Unrelated: Please note I’m aware this page is taking its sweet time to load. Everyone who might be able to fix it is off for the weekend. I will try to get the problem addressed tomorrow.
Update: Unreal — “Bush Sees Tide Turning in Iraq.” If I had time, I’d google for how many times he’s said that since, oh, 2003.
Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi hates abortion. On March 23 he signed a bill that would criminalize all abortions in Mississippi as soon as Roe v. Wade is overturned. After the nomination of Sam Alito to the Supreme Court, Barbour announced his support a bill that allowed abortion only to save a woman’s life but made no exceptions in cases of rape or incest. (He would prefer a bill that made a rape and incest exception, but said he would sign the bill without it.)
Sharon Lerner wrote in The Nation (February 7, 2005):
As you read this piece about abortion in Mississippi thirty-two years after the right to have an abortion was affirmed by the Supreme Court, the government of Mississippi is marking the anniversary of Roe v. Wade in another way. Governor Haley Barbour has issued an official proclamation declaring the seven days leading up to the anniversary “a week of prayer regarding the sanctity of human life.” Barbour also authorized the placement of tiny white crosses on the lawn of the state Capitol “in memory of the unborn children who die each day in America,” according to the decree.
You get the picture. However, in Mississippi there’s much less concern for the lives of children after they are born.
I mentioned this in the last post — in an article to be published in tomorrow’s New York Times, Erik Eckholm writes that infant mortality rates in some of the southern states are going up.
To the shock of Mississippi officials, who in 2004 had seen the infant mortality rate — defined as deaths by the age of 1 year per thousand live births — fall to 9.7, the rate jumped sharply in 2005, to 11.4. The national average in 2003, the last year for which data have been compiled, was 6.9. Smaller rises also occurred in 2005 in Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee. Louisiana and South Carolina saw rises in 2004 and have not yet reported on 2005.
Whether the rises continue or not, federal officials say, rates have stagnated in the Deep South at levels well above the national average.
Here’s more —
Most striking, here and throughout the country, is the large racial disparity. In Mississippi, infant deaths among blacks rose to 17 per thousand births in 2005 from 14.2 per thousand in 2004, while those among whites rose to 6.6 per thousand from 6.1. (The national average in 2003 was 5.7 for whites and 14.0 for blacks.)
The overall jump in Mississippi meant that 65 more babies died in 2005 than in the previous year, for a total of 481. …
…Poverty has climbed in Mississippi in recent years, and things are tougher in other ways for poor women, with cuts in cash welfare and changes in the medical safety net.
Here’s where Gov. Barbour comes in.
In 2004, Gov. Haley Barbour came to office promising not to raise taxes and to cut Medicaid. Face-to-face meetings were required for annual re-enrollment in Medicaid and CHIP, the children’s health insurance program; locations and hours for enrollment changed, and documentation requirements became more stringent.
As a result, the number of non-elderly people, mainly children, covered by the Medicaid and CHIP programs declined by 54,000 in the 2005 and 2006 fiscal years. According to the Mississippi Health Advocacy Program in Jackson, some eligible pregnant women were deterred by the new procedures from enrolling.
One former Medicaid official, Maria Morris, who resigned last year as head of an office that informed the public about eligibility, said that under the Barbour administration, her program was severely curtailed.
“The philosophy was to reduce the rolls and our activities were contrary to that policy,” she said. …
… The state Health Department has cut back its system of clinics, in part because of budget shortfalls and a shortage of nurses. Some clinics that used to be open several days a week are now open once a week and some offer no prenatal care.
The department has also suffered management turmoil and reductions in field staff, problems so severe that the state Legislature recently voted to replace the director.
Oleta Fitzgerald, southern regional director for the Children’s Defense Fund, said: “When you see drops in the welfare rolls, when you see drops in Medicaid and children’s insurance, you see a recipe for disaster. Somebody’s not eating, somebody’s not going to the doctor and unborn children suffer.”
Questions: Is Gov. Haley Barbour one of the most craven hypocrites on the planet? Or is he just oblivious to the suffering he is causing? And does the fact that many of Mississippi’s black citizens are living in third-world conditions even register with him?
Time and time again I am struck by how little people know about abortion law and practice in the U.S. This includes most people with firm opinions on abortion. For example, earlier this week I noticed one right-wing blog after another celebrating the end of “late-term abortions,” by which they obviously mean abortion of a viable fetus, presumably for frivolous reasons. Example:
Most Americans, even those who are pro-choice, understand how sick this procedure was. If a late term pregnancy was so harmful to the mother’s health, then the mother should just deliver the baby and give the baby a chance to survive. But this procedure wasn’t really about saving the life of the mother. It was about killing an unwanted baby. …
… Some lefties are angry at Justice Kennedy, claiming that he’s abandoned them, and now they’re lamenting the fact that killing a late term unborn baby by sucking its brains out is no longer legal. Of course, they disguise partial birth abortion as “women’s rights,” which is a bunch of hooey.
