The Abortion Argument We Missed

[KevinTheOmnivore]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Com...2_1_05_GW.html

December 1, 2005

The Abortion Argument We Missed
By George Will

WASHINGTON -- Henry J. Friendly, who died in 1986, was perhaps the most distinguished American judge never to serve on the Supreme Court, and he almost spared the nation the poisonous consequences of that court's 1973 truncation of democratic debate about abortion policy. The story of that missed blessing was told recently by Judge A. Raymond Randolph of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in an address to the Federalist Society.

In 1970, Friendly, then on the Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit, was a member of a three-judge panel that heard the first abortion-rights case ever filed in a federal court, alleging the unconstitutionality of New York's abortion laws. Friendly wrote a preliminary opinion that was never issued because, in that pre-Roe era, democracy was allowed to function: New York's Legislature legalized abortion on demand during the first 24 weeks of pregnancy, causing the three-judge panel to dismiss the case as moot.

In 1965, the Supreme Court, citing a constitutional right to privacy, struck down a Connecticut law criminalizing the use of contraceptives. In 1968, a University of Alabama law professor, although acknowledging that legislative reforms of abortion laws were advancing nationwide, suggested a route to reform -- judicial fiat -- that would be quicker and easier than democratic persuasion. The tactic would be to get courts -- ideally, the Supreme Court -- to declare, building on the Connecticut case, that restrictions on abortions violate a privacy right that is a ``penumbral right emanating from values'' embodied in various provisions of the U.S. Constitution, as applied to the states through the 14th Amendment.

Which is what the Supreme Court did in 1973. But in 1970, when that argument reached Friendly, he warned in his preliminary opinion about the argument's ``disturbing sweep,'' and its invitation to judicial imprudence.

The assertion of such a privacy right would, he said, invalidate ``a great variety'' of statutes that existed when the 14th Amendment was adopted -- e.g., those against attempted suicide, bestiality, even drug use. And, Friendly wrote, it would be rash to suddenly find that the Constitution is an absolute impediment to the New York Legislature's deciding that a fetus deserves some protection. Declining to join the debate about when a fetus becomes a human being, Friendly wrote: ``It is enough that the legislature was not required to accept plaintiffs' demeaning characterizations of (the fetus),'' which is ``something more than inert matter.'' He continued:

``We would not wish our refusal to declare New York's abortion law unconstitutional as in any way approving or 'legitimating' it. The arguments for repeal are strong; those for substantial modification are stronger still. ... But the decision what to do about abortion is for the elected representatives of the people, not for three, or even nine, appointed judges.''

Three years later, the Supreme Court turned all policy choices about abortion -- even such details as spousal notification -- into matters of constitutional law. Who now really thinks that this exploitation of what Friendly called ``the vague contours of the 14th Amendment'' was wise?

The day after Roe was decided, The New York Times called it a ``resolution'' of the abortion issue. Not really. Roe short-circuited a democratic process of accommodating abortion differences -- a process that had produced a larger increase in the number of legal abortions in the three years before Roe than would occur in the three years after.

Since 1973, the privacy right has, as Judge Randolph says, ``morphed.'' Its original constitutional meaning pertained to preserving personal seclusion and keeping personal information secret. Now it means personal autonomy -- everyone's right to do whatever he or she pleases so long as others are not harmed.

That idea has a distinguished pedigree. John Stuart Mill wrote in ``On Liberty'' (1859): ``The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.'' That libertarian doctrine is, Randolph says, a defensible position for a legislature to take, but nothing in the Constitution's history or text suggests that Mill's philosophy is mandatory.

In the polarized post-Roe politics, many Democrats are now poised to oppose the confirmation of Sam Alito on the ground that abortion rights, unlike all other rights (to free speech, private property, etc.), must be utterly unrestricted. Because Americans recoil from such immoderation, Democrats, after three decades of political difficulties, have reason to believe, if not the reasonableness to recognize, that they, especially, would have been better off if Friendly's preliminary opinion had been issued and if it had spared the nation Roe's diminishment of democracy and embitterment of politics.

