health Department ultimately would compile the information into a statistical report and post it on its website.

Lynn Harris at Broadsheet wrote, "According to proponents of the law, this extensive abortion data -- which will include the reason the procedure was sought -- will help health officials prevent future abortions. Yeah, I can see that. Because the requirement itself would scare the shit out of me."

The problem, ultimately, is that we're allowing politics to play into which medical procedures are covered and which aren't. For some women that have coverage already and might lose it if the Stupak amendment makes it into the final bill, they may not notice right away – until that day that they need to obtain an abortion.

Photo by Flickr user yarnivore.

Understanding Stupak

Kay — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:58:16 EST

The Stupak amendment, an amendment that would essentially create incentives for private insurance plans to drop abortion coverage, has whipped the reproductive rights community into a frenzy. But there's been some confusion about the details of the Stupak amendment. But there's been some great work published in the last couple of days. Here are some great resources for understanding the amendment:

Planned Parenthood's "real life" analysis of the whole House health care reform bill. [RH Reality Check]
Ruth Marcus says that the health care reform bill is supposed to increase choice, but apparently not for women. [Washington Post]
A New York Times editorial calls the amendment a "sharp departure from current practice." [NYTimes]
Robert Pear reports what's next for the Stupak amendment, and what Obama's position is on it. [NYTimes]
Robin Marty, the director of special projects at the Center for Independent Media, asks the essential question of how the Stupak amendment will affect women who miscarry. [RH Reality Check]
Former Campus Progress associate editor Dana Goldstein reports on the activists fallout from the amendment's passage. [Daily Beast]
Emily Douglas does an analysis of how the bill will affect women. [The Nation]
And finally, the director of CAPAF's Women's Health and Rights program, Jessica Arons lays out why the Stupak amendment is a "monumental setback" for women's rights. [Wonk Room]

Abortion and Mental Health

Annika — Mon, 17 Mar 2008 19:16:52 EDT

Late last week, the UK’s Royal College of Psychiatrists released a statement (PDF) saying that women who have abortions might be at risk for mental health breakdowns. The College recommended that women be told about potential mental health problems before choosing to have an abortion.

According to The Sunday Times,

Some MPs [Members of Parliament] also want women to have a “cooling off” period in which they would be made aware of the possible consequences of the abortion, including the impact on their mental health, before they could go ahead.

Right. This is one of many similar efforts that attempts to “protect” women from abortion. Women who are considering abortion should be presented with all relevant medical findings, including those about mental health. But such findings are often tied to a set of incredibly one-sided policy proposals, like this one, which strip the research of its objectivity and credibility.

Popularization of these “cooling off” periods, for instance, promotes the idea that a woman is not fit to make her own decision about abortion—she is emotionally confused, and her tiny girl-brain needs extra time to make such an important choice about her body.

Moreover, folding post-abortion depression into an inflexible argument against abortion reduces the likelihood that post-abortion counseling will be taken seriously. As Reva Siegel and Sarah Blustain write in this fantastic piece in The American Prospect,

The figure of a woman suffering abortion grief invokes a deep truth about mother love that, in different ways, is recognized by advocates across the political spectrum. But the anti-abortion movement is deploying this image to excite acts of public coercion that will not make women, or their families, more natural or loving or free.

Seriously, read this article. It’s a very compelling look at the way people pushing abortion restrictions—like those being advocated in the UK—paint women as helpless victims of biology and pro-abortion advocates.

Why I'm Pro-Choice

Annika — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:07:40 EST

I’ve been working on this post all day, trying to make my opinions on abortion rights sound cool or heartfelt or something. The point is: I’m pro-choice because some of my closest friends have had abortions. It’s an extremely difficult decision to make, and abortion is an ugly, ugly thing that they’ve spent a lot of time and heartache dealing with. Anyone who suggests that women take it lightly, or that women don’t comprehend the decision they’re making, needs to spend less time humanizing fetuses and more time talking to real women.

