Supreme Court upholds fed abortion ban

FYI, Everybody...

The medical term is "intact dilation and extraction." 

"Partial-Birth Abortion" is not a medical term; it is a POLITICAL name invented by a Florida Congressman named
Canady, (Republican--- DUH!) back in the 90s.  And anybody who refers to this issue by that name has fallen into
the right wingers' trap. 

=>The truth usually isn't pretty. Don't blame me for telling it.<=

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by: Chadster @ Wed Apr 18, 2007 at 17:10:06 PM CDT

Just a wild guess, but...

I'd say Dubya's approval rating just shot up about ten points.

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by: teh registered user haha lol @ Wed Apr 18, 2007 at 18:32:20 PM CDT

Not Necessarily

Republicans, particularly the social/religious wing,
thought they would win points by meddling in the Terri Schiavo case (like they CARED about Terri Schiavo)... but it backfired bigtime.  Was it Lincoln who said, "You can't fool all of the people all of the time."

=>The truth usually isn't pretty. Don't blame me for telling it.<=

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by: Chadster @ Wed Apr 18, 2007 at 20:23:12 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

and also, not all republicans are forced-birthers

some repubs, mainly women i'll wager, will be upset by this.

Click HERE and sign up: Campaign For Military Partners.

Lurleen on Twitter.

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by: Lurleen @ Wed Apr 18, 2007 at 20:33:13 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Class issue

Lilly white, middle class America that has health care, access to birth control options and education will be guaranteed a late termination, if it comes right down to it.

It is the uninsured poor that have been processed through the Abstinence Only public education mill that will be denied access to life saving medical procedures.

As bug-eyed Barbara Bush said following Katrina (something to the tune of):  "Oh, those people are used to it."

r-e-v-o-l-u-t-i-o-n!!

http://blog.iblameth...

 

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by: Patrick @ Wed Apr 18, 2007 at 20:50:18 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

That's true

My partner told me some stories about a female family member who married a rich man, got repeatedly pregnant but surprise never had a baby.  This was back in the 50s and he was so rich he had a private plane that flew them to Cuba quite often.  Funny, that's when she came back WITHOUT child.

It won't stop the poor from doing what they've always done to end pregnancies.  I have a feeling there will be increased purchases of wire clothes hangers in the near future.

Ironically, the white Pug world is fearful of being overrun by the minority.  If whites aren't outnumbered yet, they will be soon.  That simply makes for more poor minorities glumming off the system that will eventually be able to vote.  Then again, I'm cynical enough today to think that will get fixed as well.  The poor will be kept uneducated and probably disenfranchised even when it comes time to vote.  Then they'll be so uneducated that they can't read to vote anyway.  Only the rich and white will be able to go to college, leaving only one option for the poor:  the military.

"Come on, black and brown mommas, keep pumping out those babies.  We have a war to wage!!!"

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by: callie @ Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 07:26:17 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Supreme Court Justices Practice Medicine w/out a License

The law is constitutional despite not containing an exception that would allow the procedure if needed to preserve a woman's health, Kennedy said. "The law need not give abortion doctors unfettered choice in the course of their medical practice," he wrote in the majority opinion.

Funny, that is exactly what the law does allow in EVERY OTHER ASPECT OF MEDICAL PRACTICE! In fact, any physician in this country has the legal right to prescribe any licit pharmaceutical ( which excludes medical marijuana, of course) approved by the FDA for ANY USE for which the physician sees fit, regardless of the uses for which the FDA approved it. This is done because physicians are the experts, and may find uses that are beneficial to patients.

It is fascinating that only in the matter of abortion, and more widely reproduction, does any segment of society advocating tying a physician's hands as to the best course of treatment for their patient. I have told before the story of my mother's excruciating ordeal in 1971 when her physicians were overruled by a panel of untrained judges and the medically necessary abortion they recommended was denied. Instead, she spent 18 hours nearly bleeding to death (and expelling pieces of the now dead and ripped-apart fetus - makes abortion look attractive), two weeks in the hospital recovering from the ordeal, and forever abandoning the hope of having more children (she was not yet 33). In fact, within 5 years she would have to have a hysterectomy because of the damage.