Here’s a feminist whose first comment was “We’re f***ed.” Sure, lady, if you mean that you can’t go to an abortionist when you’re 6+ months pregnant and have your unborn baby almost completely delivered except for his head and have his brains sucked out while he’s still alive because you just don’t feel like being pregnant any longer, then yes, I suppose you’re f***ed. Be sure to check out the comments on this feminist’s blog as well. These wacko women are beside themselves about the fact that they can’t kill their babies in this manner any longer.
But elective late-term abortions were already illegal in most states. Roe v. Wade allows states to ban abortions once the fetus has reached the gestation age at which it is potentially viable, about 23 weeks[*], except when the life and health of the mother are at risk. There are laws on the books in most states to that effect. Some of the states that don’t have such laws in effect are those which tried to enact a law without the “life and health” exception, and the law got tangled up in court challenges.
[* Recently an infant survived that was believed to have been born at 21 weeks gestation. This made international news because she was the first baby ever known to have survived after a gestation period of fewer than 23 weeks.]
A PDF document at the Alan Guttmacher web site provides an overview of abortion law in the states as of April 1, 2007. It’s a three-page document, and pages 1 and 2 are a table that provides basic information on the abortion laws of each state. If you doubt what I say about elective late-term abortion already being illegal, just take a look.
The “Partial Birth” Abortion Act of 2003, while burdened with several miscarriages of fact and logic, makes no provisions for the lateness of the procedure, just the nature of the procedure. The real battle begun by this week’s SCOTUS ruling is not over “late term” abortions, but “mid term” abortions, meaning second-trimester abortions performed before a fetus is possibly viable.
Roughly 10 percent of all abortions in the U.S. are performed after the first trimester and before 20 weeks’ gestation, or about two thirds of the way through the second trimester. Some of these are performed for medical reasons, and some are elective. However, when a pregnancy is terminated before 20 weeks’ gestation, the fetus will die, no matter how the abortion is performed. No exceptions. So when people start raving about changing procedures so that “the baby has a chance to live,” they are confused.
The fact is, there is little agreement about what it was that was just banned. Depending on how the “partial birth” act is interpreted, it might ban no abortions at all, but only stipulate that abortions be performed by different means. Or, it might ban most abortions after the first trimester. And I won’t be the least bit surprised if some states “interpret” the act in a way that shuts off access to abortion entirely.
So what was just banned, exactly?
About the only point everyone seems agreed on is that the act bans a second trimester (notice emphasis) procedure called “intact D&E” (sometimes referred to as dilation and extraction, or D&X) in which all but the fetal head is extracted, then the fetal skull is pierced or crushed so it can easily pass through the birth canal. However, the far more common practice in second trimester abortions is dilation and evacuation , also called standard D&E, in which surgical instruments are used to dismember the fetus in the womb, and body parts are pulled out through the birth canal.
Exactly why one procedure is more icky than the other eludes me. However, my understanding is that some physicians prefer intact D&E (or D&X) procedures because with the standard D&E physicians must fish around for all the little fetus pieces, thus increasing risk of injury or infection to the woman. In some cases a woman whose life or health is really on the line might be at less risk with an intact D&E rather than a standard D&E.
There is one other abortion method generally used in the late second trimester called “induction.” In this procedure chemicals are introduced into the womb to cause fetal death, and then labor is induced. So far I haven’t heard anyone argue that induction is covered by the “partial birth” ban, but I also doubt many Fetus People have heard of it. My understanding is that induction is the most common method used in genuinely late-term abortions, of which I’ll speak a bit later in this post.
Analysis of this week’s Supreme Court decision written by people who seem to understand these distinctions say that the “partial birth” act actually bans only the “intact D&E,” also called D&X, procedure. It does not ban standard D&E or induction abortions, they say. Nor does it change the gestational limits of abortion, so abortions will be no more or less “late term” as they were before. And if you read this section of the Supreme Court’s deliberations, this view appears to be correct; the justices interpret the Act to ban D&X, but not standard D&E, procedures.
National Right to Life has its own views (emphasis added).
“Partial-birth abortion” is a legal term of art, defined by Congress as a matter of federal law, as quoted above.
Although supporters and opponents of the new law differ dramatically in their perceptions of what methods the law covers (as discussed below), neither side believes that the legal definition of “partial-birth abortion” is synonymous with the shifting and conflicting descriptions attached in various literature to such pseudo-medical jargon terms as “dilation and extraction,” “intact dilation and evacuation,” or “intact dilation and extraction.”