© 2005, Washington Post Writers Group

[KevinTheOmnivore]

And rather than starting another thread on the subject....

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/01/opinion/01conley.html

December 1, 2005
Op-Ed Contributor
A Man's Right to Choose
By DALTON CONLEY
MANY liberals who oppose Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.'s nomination to the Supreme Court focus on his (losing) position in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1991 case about a Pennsylvania law that would have required women seeking abortions to notify their husbands. "Pennsylvania has a legitimate interest in furthering the husband's interest in the fate of the fetus," is the most widely quoted part of his opinion in that case.

There may be many reasons to oppose Judge Alito's nomination - including the possibility, as highlighted in documents released yesterday, that he would seek to nibble away at Roe v. Wade - but his Casey opinion is not one of them. Rather, Judge Alito's thinking about the role of men in reproductive decision-making is in keeping with how legal thinking needs to evolve in this age of readily available DNA testing. Nor is his position contrary to national sentiment: a majority of Americans feel that the husband should be notified about an abortion.

His only problem was not going far enough, relying only on the marriage contract to legitimate men's claims to a role in the reproductive decision-making process.

Bear with me here. About a decade ago, my girlfriend became pregnant. It wasn't planned, but it wasn't exactly unplanned either, in that we obviously knew how biology worked. I desperately wanted to keep the baby, but she wasn't ready, and there were some minor medical concerns about the fetus, so she decided to terminate the pregnancy against my wishes. What right did I have to stop her? As it turned out, none. It was, indeed, a woman's right to choose.

Not surprisingly, we broke up. And my desire for fatherhood was eventually fulfilled by two wonderful children. But every so often I think back to the fateful decision, and frustration boils up. I am particularly reminded of it now, as I counsel a friend who finds himself in a parallel - but reverse - situation: when he broke off his engagement, his girlfriend told him that she was pregnant and was going to have the child no matter what.

That is her right, of course, and nobody should be able to take that away. But when men and women engage in sexual relations both parties recognize the potential for creating life. If both parties willingly participate then shouldn't both have a say in whether to keep a baby that results?


The abortion debate has polarized into a shouting match about two fundamentally different conceptions of conception, as it were. The anti-abortion position asserts that at the moment sperm meets egg a new human has been created, endowed with its own rights. Much of the recent strategy of anti-abortion advocates has been to attempt an end run around Roe v. Wade by establishing legal personhood in subtle ways through administrative fiat. For example, the Bush administration decided to include fetuses under the Children's Health Insurance Program, a tricky maneuver that creates a paradox for liberals who wish to expand the health coverage of pregnant women, but who loathe the idea of establishing legal claims on behalf of fetuses.

Other such tactics include the attempted appointment of a state guardian for the fetus of a severely retarded woman by Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida. In the face of such strategies, the pro-choice movement has desperately clung to the notion that the fetus is part of the mother and not a separate person. Pro-choice advocates argue that the debate is really about a woman's control over her body. Hence my lack of rights to have any say in whether my seed comes to fruition.

Of course, most Americans seem to fall somewhere between these two positions. They support abortion rights, but they are also willing to accept restrictions on those rights. They do not think a fetus is the same as a person, but neither do they think of it as part and parcel of a woman's body like her appendix, a kidney or a tumor. They see a fetus as an individual under construction. Hence the almost universal support for abortion in the case of risk to the mother - why not opt for protecting life that is already here on earth over something that is still, ultimately, potential?

While the abortion debate has been stuck in neutral, the last decade has been marked by two other legal and cultural developments that should have - but haven't - influenced reproductive policy: genetic testing and the responsible fatherhood movement. The two go hand in hand. Today we can know who the real father is, thanks to DNA testing. This means that society can hold fathers responsible for the children they sire.

And this is exactly what is happening. A recent focus of social policy in general and welfare reform in particular has been responsible fatherhood. Efforts to collect child support from deadbeat dads have increased. So have efforts to bring those fathers within the sphere of their families.

NOBODY is arguing that we should let my friend who impregnated his girlfriend off the hook. If you play, you must pay. But if you pay, you should get some say. If a father is willing to legally commit to supporting and raising the child himself, why should a woman be able to end a pregnancy that she knew was a possibility of consensual sex? Why couldn't I make the same claim - that I am going to keep the baby regardless of whether she wants it or not?