What advocates of anti-abortion laws do not realize is that they are not simply penalizing the anti-children feminists they think stalk the halls of every school and college in the nation, they are penalizing couples and women who desperately want their children, but are unable to continue a pregnancy, or unwilling to risk serious health and medical consequences of that pregnancy.

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by: CPT_Doom @ Wed Apr 18, 2007 at 18:56:29 PM CDT

What is Always Unsaid

I read about the decision, but didn't read the decision; I don't know if it's out yet but I'll watch for it.  But it might contain something about "serious risks and/or survival" of the mother.

What is never spoken, but you know that it's really the issue- is not children, the meaning of life or when it begins, and certainly not religious hokus-pokus.  It is about uppity women who think they have the right to control their own sex lives and reproduction.  The term "Pro-Life" is like "the War on Terror" and "Operation Iraqi Freedom."
100% pure baloney, aimed at the gullible.

=>The truth usually isn't pretty. Don't blame me for telling it.<=

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by: Chadster @ Wed Apr 18, 2007 at 20:50:46 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

get your coat hangers

get your coat hangers...get your coat hangers

This is a F*CKIN nightmare, I lobbied in MN before Roe for safe legal abortions. All this will do is hurt poor and young women, rich women ALWAYS got clean safe abortions, they could either bribe American doctors to do the procedure illeagally or they could travel to UK and Scandinavian countries.
I can't believe the health of a woman has so devalued that an unknown quantity of potential life has equal or more rights than she does.

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by: underbear1 @ Wed Apr 18, 2007 at 19:24:06 PM CDT

Shouldn't they be grateful to the lengths we go to in order to avoid abortion?

I'm always stunned that the anti-abortionists don't recognize the lengths we gay men (and our lesbian and transgendered sisters and brothers) go to in order to avoid aborting fetuses.

This is perhaps the most pernicious ruling I've ever seen. It's easy to throw bones to the religious right and think, well, women can always act faster. But think about the many reasonable reasons why a woman would wait to have an abortion (making a thoughtful decision, consulting the father), and then think about how this law restricts them.

It's pernicious to pretend that this law is anything by an assault on the safety and autonomy of women. I wonder: how many of these assholes have gotten women pregnant? What would they do if they had to watch their daughter's die in childbirth. I fear, not much.

I'd love to say I'm above abortion, but it might well be a matter of life and death for someone I care about. If I were back in the States I'd be rioting in the streets.

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by: David from Toronto @ Wed Apr 18, 2007 at 20:53:04 PM CDT

George Carlin said it right

  Tha anti abortion crowd should love us.

If I make sense? it was quite by accident.

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by: HappyCat @ Wed Apr 18, 2007 at 21:21:07 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Thanks Pam!

Thanks for your trackback!

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by: Holly in Cincinnati @ Wed Apr 18, 2007 at 21:00:09 PM CDT

Guns and babies for everyone!!

I suggest that all pregnant women purchase 9mm automatics and go an a crime spree. 

It would be terrible to kill a pregnant woman even if she is robbing a bank with a machine gun. 

This might make a great movie...does anyone know John Waters?

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by: Patrick @ Wed Apr 18, 2007 at 21:29:08 PM CDT

Here's what I don't get ...

If Kennedy based his opinion on the personal level of disgust he felt with the D&X procedure because it removes the intact fetus (which apparently is shared by many fundies based on the way they targeted this particular procedure), how is this procedure worse than regular old D&E where the fetus is - for lack of a better description - cut to pieces before it is removed?  Not to be too gross, but if the aftermath of the abortion resembles a heavy period, that's OK, but if the fetus is actually recognizable (as if the woman is going to inspect it after it has been removed), that's bad?  Some commentators have argued that it's no big deal, that it only cuts off the availability of one type of abortion.  But obviously, when you compare D&X to other abortion procedures, this logic isn't sound.