In short, it is simply inaccurate for journalists to equate the legal term “partial-birth abortion” with these nebulous jargon terms.
For the record, The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says,
Despite the fact that the safety advantages of intact dilatation and evacuation (intact D&E) procedures are widely recognized—in medical texts, peer-reviewed studies, clinical practice, and in mainstream, medical care in the United States—the US Supreme Court today upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.
The “partial birth” claptrap was coined by the Fetus People as a propaganda tactic, and they define it to please themselves. If in the next few weeks or months they don’t decide that the “partial birth” act also covers standard D&E, I will eat my keyboard. Because if the “PAB” Act truly bans only intact D&E/D&X abortion, those celebrating the end of “late term” abortions may be in for a shock. Very likely the same number of abortions will still be performed, and as early or late as they were before.
In today’s New York Times, a Cambridge fellow named David Garrow also tells us, soothingly, that hardly anything will actually change.
The Carhart decision is an extremely limited upholding of the federal ban, one that promises to affect very few abortion providers and only a tiny percentage of their patients. The most recent and reliable national statistics, from the Guttmacher Institute, show that only about 30 American doctors ever use the “intact dilation and evacuation†method that has now been criminalized. Only some 2,200 of the 1.3 million abortions performed annually in the United States involve the banned procedure.
Moreover, Justice Kennedy explicitly and insistently limited the reach of the new prohibition. He emphasized that the ban covers only the relatively rare intact dilation and evacuation method, and does not in any way apply to standard dilation and evacuation, the most common method for late-term abortions, in which fetal tissue is removed from the womb piecemeal. Reiterating the standard he embraced 15 years ago in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justice Kennedy stated that the ban would impose an undue burden if it covered standard dilation and evacuation and thus would be unconstitutional. …
… Writing on behalf of the four dissenters, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg correctly emphasized that under Justice Kennedy’s holding, “the law saves not a single fetus from destruction, for it targets only a method of performing abortion.â€
Also in today’s New York Times, Gina Kolata writes,
The Supreme Court decision on Wednesday to uphold a ban on a type of abortion, has huge political implications but, as a practical matter, is unlikely to have much of an effect.
The reason, said Dr. Isaac Schiff, chairman of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, is that there are safe and readily available alternatives to the banned method, which the law calls partial birth abortion.
“This law by itself, if it were the only law passed, would be a nonoccurrence,†Dr. Schiff said.
I’m not arguing here that we should be complacent, because there is copious medical testimony from ACOG and others that under some circumstances the alternative methods could put some women at increased risk. And you know the Fetus People are not going to be content with the “PBA” law. They will push ahead to legislate more restrictions. This was just a beginning.
On the other hand, I do think we need to be careful about making predictions of wholesale slaughter of women resulting from the “PBA” ban. There may not be a statistically significant result, in which case the Fetus People will be emboldened, and we who think women are not brood animals might be less credible when they try to extend the ban to other procedures.
Now, about real late-term abortions —
Organizations working to criminalize abortion have done a great job conflating the terms “late term” and “partial birth,” and I infer most wingnuts think they’re the same thing. This has led to fuzzy headed assumptions (such as the one quoted at the top of this post) that women routinely waltz into abortion clinics in the last trimester of pregnancy and demand abortions because they are having a bad hair day. But I’ve seen no authoritative data saying that elective third-trimester abortions are being performed by licensed medical personnel anywhere in the U.S., including those few states that haven’t expressly banned them.
And it’s very rare for a viable fetus to have to be sacrificed to save a mother. I understand third-trimester abortions are most commonly done when the fetus is already dead or has no hope of survival, but I don’t have a source to prove that. On the other hand, “rare” is not “never,” and if you (or your wife, or daughter, or sister, or mother) are one of the rare exceptions, is that OK? And how weird is it to justify sacrificing the life of even one woman for some twisted principle misnamed the “right to life”?
Eleanor Clift writes of third-trimester abortions:
Late-term abortions account for only .08 percent of the 1.3 million abortions that take place in this country every year. Most of that .08 percent are done to protect the life of the mother, so they are not affected by the Court’s ruling. This is a tiny, tiny sliver of a much larger issue. Politicians of either party seeking the center on an issue with such moral ramifications should be able to agree on ways to reduce abortions without criminalizing a medical procedure—and putting doctors, and potentially, women, in jail.
But today wingnuts everywhere no doubt still believe that “late term” abortions are banned. And this takes us to why NARAL is one of the most worthless advocacy organizations ever invented. For years newspaper and television reporters have sloppily used “late-term abortion” as a synonym for whatever it is the wingnuts call “partial-birth abortion.” And for years I’ve been yelling at television screens “MID-term, you twit!” to no avail. NARAL really should have been working hard to educate journalists about the distinctions. I see no evidence they ever did so. Instead, journalists have been getting all of their “information” from abortion criminalization groups and repeating their propagandistic language.