Well, you might argue that all the man provides is his seed in a moment of pleasure. The real work consists of carrying a child for nine months, with the attendant morning sickness, leg cramps, biological risks and so on.

But how many times have we heard that fatherhood is not about a moment, it is about being there for the lifetime of a child? If we extend that logic, those 40 weeks of pregnancy - as intense as they may be - are merely a small fraction of a lifetime commitment to that child.

The bottom line is that if we want to make fathers relevant, they need rights, too. If a father is willing to legally commit to raising a child with no help from the mother he should be able to obtain an injunction against the abortion of the fetus he helped create.

Putting this into effect would be problematic, of course. But while such issues may be complicated, so is family life. Better to deal with the metaphorical dirty diapers than to pursue an inconsistent policy toward fatherhood and an abortion debate that doesn't acknowledge the reality of all actors involved. Otherwise, don't expect anything more of me than a few million sperm.

Dalton Conley, the director of New York University's Center for Advanced Social Science Research, is the author, most recently, of "The Pecking Order: Which Siblings Succeed and Why."

[Big Papa Goat]

The problem with judicial activism like this is of course that it circumvents democratic politics. The beauty of a good democratic system is that no one group representing any one viewpoint can have its values imposed on the rest of society without compromising with other groups representing opposing viewpoints. That way, in a healthy democratic system, no one ever gets really alienated or oppressed, or subjected to government actions entirely against their beliefs or interests. In that sense, judicial activism is a bad thing, since judicial rulings have a tendency to make things a bit black and white. Dissenting opinions by Supreme Court justices, while academically interesting, don't really cause the ultimate decision of a court to be compromised, unless I'm mistaken. At least, thats how things have seem to have gone in Canada since the 1982 Charter of Supreme Court Supremacy. I might be wrong on a few of those points, but what I'm trying to say is that democracy allows for compromise, while judical decisions make things black and white, legal and illegal, right and wrong, and that makes for alienation and oppression, since the 'wrong' party is denied the moral, legal and political standing to redress their situation. Also, their views are for all practical purposes ignored when a decision is made that goes against them.

That being said, issues like abortion, gay marriage, and other such religiously contreversal issues sometimes don't lend themselves very well to compromise or democratic decision making. There are a few reasons for this, one of which is views on such issues are usually polarized, limiting the capacity for compromise, and making the competition between groups representing different views a little bit intense for peaceful democratic discourse. Another big problem is that issues based on religion or othersuch serious matters often involve disputes of foundational, high-order values. For instance, although it might be argued that this is not always the form of the abortion debate, a person who believes that God is telling him that abortion is wrong will have no common ground in a debate with a person who has no such belief in God, and holds individual liberty (say) as their highest value. Compromise is difficult in such a debate since neither party can be expected to seriously tolerate the other parites values being put into practice in any way, since the polarization between the values of the parties involved prevent make the debate represent a zero-sum conflict. Either party would have to compromise their own values to allow for the other parties values to be represented in the government.

Basically, you didn't really need to read the above bullshit, since it's basically just giving some nominally coherent theoretical reasons for what everyone already knows, people that disagree strongly can't get along. What makes that important for this issue is that while the undemocratic nature of judicial activism has its problems, democratic politics are not ideal for soving such issues either.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Originally Posted by Big Papa Goat

The problem with judicial activism like this is of course that it circumvents democratic politics. The beauty of a good democratic system is that no one group representing any one viewpoint can have its values imposed on the rest of society without compromising with other groups representing opposing viewpoints. That way, in a healthy democratic system, no one ever gets really alienated or oppressed, or subjected to government actions entirely against their beliefs or interests. In that sense, judicial activism is a bad thing, since judicial rulings have a tendency to make things a bit black and white.

I'm not a huge fan of even the phrase judicial activism. You mean judges buck the will of the masses in order to act on precedent and rational conclusions!?? Who would dare think up such a thin!? I mean, aside from James Madison, et. al....