I’m all for political activism and the power of impassioned arguments—I blog about sexual politics all the time, I was the president of the Women’s Issues Organization in college, and I bring up sex ed approximately once every 5 minutes—but talking to a close friend about her abortion is an irreplaceable, undeniably jarring experience. And difficult though the decision is, none of my friends regret their abortions. Their circumstances are wildly different, but they all agree that they were not responsible enough, or ready enough, or prepared enough to raise a child.

Looking at other women I care deeply about—like my younger sister, who wants to go to law school in a couple years—I hope and pray that they never have to make the choice to have an abortion. But if they are, they deserve to have a safe, legal, unobstructed choice.

What Does Our Abortion Rate Say About Us?

Annika — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 13:15:31 EST

A recently completed study by the Guttmacher Institute found that 1.2 million abortions were performed in America in 2005—the lowest annual rate since 1976. Abortion rates in the U.S. have been dropping fairly steadily since the early 1990s.

While the study doesn’t identify specific causes for the drop, its researchers have some ideas:

"It could be more women using contraception and not having as many unintended pregnancies. It could be more restrictions on abortions making it more difficult for women to obtain abortion services. It could be a combination of these and other dynamics," said Rachel K. Jones of the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health research organization, which published the report in the March issue of the journal Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.

While the report’s findings are promising for anyone interested in making abortion safe and rare, some of its specifics are less encouraging. 87% of counties in the U.S. lack an abortion provider—which means that 24% of women who live in metropolitan counties and 92% of women who live in nonmetropolitan counties face serious barriers to access.

I’m also curious about the age distribution of the study, which isn’t broken down in the copy I read. According to other info from Guttmacher, 33% of abortions are obtained by women aged 20-25, and 17% of abortions are obtained by teenagers. The teen birth rate jumped in 2005 for the first time in over 15 years, likely due in large part to the simultaneous promulgation and ineffectiveness of abstinence-only sex education.

So what do we make of these seemingly conflicted numbers? Fewer women are having abortions, but more young women are getting pregnant. It seems we’ve failed to provide young women with the tools they need to prevent unwanted pregnancy in the first place: sufficient education about and access to birth control. It’s time to give up on what we know doesn’t work—if this isn’t an argument for eschewing abstinence-only in favor of comprehensive sex ed, I don’t know what is.

Rudy Giuliani Won't Be Winning the Nobel Prize for Math Anytime Soon

JonathanGarro — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 14:16:52 EDT

Rudy Giuliani has already created an image for himself that even the casual observer could probably identify. He reminds us daily that he was, in fact, the Mayor of New York City during the September 11th terrorist attacks, (a point which I will do my best to remind you of, in case you don't already it have stuck in your head like the lyrics to a bad song). He speaks ad nauseam about his tough stance on terrorism, and his apparent affection for constitution-bending Jack Bauer-style interrogation techniques. Speaking about the torture technique known as waterboarding, Giuliani said:

Well, I'm not sure it is either. It depends on how it's done. It depends on the circumstances. It depends on who does it. I think the way it's been defined in the media, it shouldn't be done. The way in which they have described it, particularly in the liberal media. So I would say, if that's the description of it, then I can agree, that it shouldn't be done. But I have to see what the real description of it is.

Giuliani, (the Mayor of New York City during the 9/11 terrorist attacks) is right: The "liberal media" must be making it look much worse than it is. When I think about having someone "simulate" the experience of drowning, it sounds like a blast to me. Don't they offer that at Club Med these days right after snorkeling?

The presidential hopeful (and, did I mention, the Mayor of New York City during the 9/11 terrorist attacks) has developed a bit of an odd talent. Odd talents, like a knack for solving Rubik's Cubes or juggling chainsaws, may have a way of attracting voters on the campaign trail. Other odd talents, such as being able to skew statistics to suit a political message, seem to do anything but win the affection of the public. As it turns out, Giuliani has quite the habit of skewing statistics in just such a way.