There have been some excellent critiques of NARAL on firedoglake this past week, including this one by Brendan and this one by Phoenix Woman. If you are upset by this week’s SCOTUS ruling, whatever you do don’t donate money to the national NARAL organization. Volunteer or donate money to a local NARAL chapter or, even better, Planned Parenthood.
Back in the 1970s I thought NARAL was making a big mistake not to issue a clear statement in support of banning elective third trimester abortions, as Roe v. Wade allowed, by any means. NARAL was concerned about the famous slippery slope, but I think making a clear distinction about elective post-viability abortions would have defused much rightie propaganda that has hurt the cause of reproductive rights and health lo these many years.
The fact is — and having given birth to two babies myself, I say this with authority — if a woman does not want to be pregnant, she needs to terminate that pregnancy way before the third trimester begins. Because at that point you’re about as pregnant as anybody ever gets. The hormones are raging, the ankles are swollen, you may have gained most of your pregnancy weight, and your “innie” belly button has popped out and become an “outie.” (I’m explaining this to guys; frankly, I doubt many women have ever willingly carried a pregnancy to the sixth month and suddenly decided to end it.) And by then, however the pregnancy is terminated — childbirth or otherwise — it’s a big honking medical deal that is riskier than a first-trimester abortion. A legal gestational limit on elective abortion set somewhere between 20 and 23 weeks would simply reflect good medical practice. But that’s my sermon.
One more thing — in an article to be published in tomorrow’s New York Times, Erik Eckholm writes that infant mortality rates in some of the southern states are going up.
To the shock of Mississippi officials, who in 2004 had seen the infant mortality rate — defined as deaths by the age of 1 year per thousand live births — fall to 9.7, the rate jumped sharply in 2005, to 11.4. The national average in 2003, the last year for which data have been compiled, was 6.9. Smaller rises also occurred in 2005 in Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee. Louisiana and South Carolina saw rises in 2004 and have not yet reported on 2005.
Whether the rises continue or not, federal officials say, rates have stagnated in the Deep South at levels well above the national average.
By contrast, many developed nations and some states in the U.S. in recent years have an infant mortality rate of less than 5 per 1,000 live births. Clearly, infants are dying in the South who would not have died had they been born in, say, Massachusetts. Righties love to argue that because of some discrepancies of how infant mortality is calculated by various nations, comparisons between the U.S. and other nations is meaningless (this is bogus, but I’ll leave that alone for now). But when you’ve got a rate of 11.4 in Mississippi and 4.9 in California, I’d say there’s something wrong with Mississippi.
But right now I will predict that the state legislatures of these southern states will put little effort in the coming months into improving the health of pregnant women and small children, and will instead work overtime thinking up new ways to restrict abortion. Anyone wanna bet?
Some rightie bloggers have their knickers in a knot because the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (apparently; none of them link to the original article, but this guy provides a screen shot) used what was probably a stock photo of factory smokestacks to illustrate a global warming article.
Why is this scandalous? Apparently the CBC has used the same stock photo in other stories — possibly they own it — and they tweak the colors and crop it different ways to make it work with the story. But the photo isn’t anything but an eye catcher, something graphic to break up text. From what I can tell the CBC never put a caption on it and aren’t claiming it stands for anything in particular except factory smokestacks in a generic sense.
Some people need another hobby.
The site linked above says “Set aside for a moment the journalistic misrepresentation on display in using a photo depicting air pollution to illustrate a story on the costs of meeting Kyoto mandated C02 reductions… ” Right, factory emissions don’t have anything to do with C02 … oh, wait …
The carnage in Iraq continues. Shashank Bengali, Laith Hammoudi and Nancy A. Youssef write for McClatchy Newspapers:
At least 173 people died in Baghdad on Wednesday in a series of major explosions, making the day the capital’s deadliest since the onset nine weeks ago of a much-touted U.S.-Iraqi security plan.
The violence capped a dreadful seven days that began with a stunning suicide attack in the Iraqi parliament building in the heavily fortified Green Zone. At least 363 people have died in Baghdad in the past week.
And Polly Toynbee writes for The Guardian:
It’s been a good week for death. In Iraq, 200 people were blown to bits in what witnesses called “a swimming pool of blood” with “pieces of flesh all over the place”. Remember that the dead are only part of the story: add to each of the war’s hundreds of thousands of civilian corpses all those burned and crippled survivors, far beyond Iraqi medical facilities’ ability to cope, breadwinners and babies lost. Few families are untouched by the sheer scale of slaughter.