Anyway, there's one point here Goat (despite you calling it "bullshit") that I think you missed. Will is going after "activist judges" here, but he's also questioning the constitutionality of Roe vs. Wade. Will, being an anal strict constructionist, questions not only its democratic tenents, but its legal ones as well (hence why he brought up the 14th Amendment, etc.). It's an interesting point I think, and it's actually one held by folks across the spectrum. The New Republic, for example, holds an editorial position of being pro-choice and anti-Roe.

That being said, issues like abortion, gay marriage, and other such religiously contreversal issues sometimes don't lend themselves very well to compromise or democratic decision making. There are a few reasons for this, one of which is views on such issues are usually polarized, limiting the capacity for compromise, and making the competition between groups representing different views a little bit intense for peaceful democratic discourse.

You couldn't get any more polarized on this issue than we already are in America. It's interesting, because I think what we've seen with judicial "fiat" on the matter is sort of the opposite of what you just said.

Whenever polled, most Americans tend to have a very logical and moderate opinion on abortion. They want it legal, they want it available, but they want it limited and not necessarily on demand. This is a far cry from the two screaming children you have on both sides of the issue today. One reason may be that because the issue was removed from the state legislative bodies and placed in the courts, it took the debate away from deliberative bodies, and handed it to the monied interest groups. You don't have a republican debate/discussion going on, you have two sides screaming at each other, trying to scare the other side into not acting. This isn't functional democracy, and I wonder whether or not it would be worse if Roe vs. Wade were overturned.

Another big problem is that issues based on religion or othersuch serious matters often involve disputes of foundational, high-order values. For instance, although it might be argued that this is not always the form of the abortion debate, a person who believes that God is telling him that abortion is wrong will have no common ground in a debate with a person who has no such belief in God, and holds individual liberty (say) as their highest value.

But as Will points out in the article, you don't need to be a Christian extremist to oppose abortion. After all, there are restrictions on liberty. Mill believed that whatever doesn't hurt or hinder someone else is fair game, but that isn't stated really anywhere in the Constitution. In a sense, thanks to the 10th Amendment, you could argue the states have more of an entitlement to rule on abortion than the federal government does.

Compromise is difficult in such a debate since neither party can be expected to seriously tolerate the other parites values being put into practice in any way, since the polarization between the values of the parties involved prevent make the debate represent a zero-sum conflict. Either party would have to compromise their own values to allow for the other parties values to be represented in the government.

You're right, however there's a difference between a partisan judge and a partisan legislator. The latter has to answer to a voting public, which can have a surprising effect on how politicans act and speak. Judges (thankfully!) are rarely held to the same standard.

I think if abortion were a state issue (much like gay marriage is), you would see shades of variation from state to state. I'm sure you can name the states that would be less and more supportive of it.

people that disagree strongly can't get along. What makes that important for this issue is that while the undemocratic nature of judicial activism has its problems, democratic politics are not ideal for soving such issues either.

But the counter to that is that this form of judicial activism may not be the masses versus the discretion of several really smart judges, but rather the masses versus some really smart judges who are in the pocket of either pro-life or pro-choice interest groups.

Think about it, when we nominate judges here, it's rarely about qualifications, and always about where they stand on abortion. One polarizing issue has almost entirely framed the way our system works, because it allows two powerful factions to scream really loud if they don't get the "right" kind of judges on the bench.

And again as Will points out, they sort of primed the pump on the issue, so to speak. Fully realizing that our Supreme Court is built to rule on precedent rather than policy, the Left in the 1970's pushed certain cases in order to get it to the Court and get a ruling in their favor. It almost highlights a flaw in our system.

Anyway, I was actually more intrigued by the second article. Whereas Will is arguing over law, the second article is raising a point from the male perspective on the matter, which has been all but squelched in this argument by groups like NARAL and NOW.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

This Op/Ed in the Boston Globe pretty much reiterates what I've been saying.

I think Jacoby makes a particularly good argument towards the end, where he points out how overturning Roe vs. Wade would actually turn the Christian Right on the Republicans, since these GOP legislators wouldn't be able to say ineffectual things and then vote otherwise.