When discussing the issue of abortion, Giuliani loves to talk about his success in lowering the number of abortions during his tenure as Mayor of New York City, (during which time he dealt with the 9/11 terrorist attacks). His campaign has said on numerous occasions that "Adoptions went up 65 to 70 percent; abortions went down 16 percent." As FactCheck.org points out, while those numbers aren't exactly a flat out lie, they also aren't the most honest statistics. FactCheck points out that:

Adoptions had already increased by 257 percent in the seven years prior to creation of ACS, the agency Giuliani credits with increasing adoptions...[and] adoptions declined in five of the mayor's last six years.

Perhaps more blatantly misleading is how Giuliani, (who bravely walked the streets of New York City with the Firefighters while they saved lives in the wake of the attack on the World Trade Center by Islamic extremists), uses deceptive numbers regarding healthcare. His campaign recently released a radio ad in which he denounces "socialized medicine" by explaining that he would likely have died of his prostate cancer, had he lived in a country like England that has a form of "socialized medicine." The campaign proclaims that only 44 percent of men survive similar cases of cancer, but here in the US, the chances are 82 percent. FactCheck discovered that those numbers aren't just misleading, they are just flat out lies:

We tracked down the source of that number, which turns out to be the result of bad math by a Giuliani campaign adviser, who admits to us that his figure isn't "technically" a survival rate at all. Furthermore, the co-author of the study on which Giuliani's man based his calculations tells us his work is being misused, and that the 44 percent figure is both wrong and "misleading." A spokesperson for the lead author also calls the figures "incorrect survival statistics."

In the campaign's defense, the stats were apparently taken from an opinion piece from a conservative think tank. That seems like a good place to get statistics for a political ad.

Jonathan Garro is editor of SkipperStyle, a political blog.

Abortion is not the same as pregnancy prevention

Kay Steiger — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 14:52:33 EDT

Broadsheet does some good work at keeping the MSM honest. Apparently Reuters thought RU-486 and Plan B are the same thing. They're not. Broadsheet explains why:

So what's the big deal, you ask? The abortion pill, the morning-after pill -- they all end pregnancies, right? Well, no. As many of you no doubt already know, the morning-after pill prevents pregnancy by blocking embryos from implanting in the uterus. RU-486, on the other hand, terminates an already established pregnancy. So in the first article, when the pope criticized drugs "whose aim is to stop an embryo implanting," he could not have been talking about RU-486. And yet for some reason, Reuters devotes the entire article to "the abortion pill" without making a distinction between Plan B and RU-486. In fact, the article doesn't even mention Plan B or, for that matter, refer to RU-486 by name.

Abortion clinics face unique challenges

Annika — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 11:46:45 EDT

Ann Friedman has a great piece right now in The American Prospect reporting on the significant financial challenges faced by reproductive health clinics. Turns out abortion clinics are subject to many more legal and infrastructural challenges than right-wing backed “pregnancy centers.”

Friedman visits a small, independent clinic in Nebraska that fought so many legal battles in the last seven years that the owner can’t afford upkeep on the clinic’s exterior. She also profiles the much-discussed $7.5 million Planned Parenthood facility in Aurora, IL. Construction went as planned until conservative activists realized the building would house a Planned Parenthood, at which point they pressured city officials into denying the clinic an occupancy permit. While the city attorney insists the conflict is about permit regulations, Planned Parenthood lawyers point out that “We wouldn’t be here if this was a foot care clinic.”

As in many policy areas, financial differences between the pro- and anti-choice movements are stark:

The biggest piece of this puzzle is always financial. It's tough to see a run-down abortion clinic, with high concrete walls and peeling paint, next to a sparkling new "crisis-pregnancy center." But the bottom line is that it's really, really expensive to provide actual medical care. And it's cheap to run an office-slash-misinformation center. Roll one ultrasound machine in, buy some beige furniture and, bam, you're done. Lots of money left over to spend on the landscaping.

Read the whole article here.