Naturally, today officials at the Pentagon said that violence in Iraq is diminishing. Of course, this depends on what you mean by “violence” and “diminish.” And “Iraq.”
Just to show how secure the Pentagon is in its assessment — National Journal reports (subscriber only material, so I don’t have a link):
Pentagon lawyers abruptly blocked mid-level active-duty military officers from speaking Thursday during a closed-door House Armed Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee briefing about their personal experiences working with Iraqi security forces.
The Pentagon’s last-minute refusal to allow the officers’ presentations surprised panel members and congressional aides, who are in the middle of an investigation into the effort to train and organize Iraqi forces.
Clearly, the Pentagon is proud of what it is accomplishing in Iraq.
Also on Wednesday, President Bush met with congressional Democrats to discuss the “emergency” supplemental appropriations bill, which Democrats in Congress are calling the Iraq Accountability Act. Greg Sargent provides a peek at what happened:
A source familiar with the meeting — at which no compromise of any kind was reached, though Speaker Nancy Pelosi said publicly today that it had been “productive” — shares a few interesting tidbits. First, the source says, Bush bristled and was taken aback when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid compared the current situation to Vietnam; he also appeared irked by those who said the war couldn’t be won.
Second, according to the source, Reid told Bush that he understood that the White House would come after Congressional Dems after the veto of the bill with everything they had; Reid vowed to respond every bit as aggressively.
“Reid talked about a recent conversation he had with a retired general where they talked about the similarities between the current situation and Vietnam,” the source relates. “He talked about how the President and Secretary of Defense [during Vietnam] knew that the war was lost but continued to press on at the cost of thousands of additional lives lost.”
“The analogy to Vietnam appeared to touch a nerve with the President. He appeared a little sensitive to it,” the source continued. “And he clearly didn’t like to hear people in the room say that the war couldn’t be won militarily.”
More: “Reid made it clear to the President that he understood that the President and Vice President after the veto would come after him and Speaker Pelosi with everything they have. Reid said that he and Pelosi would respond just as aggressively. He said he was convinced that they were on the right side of the issue.”
Yesterday’s Dan Froomkin post:
There were no pyrotechnics, but according to multiple reports Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid compared Iraq to Vietnam at one point in a closed door meeting with Bush. Specifically, Reid suggested that Bush was pursuing a lost cause at the cost of American troops in order to protect his legacy.
Bush’s reaction: He was “visibly angered” says the New York Times; he “bristled” according to the Associated Press. And he “denied this forcefully, after which Mr. Reid touched his arm in a gesture of friendliness,” write the Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, the Iraq Accountability Act makes its way toward completion. Last night some Republican House members attempted to to strip provisions in the Act holding the Iraqi government accountable and providing for a “responsible redeployment from Iraq” (nice phrase, that) before the bill goes to conference committee for reconciliation with the Senate version. This attempt failed.
Although the Act is still a work in progress, after slogging through a number of news stories I get the impression that the House might defer to the Senate regarding the timetable language. The Senate bill has a non-binding goal of March 31, 2008 for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. The House version has a firm deadline of September 2008.
The war at home is over public opinion, and all signs are that the Dems are winning for once.
Dan Froomkin wrote on Tuesday:
President Bush’s public campaign to push back against Congressional demands for withdrawal from Iraq is becoming highly reminiscent of his failed effort two years ago to win support for a radical overhaul of Social Security.
The meticulously choreographed settings, the carefully controlled audiences, the mind-numbing repetition of hoary talking points (with a particular emphasis on stoking fears) — it’s like deja vu.
And so is the result: A public that is apparently more turned off to Bush’s ideas the more he talks about them.
As it was last time, Bush’s Bubble may be the central problem. Bush seems to think that through sheer force of will — and repetition — he will convince people that his cause is just — in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. And why does he think that? Quite possibly, because virtually everyone he talks to — and virtually everyone he sees — is already in his camp.
Via Atrios — here’s one of those famous Bush “town hall” meetings in front of a group of hand-picked drooling idiots with scripted questions. Bush says insightful things like “death is terrible.” Don’t watch on a full stomach. Continue reading
The day of the Alberto Gonzales hearing has finally arrived, and I regret that I won’t be able to stay home and watch. Slate has a list of questions the Attorney General is likely to be asked. Answers — or nonanswers — will be filled in as the hearings progress. If you want to follow along on the web, that’s one option. I’m sure other bloggers will be liveblogging. I may be able to catch part of it.
More Gonzales-related links:
Greg Gordon, McClatchy Newspapers: “Campaign against alleged voter fraud fuels political tempest.”