I also think it would galvanize closet pro-choice Republicans. Thanks to Roe, these folks never really have to compromise their values on the issue, because the practice has been safely cofified by the Court. This would change that, and would also potentially revive a significant Liberal wing to the Republican Party, IMO.


http://www.boston.com/news/globe/edi...tion_politics/

JEFF JACOBY
Abortion politics

By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | December 4, 2005

THE ABORTION case taken up by the Supreme Court last week didn't involve a challenge to Roe v. Wade, and there is no chance the court will use it to topple that 1973 landmark. Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood dealt only with a narrow regulation -- a New Hampshire law requiring that a parent be notified before an abortion is performed on a minor.

Nonetheless, the air was heavy with the usual absolutism. On the day of the oral argument, protesters outside the Supreme Court building carried signs reading ''Keep Abortion Legal" and ''Stop Abortion Now" -- the slogans, respectively, of those who want no retrenchment from the virtually unlimited right to abortion that Roe created, and of those who want virtually all abortions banned.

But those aren't the only two choices, and they aren't the choices most Americans would make. As poll after poll makes clear, the public is ambivalent on this subject. Most people believe that abortion is a great evil, but most also believe that abortion decisions should be left to a woman and her doctor. At the same time, a large majority also supports regulating abortion in specific ways -- by mandating waiting periods or preabortion counseling, for example, or by requiring parental notice or consent for a minor's abortion.

No rational abortion policy can encompass all those stands. But then, Americans are out of practice at setting abortion policy. They haven't been allowed to do so for more than 30 years, ever since Roe struck down the laws of 50 states, took the issue away from voters and lawmakers, and carved a practically unlimited ''right to choose" into constitutional granite.

Far from settling the matter once and for all, Roe turned abortion into perhaps the most unsettled subject in American politics. It certainly polarized the two parties. Republicans became officially and explicitly antiabortion, writing language into their national platform that proclaims the inviolable right to life of the unborn and endorsing a constitutional amendment that would ban nearly all abortions. Democrats became adamant defenders of abortion on demand, with their platform taking a hard line against any restrictions at all: ''We stand proudly for a woman's right to choose . . . regardless of her ability to pay."

Neither position would seem to make much sense politically, since neither reflects the views of the ambivalent American mainstream. But by yanking abortion from the democratic process, Roe freed each party to cater to its extremes. Most of us now take this political distortion for granted: The Democrats insist that Roe is sacred and mustn't be tampered with, while the GOP blasts it as rampant judicial activism, ripe for overturning.

But do the Democrats really do themselves any favors when they defend Roe so ardently?

Look again at the hardline positions each party is formally committed to. Republicans supposedly favor a near-total ban on abortion -- something most voters would never support. As long as Roe remains in force, the GOP's stand is cost-free. Republicans can talk all they like about stopping abortion, safe in the knowledge that they will never have to vote for legislation actually banning it. All they can do about abortion now is try to restrict it at the margins -- by halting partial-birth abortions, for example, or requiring parental notice. In other words, by promoting the kind of reasonable regulations that most voters do support.

Not so for the Democrats. Their extreme stance -- unrestricted abortion on demand, basically -- does indeed extract a political price, since it forces them to oppose those same popular regulations. The public overwhelmingly favors a ban on partial-birth abortions, but Democratic lawmakers, in their post-Roe intransigence, vote against it. Americans support parental notice; Democrats oppose it. Over the years, the result has been a prolife migration to the Republican Party, which is far stronger today than it was before Roe was decided. ''The biggest paradox," commented The Wall Street Journal recently, is ''that Roe has been a disaster for the Democratic Party that has made its defense a core principle." (The Journal's James Taranto has detailed this disaster in an article titled ''The Roe effect.")

By the same token, an overruling of Roe would be a boon to the Democrats. Abortion would return to the state legislatures, where Democrats, free at last of the Roe albatross, would no longer be compelled to stake out the most extreme prochoice positions. Instead it is Republicans who would be squirming, prodded by their prolife base to make abortion illegal, but knowing that any such attempt would be politically catastrophic.

