SEVEN (the last):
In 1997, the AMA declared that
third-trimester abortions should not be
performed "except in cases of serious fetal
anomalies incompatible with life," meaning
when the fetus appears fated to die
anyway. The AMA supports Roe, backs
public funding of abortions, and favors
availability of RU-486; it simply thinks that,
once a fetus can draw its own breath, a new
life exists and must be protected. The AMA
declaration had a strong influence on
centrists such as Democratic
Representative Tim Roemer of Indiana,
who has called the D&X procedure "inches
from infanticide," and Senate Minority
Leader Tom Daschle, who in 1997 switched
from supporting late-term abortion to
opposing it.
Daschle offered a bill that would have
prohibited third-trimester abortions
except to avoid "grievous injury" to the
mother and would have required any
physician performing a late-term abortion
to certify that the fetus was not viable.
Under pressure from pro-choice lobbyists,
Clinton offered only tepid, pro forma
support for the Daschle bill. Pro-life
activists rallied against it, asserting that
the "grievous injury" clause could justify
abortions based upon a woman's mental
rather than physical health. Gridlock has
prevailed since.
The issue of mental health is an example of
how absolutist thinking cripples both
pro-life and pro-choice advocacy. Pro-life
forces find it repugnant that a woman might
be allowed to terminate a pregnancy to
preserve her emotional state, yet it is fair
to assume that no man will ever understand
the mental-health consequences to a woman
of unwanted motherhood. Conversely,
pro-choice theory concerns itself only with
a woman's mental health during pregnancy,
not afterward. A woman who carries an
unwanted child to term and then offers the
baby for adoption may suffer physical and
psychological hardship and social
opprobrium--but, for the rest of her life,
her conscience will be clear. Pro-choice
absolutism takes no account of the mental
health of the woman who aborts a viable
child and then suffers remorse for an act
she cannot undo.
If women's health and freedom represent
the blind spot of the pro-life side, the
moral standing of the third-trimester
fetus--the baby, by that point--is the blind
spot of pro-choicers. Pro-choice adherents
cite the slippery slope, but that
apprehension is an artifact of lobbying and
fundraising, not of law. Clinton, reflecting
the absolutist line, has said that late-term
abortion is "a procedure that appears
inhumane" but that restrictions "would be
even more inhumane" because they would
lead to the overturning of Roe. For those
who know what's actually in Roe--a
trimester system whose very purpose is to
allow early choice while protecting
late-term babies--this claim is more than a
little ironic.
Women are right to fear that political
factions are working to efface their rights.
Late-term abortion is simply not the ground
on which to stage the defense--because,
unless the mother's life is at stake,
late-term abortion is wrong.
It is time to admit what everyone knows
and what the new science makes clear: that
third-trimester abortion should be very
tightly restricted. The hopelessly confusing
viability standard should be dropped in
favor of a bright line drawn at the start of
the third trimester, when complex fetal
brain activity begins. Restricting abortion
after that point would not undermine the
rights granted by Roe, because there is no
complex brain activity before the third
trimester and thus no slippery slope to
start down. Scientifically based late-term
abortion restrictions would not enter into
law poignant but unprovable spiritual
assumptions about the spark of life but
would simply protect lives whose humanity
is now known.
To be sure, restrictions on late-term
abortion would harm the rights of American
women, but the harm would be small, while
the moral foundation of abortion choice
overall would be strengthened by removing
the taint of late-term abortion. By contrast,
restrictions on early abortions would cause
tremendous damage to women's freedom
while offering only a hazy benefit to the
next generation, since so many pregnancies
end naturally anyway. There are costs to
either trade-off, but they are costs that a
decent society can bear.
Western Europe is instructive in this
regard. In most European Union nations,
early abortion is not only legal but far less
politically contentious than it is here. Yet, in
those same countries, late-term abortion is
considered infanticide. All European Union
nations except France and the United
Kingdom ban abortion in the third
trimester, except to save the mother's life.
And, even where allowed, late-term
abortion occurs at one-third the U.S. rate.
Western European countries have avoided
casting abortion as a duel between
irresolvable absolutes. They treat abortion
in the first two trimesters as a morally
ambiguous private matter, while viewing it
in the third trimester as public and morally
odious. We should follow their lead.All it
requires is knowledge of the new fetal
science and a return to the true logic of
Roe.
[End. This is from tnr.com] |
