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.