Of course the case for or against Roe -- and for or against abortion -- is not, fundamentally, about politics. But to the extent that the Democrats' passion for Roe v. Wade is political, they might want to rethink their premises.

Jeff Jacoby's e-mail address is jacoby@globe.com.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

http://newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news...48/index1.html

The Abortion Capital of America

As the pro-life movement intensifies nationwide, New York contemplates its history and future as a refuge.

By Ryan Lizza


In 1970, New York passed the most permissive abortion law in America, one that defined the state as the country’s abortion refuge. Overnight, a new industry materialized in New York City, promoting itself to women across the country. The pitches were often blunt. A newspaper ad from the time inquired, “Want to be un-pregnant?”

Thirty-five years later, New York has the highest abortion rate in America. In 2000, the last year for which good data are available, 39 out of every 1,000 women in the state ended a pregnancy, for a total of 164,000 abortions that year. In America, one of every ten abortions occurs in New York, and in New York, seven of every ten abortions are performed in New York City. In absolute terms, there are more abortions performed on minors, more repeat abortions, and more late abortions (over 21 weeks) in New York City than anywhere else in the country. In parts of the city, the ratio of abortions to births is one to one.



The New Underground Railroad
The migration has already begun for a procession of women hoping to get second-trimester abortions. When liberal-minded volunteers play host, female solidarity and class anxiety collide.


Over the past twenty years, while legislatures have circumscribed access to abortion in state after state, especially for the poor and the young, New York has remained an island of unrestricted abortion rights. Medicaid pays for abortions for low-income women. Teenagers don’t need a parent’s permission to have an abortion. There are no 24-hour waiting periods. Thirty-four major clinics in New York City each perform more than 400 abortions per year.

New York becomes more pro-choice every year. After years of electoral free fall, the New York Right to Life Party failed to win enough votes in 2002 to stay on the ballot. The party doesn’t even have a Website anymore. The New York Right to Life Committee, which founded the national anti-abortion movement in 1967, hasn’t had a legislative victory in years. No pro-life candidate can win statewide office in New York. Ambitious Republicans climbing toward the governor’s mansion, like George Pataki, and now John Faso, hastily ditch their pro-life pasts. New York City’s mayor is one of the most pro-choice politicians in the country.

In short, New York is the abortion capital of America.

The United States is slowly turning into two places when it comes to abortion. In one, easy access to the procedure is being eroded by regulations, while conservative legislators dream up new restrictions, waiting periods, and consent laws. In the other, abortion is accessible, inexpensive—often government-subsidized—and safeguarded by powerful interest groups. The Supreme Court set the country down this path in 1992. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the Court retreated from a core principle of Roe v. Wade and upheld several restrictions in a Pennsylvania law called the Abortion Control Act. States, the Court said, could force women to wait 24 hours before having an abortion, and they could require doctors to read “informed consent” scripts to women before an abortion. The Court only struck down a more onerous section of the act that required women to notify their husbands before seeking abortions. The test for any future state regulation, the Court decreed, was whether it constitutes an “undue burden,” defined as a law that places a “substantial obstacle” in the path of a woman seeking an abortion.

The Casey decision inspired a crusade by pro-life lawyers. True, the Court had not overturned Roe, but the right believed Casey was the go-ahead to gut it. One line in Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s dissent stood out as particularly inspiring: “Roe continues to exist, but only in the way a storefront on a western movie set exists: a mere façade to give the illusion of reality.” The new strategy would be to systematically test the boundaries of what the Court meant by “undue burden” and “substantial obstacle.” Pro-life lawyers hatched a series of increasingly clever legal restrictions that have defined the abortion wars for the past decade and a half.