So what's scary to me is that this new test introduced by Kennedy and joined by Alito and Roberts (don't even get me started on the concurrence by Scalia and Thomas) permits a judge's or a politician's own personal level of offense by a particular abortion procedure to override the educated judgment of doctors who take an oath to do what is best for their patients under the circumstances.  I can't wait until doctors are sued for medical malpractice once these restrictive abortion bans prevent them from performing the most medically appropriate procedures, resulting in preventable complications.  But that'll only raise their malpractice insurance rates even more, meaning the cost will be passed along to us.  Then again, maybe the price is right after all, since these bans are likely to be passed in the most conservative states; they want the ban, they pay the higher insurance rates.

Is abortion arguably disgusting?  Sure it is, and though I've never had one, it's probably no picnic.  But once we start using the degree of disgust as the appropriate measure of whether an activity should be illegal, we encounter all the usual tensions between individual freedoms and the will of the majority.  Whose opinion of what is disgusting counts?  How disgusting does it have to be?  Using offensiveness or disgust as a yardstick is especially problematic when a lay opinion can trump determinations made by medical experts who usually factor in considerations the average Joe is not even aware of.

I heard a commentator on NPR analogize the decision in this way: Imagine if a man had testicular (or prostate?) cancer and a doctor could either treat him through surgery or through radiation.  This decision is like the Supreme Court saying that no matter what the individual patient's circumstances or the opinion of the majority of doctors, from now on, only radiation can be used because surgery is just too invasive.  So even in cases where surgery would be the best treatment, the Court, based on policy considerations totally unrelated to medical expertise, has decided that radiation is sufficiently appropriate to be used in every single case.  Not a perfect analogy, but pretty good. 

Look, we all know where this decision is leading.  It means that states can restrict abortion just because they don't like it, without even considering the health consequences the the pregnant woman.  If that's not a slippery slope, I don't know what is.  But as others here have observed, women with means will always have access to safe abortions, so maybe this time the Court just felt safe knowing that the real victims of this decision - poor women in rural areas - lack the political power to fight back.

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by: Sanchito @ Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 00:41:36 AM CDT

Oye vey, Patrick!

As American Dad said when his kid wanted an abortion: "We're conservatives! That's the one way we don't like to kill things!"

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by: h3986 @ Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 00:49:31 AM CDT

I don't have access to this opinion at the moment, but...

...if memory serves RvW established a trimester system by which states could regulate abortions in the last trimester.

Since I don't have access to this opinion, it confounds me as to the power in Article I of the US Constitution, under which the federal government could regulate abortions in the last trimester.  The federal government is supposedly a government of limited powers (Article I) but the report here suggests that it is not.  And that is quite disturbing.  It is almost as if the court is suggesting that the federal government has plenary powers over the states, which was not the intention of the federal system.

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by: raj @ Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 01:23:28 AM CDT

You are overlooking ...

... the elastic clause.

BANNED for TOS violations.

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by: William Wilson @ Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 11:54:17 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Simple solution for pro-choice women

don't have sex with pro-life men...(in a couple generations those troglidytes will be extinct.)
PLEASE,begin with that hateful b*stard Randall Terry.Looking at him you'd think "totally UNF*CKABLE," but he has nearly a dozen kids, WELL that's what the world needs, being knee deep in Terry's and Santorum's spawn...ugh!

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by: underbear1 @ Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 02:14:50 AM CDT

Too Much Hysteria

The comments like, "get your coat hangers" are absurd.

1. The opinion expressly reaffirmed Roe v Wade.

2. Roe v Wade allows regulation of second-trimester abortions and prohibition of third-trimester abortions.

3. The opinion notes that the law forbids only the extraction of a live fetus, thus allowing alternative dilation and extraction abortion method in which the doctors kills a fetus before it's extracted though the cervix.

4. This is political theater. The decision affects hardly any abortions. Only 5% of abortions happen late in the second timester or thereafter. of those, fewer than 1 in 25 use the so-called "partial birth" (intact dilation and extraction) method.

The best argument against my position is that this decision chips away at abortion rights. If it's followed by more rulings that uphold more meaningful restrictions, that fear will prove justified. For now, I am not convinced.

BANNED for TOS violations.

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by: William Wilson @ Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 03:56:51 AM CDT

No, Mr. Wilson...

...Under what power of the US constitution did the Federal Government purport to regulate abortion, during any trimester.