The Next Battle for Choice

Kay Steiger — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 16:47:31 EDT

Via Feministing. While the main focus of the choice discussion is centered on abortions and abortion accesses (which, by the way, is abysmal), Cristina Page, author of How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America: Freedom, Politics and the War on Sex, has a great piece this week in the Balitmore Sun about the National Right To Life conference. Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney tried to convince pro-lifers that he was their candidate, but meanwhile she noticed some subtle language that indicated that he was willing to continue Bush's work against access to contraception.

No matter that emergency contraception has the same mode of action as the birth control pill and every other hormonal method of birth control. To the anti-abortion movement, contraception is the ultimate corruptor. And so this year, the unspoken rule for candidates seeking the support of anti-abortion groups is that they must offer proof they're anti-contraception too.

Annika blogged earlier today about how even though Plan B is "available" over the counter now, it is in practicality unavailable to many women and girls under the age of 18. This is just one of the many subtle battles that choice faces under rule of conservatives.

Amnesty International Gives Amnesty to Pro-Choice

Kay Steiger — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 15:00:05 EDT

The BBC reports that Amnesty International, which had maintained a neutral stance on abortion, now says they want "to ensure women have access to health care when complications arise from abortion and to defend women's access to abortion, within reasonable gestational limits, when their health or human rights are in danger."

This is a pretty conservative endorsement, if you ask me, but given the fact that AI does a lot of work in countries with a heavy Catholic populations. I'm not sure how they determine what a "reasonable gestational limit" is, but it seems like they're recognizing that by being neutral they were actually serving an injustice.

Review of the Day

Kay Steiger — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 15:47:31 EDT

Scott Lemieux had a great review of Helena Silverstein's new book, Girls on the Stand: How Courts Fail Pregnant Minors. It's a great book that examines the real implications of such Supreme Court decisions as Planned Parenthood v. Casey:

Silverstein's book is an especially welcome addition because, rather than focusing on normative debates about abortion that almost anyone interested in the question is already familiar with, she focuses on how parental notification laws actually work on the ground. The book is judicious and moderate in tone; indeed, I can imagine some who agree with her conclusions wishing she had been more forceful in her criticisms of the policies she studies. But the book would not be as powerful as it is if it were not also a first-rate work of social science.

Read the whole thing.

Next You're Going To Tell Me You Can Win A Race By Opposing Taxes

Jesse Singal — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 17:50:55 EDT

Fom an otherwise interesting article about a new way to engage those who believe abortion should be illegal: ask them how much jail time a woman convicted of having an abortion should get.

"They never connect the dots," says Jill June, president of Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa. But her organization urged voters to do just that in the last gubernatorial election, in which the Republican contender believed abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape and incest. "We wanted him to tell the women of Iowa exactly how much time he expected them to serve in jail if they had an abortion," June recalled. Chet Culver, the Democrat who unabashedly favors legal abortion, won that race, proving that choice can be a winning issue if you force people to stop evading the hard facts. "How have we come this far in the debate and been oblivious to the logical ramifications of making abortion illegal?" June says.

Choice can be a winning issue? Really? In a country where 57% of the population believes abortion should always or almost always be legal? Wow. What a revelation!

Progressive Republicans?

Jim D — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 11:57:16 EDT

While flyering for the Clean My Ride campaign, our fellow interns ran into some people from the Republican Youth Majority. It's not a clone of Young America's Fascists...er, Foundation, but rather has three main positions: pro-choice, pro-environment, and fiscally conservative. Board members include some of moderate Republicanism's greatest hits: Pete Wilson, Bill Cohen, William Weld, and so on.

What to make of this? The not-surprising part is that there is a group like this; many young people (and plenty of older ones) are sick of the litmus tests in politics, and young people(even with evangelical Republicans) are almost always to the left of their parties - though the Iraq War is a notable exception to this rule. The surprising part is their choice of issues. More in extended.

Surprise of the Day

Jesse Singal — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 15:12:37 EDT

Missouri, as it turns out, isn't entirely committed to accurate sex ed or a woman's right to choose. Shocking.