Now we are at another turning point. The Supreme Court will soon decide a case that may allow states to go well beyond current abortion restrictions. Last week, the Court heard arguments in Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood, a challenge to New Hampshire’s parental-consent law and perhaps the most important abortion case since Casey. The New Hampshire law prevents a doctor from performing an abortion on a minor until 48 hours after one of her parents has been notified. Most similar laws have an exception to the waiting period if the minor’s health is at risk, but the only exception in the New Hampshire law is if the girl is about to die. At stake are two issues. One is whether New Hampshire’s law is unconstitutional because it lacks a health exception, a feature of abortion restrictions that the Court has regularly required. The second issue is technical but of greater consequence. Until now, doctors and patients have been able to ask courts to strike down abortion restrictions if some potential harm can be proved. But the new standard requested by New Hampshire, and supported by the Bush administration, is to allow courts to leave potentially unconstitutional abortion laws intact unless it can be proved that application of the law is unconstitutional in every case.


If the Court settles these two issues in favor of New Hampshire, there will be an explosion of red-state abortion regulation far greater than the post-Casey boom. That, more than the imminent reversal of Roe v. Wade, is what’s at stake in the judicial-confirmation battle consuming Washington. The replacement of Sandra Day O’Connor may spell the end of the Court’s meddling with state abortion restrictions. As the famous Casey case made its way up the judicial ladder, there was one federal judge in Pennsylvania who believed that even the extreme spousal-consent provision was constitutional. His name was Samuel Alito.

If Roe were overturned, of course, New York would instantly become an abortion destination for thousands of women who find themselves living in states that voted to outlaw the procedure. This has happened before, and it has had dramatic social and political consequences that we could well see again.

This is now the third period in American history in which New York has become the nation’s abortion capital. In many ways, the story of abortion in the United States is the story of abortion in New York. There were no laws against the procedure until the 1820s. Before that, British common law allowed abortions before “quickening,” or the moment when the fetus first moved. It was in New York in 1828 that America’s first real abortion law was passed. The debate of the day wasn’t driven by religious concerns about when life begins. Instead, as James C. Mohr’s classic history of the subject, Abortion in America, explains, Albany responded to pressure from doctors who were aghast at quacks’ butchering women and scamming them with phony abortifacient potions. The law was really about medical regulation, and, according to Mohr, it went completely unenforced.





At that time, semi-clandestine abortion clinics dotted the city. Inside, women could have a pregnancy terminated or they could purchase “French lunar pills,” “Portuguese female pills,” or other exotic-sounding medicines that would purportedly trigger a miscarriage. The customers were mostly wealthy native-born Protestant women looking to put off their childbearing years or who had decided they’d had enough children.

New York’s nineteenth-century abortionists advertised openly in the leading newspapers of the day, including the Times. “Ladies who desire to avail themselves of Madame Despard’s valuable, certain and safe mode of removing obstructions, suppressions, &c., &c., without the use of medicine, can do so at one interview,” read an 1863 Times ad. Abortion advertising became a hefty source of newspaper revenue. New York’s most famous abortionist, the flamboyant Madame Restell, spent $60,000 a year on such advertising. Over 40 years, she built an abortion empire, with traveling salesmen hawking her pills and franchise clinics in Boston and Philadelphia. Such was her prominence that abortion was referred to in New York as “Restellism.” The practice became very common. A study from 1868 found that one in five New York City pregnancies ended in abortion.

But Restellism produced a backlash. In the 1870s, the Times stopped accepting abortion ads and launched a crusade against the industry. “There is a systematic business in wholesale murder conducted by men and women in this City, that is seldom detected, rarely interfered with, and scarcely ever punished by law,” read a front-page report from 1871 headlined THE EVIL OF THE AGE. Laws against abortion advertising were passed, and abortionists were prosecuted. Madame Restell, who had already been through several trials, was arrested again in 1878 for selling her abortifacient concoctions. On the eve of a court appearance, she dressed herself in diamonds, slipped into her marble bathtub, and slit her throat. By 1881, New York had passed some of the most severe abortion bans, laws that were imitated throughout the nation.

New York’s abortion laws remained unchanged and virtually unchallenged until the stirrings of the abortion-rights movement in the late sixties. New York was home to the earliest abortion-rights group in the country, the Association for the Study of Abortion, and the idea for basing the legalization of abortion on the right to privacy was first proposed, almost on a lark, in a paper by a law student at NYU.