Do you not understand that the Federal Government is supposedly one of limited powers?  If you do not understand that, you migh consider reading the US constitution, particularly Article I, Section 8.

RvW said that the states could regulate abortion during the 2d and 3d trimesters.  Not the federal government.

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by: raj @ Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 05:18:32 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

If that's the argument ...

... then the pro-choice lawyers ought to consider making it sometime.

BANNED for TOS violations.

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by: William Wilson @ Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 11:18:57 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Not enough concern

Just another day at the Supreme Court, eh Mr. Wilson?  I am relieved that I don't have those 5 old bastards (some not old enough) sniffing around in my crotch deciding what medical procedures I am allowed to choose from when faced with few options. 

As usual in this debate, men are involved much more than they need to be.  Don't like abortion?  Don't have one.

This article appeared today at http://www.sfgate.co...

Doctors denounce high court ruling
They say other 2nd-term abortions riskier, medical decisions should be left to them

Erin Allday, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, April 19, 2007

Excerpts:

"No one knows exactly how many of these abortions are performed nationwide each year, although estimates range from 2,000 to 4,000, out of about 156,000 second-trimester abortions.

Doctors have argued that the method is sometimes safer than the much more common dilation and evacuation procedure. With this method, the fetus is dismembered in the womb and removed in pieces. The procedure involves inserting medical instruments into the uterus multiple times, potentially increasing the risk of bleeding, infection and patient discomfort, doctors have said."

"None of the procedures for a second-trimester abortion is pleasant, and doctors on Wednesday were reluctant to discuss details of the different methods. The point of the Supreme Court's ruling, they said, wasn't in the details of the procedure, but in the government taking away physicians' ability to make the best medical decisions for their patients.

"From a clinical perspective, what this means is that women are just not going to get the best possible care," said Dr. Paul Blumenthal, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Stanford University School of Medicine. "American medicine has prided itself in being based on science and evidence. In essence, what's happened here is my clinical judgment, my training, and those of my peers, has been taken away from us." "

 

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by: Patrick @ Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 09:00:53 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Calling the reaction hysterical ...

... doesn't mean that I'm in favor of the ruling. I just think that the reaction is over the top. Last year there were 854,000 abortions. Of them about 1,400 used the so-called "partial birth" method.

Given that most if not all of the so-called partial birth abortions can be performed with a different method, I'll be surprised if, in the end, this ban winds up affecting any abortions at all.

BANNED for TOS violations.

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by: William Wilson @ Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 11:26:52 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

like claiming a foreign land

I had this little epiphany on another site and think it speaks to the misogyny of the far right.

Note that there are few winger women commenting on this topic saying how wonderful it is that they can give up control of their bodies and minds to men now, they no longer have to agonize over the hard decisions for they are already made for them by men.

No, what you see are winger men stating how wonderful this is and how they should have a right to control women.

I believe there is a primal force at work here.  It's the male belief, similar to the mentality that sticking a flag in a foreign land and claiming it as his, that they've stuck their penis in it so they get to decide what to do with it now.

It's not about love, family, or even procreation and the sanctity of life.  It's about power and property.  You f**k it and it's yours.

I do wonder if such mentality would extend to the increase in paternity suits and demands for financial support for the babies they fathered.  They f**ked it, they fathered, now it's their responsibility.

I doubt it would.

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by: callie @ Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 09:23:48 AM CDT

KEEP YOUR FILTHY LAWS OFF OUR BODIES

I lobbied for safe legal abortions in MN with my feminist friends BEFORE Roe vs. Wade.
As a man, and a queer man...abortion will never be an issue I'd have to decide. That's why it is essential men allow the woman to make HER CHOICE.
I get fed up to the teeth with pro-life fanatics, To shut them up simply ask,

How many crack babies or babies addicted to alcohol, crystal,or cocaine have they adopted?

How many HIV/AIDS infants have they adopted?

How many infants with Downs syndrome have they adopted?
NONE, NONE, and NONE!
yeah that's what I thought ALL TALK, NO ACTION!

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by: underbear1 @ Thu Apr 19, 2007 at 20:35:40 PM CDT