Peter Baker, Washington Post: “On the Hill, Gonzales Gets His Chance at Redemption: Insiders Say Loyalty Bought Him Time”
David Iglesias, Steven Calabresi, Ron Klain, and Jeffrey Rosen, New York Times: “A Dozen Questions for Alberto Gonzales”
Mark Follman, Salon: “The U.S. Attorney Scandal Gets Dirty”
Update: Home again for a little while. There’s good running commentary at TPM Muckraker.
At Media Matters, Eric Boehlert asks, “Can conservative bloggers tell the truth?”
No.
Simple answers to simple question, eh?
They can’t even tell the truth when they’ve been pinned to the ground with their falsehoods. Boehlert caught John Hinderaker of Power Line in a lie — just plain nailed him — and Hinderaker’s response is a study in weaseling. He got caught fibbing, so to defend himself he shifts to a different set of lies. Unreal.
The lie was that the stories told about John Kerry’s Vietnam service by the Swift Boat crew had never been disputed. Cough.
The Jawa Report defended Hinderaker by publishing the fact that David Brock, the founder of Media Matters, had made campaign contributions to John Kerry. However, it’s anyone’s guess what this is supposed to “prove.” In this bloggers sick little — very little — mind, campaign contributions to a a Democrat are evidence of sedition and conspiracy, evidently.
For what it’s worth — I’m watching the NBC series “Crossing Jordan,” and they’ve introduced an interesting plot twist — one of the main characters, definitely a “good” guy, was “disappeared” by Homeland Security on suspicion of being a terrorist, which was not true. The good guy was interrogated by a sinister agent, and there was suggestion he was tortured. The other characters first had to learn where he was and then tried to get him “sprung,” to be told by a judge there was nothing that could be done because habeas corpus didn’t apply. At the very end of the episode the character was released, but he looked rattled.
It was a nice dramatization of why habeas is necessary. I also think it’s interesting that NBC felt comfortable making Homeland Security the villain of the episode.
From Wizbang, which is always a reliable source of examples of rightie stupidity:
Most Americans, even those who are pro-choice, understand how sick this procedure was. If a late term pregnancy was so harmful to the mother’s health, then the mother should just deliver the baby and give the baby a chance to survive. But this procedure wasn’t really about saving the life of the mother. It was about killing an unwanted baby.
I’m seeing many variations of this opinion drizzled around the Right Blogosphere, and it reveals that, once again, righties lack a grasp of basic facts.
Firat off, calling D&E procedures “late term” never was correct, because it’s a second trimester procedure performed before the fetus is developed enough to be viable. Roe v. Wade permits states to ban elective abortions by any means after viability as long as there is an exception for life and health of the mother, and it is very unusual to have to sacrifice a viable baby to save the mother. “Very unusual” is not the same thing as “never happens,” however. The point is that it’s illegal to abort a viable fetus without medical cause in most states already, and has been for years.
The Wizbang post continues —
Here’s a feminist whose first comment was “We’re f***ed.” Sure, lady, if you mean that you can’t go to an abortionist when you’re 6+ months pregnant and have your unborn baby almost completely delivered except for his head and have his brains sucked out while he’s still alive because you just don’t feel like being pregnant any longer, then yes, I suppose you’re f***ed.
And, in fact, what this guy is talking about has been illegal in most states all along, and is no more illegal today than it was yesterday. When you say 6+ months you’re talking about after the 24th week of gestation, and that’s clearly within the time that a fetus might be viable. Therefore, that procedure wasn’t protected by Roe v. Wade unless there was medical need. Also, my understanding is that what procedures are performed after the 18th week or so of gestation are done by another means than D&E anyway.
I’ve seen some arguments that today’s ruling might end up hurting the Right. That’s a complicated subject. I do suspect the Fetus People might be thrown into confusion when it finally dawns on them that second-trimester abortions are still being performed, but that depends on what happens in the states. As I wrote in the last post, I think we can count on conservative state legislators to use today’s ruling as an excuse to write abortion laws that are even more restrictive than the one covered in the case decided today. We can also expect that in some states the ruling will be used to intimidate abortion providers from performing second-trimester abortions by any means. It’s going to get interesting.
Update: Here’s another example of profound ignorance. The rightie assumes that “partial-birth abortion” is a catchall term for all abortions performed after the first trimester:
… after running through some of the reactions on the left, it is clear that many that write those blogs are men because they seem to have no understanding of the differences between an abortion performed in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and a partial birth abortion.
Unfortunately, as Kennedy pointed out, neither do some women. Then you have women that DO understand the differences between abotion and partial birth abortion and simply do not care. Some seem to feel that it doesn’t matter if the baby is alive or not ater 12 weeks or even after 6 months, they feel their rights should trump the rights of an unborn child, even if the child is already displaying a heartbeat, movement and other signs showing it is alive.
