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Nov. 20, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: How to make every second of your life come first
Caroline B. Glick: Whither American Jewry
Nov. 19, 2009
Binyamin L. Jolkovsky: Please Listen to this Godcast (5 minutes)
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: What Judaism has to say about the secret of the Mona Lisa's smile
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : When borrowing is stealing
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick: Obama's failure, Netanyahu's opportunity
Nov. 12, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet By Marialisa Calta : A sweet sweet potato treat
JWisdom.com Does God get tired? with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
Rabbi Avi Shafran: Jews and money: When anti-Semitism isn't
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review May 4, 2007 / 16 Iyar, 5767

Partial-birth abortion ban makes waves

By Drs. Michael A. Glueck & Robert J. Cihak

The Medicine Men
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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In a recent 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of Congress to forbid partial-birth abortions, or intact dilation and extraction (Gonzales v. Carhart), without an exception for the health of the mother.


The Feminists Majority Foundation told its members that the decision was a "direct assault on Roe v. Wade" (LifeNews.com, April 19).


Although The Associated Press stated that most Americans do not support the ban, a variety of polls show broad-based bipartisan support. For example, a March 2006 poll by Fox News showed that Democrats support the ban 51 percent to 35 percent; women, by 66 percent to 23 percent; men, by 55 percent to 32 percent; and Americans overall, by 61 percent to 28 percent (Lifenews.com April 18).


Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy distinguished the federal statute from the Nebraska one overturned in Stenberg v. Carhart, stating that it had a more precise definition of the prohibited procedure.


A "Perspective" by R. Alto Charo, J.D., in The New England Journal of Medicine called the decision "the partial death of abortion rights." Charo is a professor of law and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a member of the board of directors of the Guttmacher Institute.


Claiming that these procedures are "rare," the author said that in 2000 only 2,200 were performed by 31 providers, accounting for 0.17 percent of the 1.3 million abortions occurring in the United States that year.


Congress had found that "a moral, medical and ethical consensus exists that partial-birth abortion is a gruesome and inhuman procedure that is never medically necessary and should be prohibited."


Charo further comments that when government involvement in medical decision making is warranted, "it is best handled through dispassionate, evidence-based expert reviews." The "mere prospect of being investigated by a possibly hostile prosecutor may well have a chilling effect," as on physicians who determine that the procedure is indicated to save a mother's life.


Justice Kennedys conclusion that the burden imposed by the ban is "legitimate" and not "undue" because "a fetus is a living organism within the womb" shifts the "balance of interests" away from women's health to "societal morality and the state's interest in life."


Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg notes that, "the Act, 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" (Charo RA. N Engl J Med April 23).


In another "Perspective" in the Journal, Michael F. Green, M.D., director of obstetrics at the Massachusetts General Hospital and associate editor of the Journal, headlines the ban as "the intimidation of American physicians."


Dutch oncologists have bravely performed euthanasia even when it was still illegal and reported to prosecutors, confident that they would not be prosecuted if they had acted, "transparently and in the best interest of the terminally ill patient."


American physicians have "no confidence that their own judicial system would judge them fairly under similar circumstances."


The dilemma faced by abortionists is highlighted by a British study showing that one baby in 30 survived an abortion attempt. The study covered the outcomes of 3,189 abortions done at West Midlands hospitals between 1994 and 2005 because of fetal abnormality. Many of the 102 survivors were between 20 and 24 weeks of gestation, just before or right at the point of viability.


Without intensive care, they had no chance of living more than a few hours.


The Supreme Court ruling "catapults abortion back into the '08 presidential race" (NY Times April 19). Strongly disapproving of the decision were Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. Supporting it were John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, and Rudolph Guiliani.


Americans face enough problems and issues in the 2008 election without suffering through another diversionary and meddlesome abortion debate.


Editor's Note: Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., submitted this week's commentary.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Michael Arnold Glueck, M.D., is a multiple award winning writer who comments on medical-legal issues. Robert J. Cihak, M.D., is a Discovery Institute Senior Fellow and a past president of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Both JWR contributors are Harvard trained diagnostic radiologists. Comment by clicking here.

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