Pro-Life "Objectivity"

Kate Stanton — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 16:41:38 EDT

D.C. commuters may have noticed a series of unusual advertisements appearing on the public bus system in the past few months. Sponsored by an enigmatic organization known as the “Second Look Project,” the ads feature solemn-looking young women accompanied by provocative messages about abortion in America.

One particularly absurd ad reads:

“Myth: Abortion is legal only in the first three months of pregnancy. Fact: It’s legal for the entire nine months for virtually any reason.”

Um, no. A woman can’t just ask for an abortion in her third term because she "feels like it," for example. Late-term abortions occur rarely and are always subject to a multitude of restrictions.

Sorry, But That Guy's Definitely A Terrorist

Jesse Singal — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:01:06 EDT

I find this fascinating. ABC News is reporting that "Israeli police detained an Orthodox Jewish man carrying a small homemade bomb in Jerusalem on Thursday, as thousands of Israelis marched in support of gay rights in defiance of religious protesters." But something about ABC's reporting is weird...

Jerry Falwell--denouncer of Tinky Winky--dies at 73

ashwini — Tue, 15 May 2007 15:08:08 EDT

“The ACLU’s got to take a lot of blame for this. ... And I know that I’ll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way - all of them who have tried to secularize America - I point the finger in their face and say: “You helped this happen.”

--Jerry Fallwell, 700 Club, 9/13/2001

The founder of Moral Majority, the evangelist who made hate speech profitable and established fundamentalists as a viable political force, Jerry Falwell has died at age 73.

Abortion and Disability

Dana Goldstein — Wed, 09 May 2007 14:09:11 EDT

We are facing two scary pushes from the extreme right in terms of reproductive freedom. First, as reflected in the Supreme Court's Carhart decision two weeks ago, there's a new willingness to stop short of protecting women's health and allow certain abortion procedures only in the extreme situation of a woman's life being at risk. This standard would allow states to outlaw abortions in cases (like this Irish example) in which the fetus is not viable outside the womb, forcing women to carry deeply traumatic pregnancies to term. The second push, as The American Prospect's Sarah Blustain reported on so thoroughly here, are "informed consent" laws like the one in South Dakota, which force women to hear ideologically-compromised statements on fetal pain, the sanctity of the mother-child bond, or adoption before allowing them to exercise their right to choose.

In light of these trends, the New York Times story today on the efforts of parents with Down syndrome children to dissuade others from ending Down syndrome pregnancies raises questions about how disability issues will factor into the shifting political and ethical debate on abortion. Because of new, safer testing methods, all women can now opt to screen for the disease with a simple sonogram and two blood tests in the first trimester. Ninety percent of women who receive a diagnosis of Down syndrome for their fetuses choose to abort. At some hospitals, parents of children with Down syndrome have organized programs to speak to obstetricians and genetic counselors about the joys of raising Down syndrome children, and have asked the hospital to put them in touch with expectant parents who have received a diagnosis of the disease.

As anyone who's had their life enriched by a loved one with a disability can attest, these conversations are incredibly fraught. But without judging any family's choice to either end or continue such a pregnancy, the issues remain the same -- the right to choose an abortion and the freedom from coercive pressure. Expectant parents should be given information, resources, and support as they make these complex choices. But expect the antis to boil this issue down into a talking point and portray pro-choicers as mad scientists trying to genetically manipulate the human race.

Cross-posted at TAPPED.

What Happens When There's No Health Exception

Dana Goldstein — Thu, 03 May 2007 15:17:54 EDT

The Irish government is preventing a four-month pregnant 17-year old from traveling to Britain to have an abortion, even though her fetus is missing parts of its brain and skull and will be unable to live outside her womb for more than four days.

In Ireland, abortion is legal only if the mother's life is in danger. This is the same logic the Supreme Court majority embraced in the Carhart decision, which for the first time since Roe, did not contain broad protection for "women's health." How many of us really want to live in a country where a Court has to give you permission to abort a fetus that can't live outside the womb? It's almost unthinkable.