An embryo/fetus is just as “alive” in the first trimester as it is in the second. The writer confuses “alive” with “viable.” Recently an infant survived that was believed to have been born at 21 weeks gestation. This made international news because she was the first baby ever known to have survived after a gestation period of fewer than 23 weeks. That’s very late in the second trimester. About 10 percent of abortions are performed during the 13th to 20th weeks of gestation, and no fetus is viable in that period.
Do not let some of the over heated reactions confuse the two issues, women can still have abortions, that has not changed, they just need to make that decision in a timely manner before a fetus actually becomes a baby that is alive.
The only rights that have been harmed here is a womans right to have her doctor murder her child.
I’d encourage any woman who plans to have an elective abortion to do this as early as possible, for her own safety. But what this dimbulb doesn’t grasp is that many serious complications can occur in the second trimester that can put a woman’s life at risk, and if the pregnancy has to be terminated before 23 weeks gestation (with one exception) the infant is not going to survive no matter how it is delivered. For example, preeclampsia, or pregnancy induced hypertension, is a common complication that can put the mother at risk of convulsion and death. In extreme cases the only way to save the mother’s life is to terminate the pregnancy, and sometimes this must be done before the fetus is viable. Terminating a pregnancy to save her own life doesn’t make a woman a monster, in my opinion.
A great many severe birth anomalies cannot be diagnosed until the second trimester. These include anencephaly, Tay Sachs, and other conditions that will take the baby’s life, with no exceptions. I believe strongly that when these diagnoses are made it must be up to the mother, and preferably her husband or partner also, to decide whether to carry the pregnancy to term. Not the government.
Here’s a heartbreaking story in which one twin might have been saved by sacrificing the other, which had no realistic chance to survive. But this procedure violated the hospital’s abortion policy, so the laboring mother was transported to another hospital several miles away, and both twins were stillborn. The father of the twins writes,
But the greater tragedy here, to my mind, is the straitjacket that a religious worldview imposes on the complexity inherent within clinical medicine. Our world sometimes presents us with situations that cannot be simplistically categorized as pro-choice or pro-life, and other patients across the nation will be faced with decisions like the ones we made on that fateful day.
This is why hospital policies that originate in religion rather than science can be unhealthy and unsafe. Personal religious beliefs can and should guide the lives of clinicians of faith. The extent to which they guide a clinician’s professional life is the clinician’s personal matter, and I hope that clinicians will choose specialties and practice settings that ensure that patients receive needed care regardless of the clinician’s religious beliefs. However, the extent to which these beliefs guide hospital policy is a matter of concern to all of us, whether we are patients or clinicians. The extent to which the US medical establishment succeeds in circumscribing the circle of influence of religion-based medicine will determine the quality of health care that phsycians can offer their patients. Clearly, irrespective of what religion each of us belongs to, this is the very least that our patients deserve.
But no; this twit thinks that people like this father are heartless murderers who kill their babies just because they’re having a bad day.
Update 2: Scott Lemieux explains it all for you.
I’ve just learned that the Supreme Court upheld the national “partial birth” abortion ban passed by Congress in 2003. The five justice who made up the majority are Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, and Kennedy.
The repercussions of this ruling will depend a great deal on how the various states interpret the ban. Physicians have complained that the ban, as it is worded, could be interpreted to ban just about any type of abortion. If that’s the case, I think this will bring about a huge public backlash against the Fetus People, which is something I don’t think they realize.
On the other hand, if it is interpreted to ban only the dilatation and evacuation (D&E) procedure, which is commonly used in the second trimester, then nearly 90 percent of abortions, performed in the first trimester using other methods, would not be affected. And second trimester abortions would still be performed, but by other means that pose greater risk to women. Even so, abortions performed by physicians in sterile environments would not likely result in the carnage that a return to “back alley” abortions would cause. It’s hard to know if a ban on D&E only would create much of a public stir at all.
But I think we can count on conservative state legislators to go for the more expansive interpretation of the ruling. I’m sure that many Red State politicians are busily writing up new and more oppressive abortion laws that go beyond today’s ruling even as I keyboard, and I strongly suspect this ruling has just opened a big can of damn ugly worms.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) filed an amicus brief in support of the challenge to the ban. I’m going to paste an ACOG press release about the brief here, because I think it explains the issues clearly.
For Release: September 22, 2006
ACOG Files Amicus Brief in Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. PPFA Washington, DC — The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) has filed an amicus brief in support of the challenges to the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The United States Supreme Court will hear arguments on November 8, 2006, in two cases that dispute the constitutionality of the Act, which was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush in November 2003. The ban has not taken effect because of the legal challenges.
Almost immediately after the Act was signed into law by President Bush, physicians and medical groups filed three separate lawsuits challenging it in federal courts in New York, Nebraska, and California. In each case, the court ruled the Act unconstitutional and the decision was upheld on appeal. The government subsequently sought review of two of the cases by the US Supreme Court: Gonzales v. Carhart (Nebraska) and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) (California). Any further appeals in the New York case would be initiated after the US Supreme Court rules on the Nebraska and California cases. [I assume this is moot now — maha]
“The courts were correct each time they struck down such ill-conceived and unconstitutional restrictions on physicians’ ability to provide patients with the safest possible medical care,” according to Douglas W. Laube, MD, MEd, president of ACOG.
The Act purports to ban so-called “partial-birth abortions;” however, “partial-birth abortion” is not a medical term and is not recognized in the field of medicine. The Act defines “partial-birth abortion” in a way that encompasses a variation of dilatation and evacuation (D&E), the most common method of second-trimester abortion, in which the fetus remains intact as it is removed from the woman’s uterus. The Act’s definition also encompasses some D&E procedures in which the fetus is not removed intact.
Over 95% of induced abortions in the second trimester are performed using the D&E method. The alternatives to D&E in the second trimester are abdominal surgery or induction abortion. Doctors rarely perform an abortion by abdominal surgery because doing so entails far greater risks to the woman. The induction method imposes serious risks to women with certain medical conditions and is entirely contraindicated for others.
The intact variant of D&E offers significant safety advantages over the non-intact method, including a reduced risk of catastrophic hemorrhage and life-threatening infection. These safety advantages are widely recognized by experts in the field of women’s health, authoritative medical texts, peer-reviewed studies, and the nation’s leading medical schools. ACOG has thus concluded that an intact D&E “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of the woman, and only the doctor in consultation with the patient, based on the woman’s particular circumstances can make that decision.” [ACOG Statement of Policy on Abortion (reaffirmed 2004)]
ACOG objects to the 2003 federal ban because it exposes women to serious, unnecessary health risks and does not include any exception to protect women’s health. In addition, ACOG objects to the Act’s vague and overly broad terms because doctors will be unable to determine whether their actions are prohibited by the Act. As a result, the Act will deter doctors from providing a wide range of procedures used to safely perform induced abortions.
“The term ‘partial-birth abortion’ was purposely contrived to be inflammatory,” said Dr. Laube. “While proponents of this law say that it addresses a particular procedure, it has been specifically written to describe and encompass elements of other procedures used in obstetrics and gynecology.”
In 2000, ACOG filed an amicus brief in Stenberg v. Carhart on behalf of the challengers to a Nebraska law that attempted to ban so-called “partial-birth abortions.” The US Supreme Court struck down the Nebraska law, ruling that it violated the US Constitution by failing to provide any exception “for the preservation of the health of the mother” and being so broadly written that it could prohibit other types of abortion procedures such D&E, thereby unduly burdening a woman’s ability to choose to have an abortion.
“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,” said Dr. Laube.
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The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is the national medical organization representing over 51,000 members who provide health care for women.
Let’s hear from the only woman on the Court:
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, speaking in the courtroom for the dissenters, called the ruling “an alarming decision” that refuses “to take seriously” the Court’s 1992 decisions reaffirming most of Roe v. Wade and its 2000 decision in Stenberg v. Carhart striking down a state partial-birth abortion law.
Ginsburg, in a lengthy statement, said “the Court’s opinion tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. For the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception protecting a woman’s health.” She said the federal ban “and the Court’s defense of it cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court — and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women’s lives. A decision of the character the Court makes today should not have staying power.”
That final comment, concluding remarks delivered without an open display of emotion, clearly was a suggestion that the ruling might not survive new appointments to the Court — just as the arrival of Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and, especially, Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. — had led to the switch she claimed had come about this time. Ginsburg pointedly noted that the Court is “differently imposed that it was when we last considered a restrictive abortion regulation” — in Stenberg in 2000.
In the course of her dissenting opinion, Ginsburg accused the majority of offering “flimsy and transparent justifications” for upholding the ban. She also denounced the Kennedy opinion for its use of “abortion doctor” to describe specialists who perform gynecological services, “unborn child” and “baby” to describe a fetus, and “preferences” based on “mere convenience” to describe the medical judgments of trained doctors. She also commented: “Ultimately, the Court admits that ‘moral concerns’ are at work, concerns that cdould yield prohibtions on any abortion.”
I have a lot of questions about today’s ruling. For example if the Court has affirmed an abortion law that doesn’t have a “life and health of the mother” clause, what does that do to Roe v. Wade?
And may I say that if even one woman dies or is needlessly impaired because the government has “tied the hands” of physicians, it’s an injustice.