In 1967, the Reverend Howard R. Moody, a Texas-born Baptist minister of Judson Memorial Church on Washington Square Park, began consulting friends about how to help women get safe abortions. He organized 21 ministers and rabbis and built an underground network of reliable doctors; in May 1967, a front-page piece in the Times announced the creation of Moody’s Clergy Consultation Service on Abortion. Clergymen worked weeklong shifts taking calls from women across the country.

As the New York State Legislature moved haltingly toward repealing the state’s laws, the city’s abortion underground began making news. In 1969, police raided the 30th floor of the New York Hilton and arrested three people performing abortions. Another raid in a luxury high-rise in Riverdale broke up “an abortion ring” servicing wealthy women from around the country, many of whom were referred there by the clergymen.


When the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws (NARAL) was founded in 1969, it made New York its first target. Several states had already passed reform laws, but for the most part they allowed abortions only if the health of the mother was at risk. The push for repeal in New York was built in stages, first by the referral system, then by pro-abortion activists converting Democratic clubs in New York City to the cause, precinct by precinct. The turning point in the debate came when several Long Island legislators signed on to the bill. The Times also joined the cause, printing a steady beat of pro-repeal editorials.



Regulating abortion is like playing whack-a-mole. Every time a state tightens its laws, abortions rise somewhere else.



The crucial roll call came in the New York Assembly on April 9, 1970. The bill appeared to be doomed by a single vote. As the vote neared completion, a trembling, bespectacled man in a black suit rose to his feet, tears welling in his eyes. “I realize, Mr. Speaker,” Assemblyman George M. Michaels said, “that I am terminating my political career, but I cannot in good conscience sit here and allow my vote to be the one that defeats this bill. I ask that my vote be changed from ‘no’ to ‘yes.’ ” Governor Nelson Rockefeller signed the bill into law, making New York the only state in the country with abortion on demand for all comers.





In the two and a half years between July 1970, when New York’s new abortion law took effect, and January 1973, when the Supreme Court’s Roe decision legalized the procedure everywhere, 350,000 women came to New York for an abortion, including 19,000 Floridians; 30,000 each from Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois; and thousands more from Canada. By the end of 1971, 61 percent of the abortions performed in New York were on out-of-state residents.

Commercialization crept back into the abortion business. The clergymen, who had never taken any money for their work, were pushed aside by heavily advertised commercial referral services, which targeted out-of-state women, charging them about $100 to find a New York provider. New York’s abortion monopoly produced a booming new industry. One service even flew an airplane banner ad over Miami Beach.

The statistics from the time show that one of the benefits of legalization in New York was that New York women were having abortions earlier. The Alan Guttmacher Institute reported that no more than 10 percent of the city’s residents in 1972 had abortions after twelve weeks of pregnancy. For women traveling to New York City from non-border states, the rate of abortions after twelve weeks was 23 percent because of the time it took to find a provider and arrange travel and lodging in the city, especially difficult for young women who had barely ever left their own state.

The other obvious lesson from the seventies is that women with resources almost always have access to abortion. For those who couldn’t afford a trip to New York, coat hangers and knitting needles, the ghastly symbols of the early abortion-rights movement, remained a fact of life.

The abortion capital of New York is at the corner of Bleecker and Mott. That’s the home of Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger Center, the largest abortion provider in New York. Doctors at this one clinic perform some 11,000 abortions per year. “I’m sure we provide a good chunk of the abortions in the U.S.,” says Dr. Maureen Paul, the chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood New York. In fact, the Margaret Sanger Center provides about one in every ten abortions in New York and about one in every thousand abortions in the United States.

The clinic tells a lot about how the abortion debate has changed. As the largest brand name in the reproductive-health- services business, Planned Parenthood has historically been a magnet for protesters. But the streets outside the Sanger Center are usually quiet. Across the country, violence against providers has subsided after cresting in the nineties. “I was in Planned Parenthood in Massachusetts when we used to have huge blockades and people Kryptonite-locking themselves to operating tables,” says Dr. Paul. “We still see some of that, but there has been a shift. The antis don’t spend as much time in places that they are not welcome.”

Medical abortions, those produced by the abortifacient mifepristone, once known as RU-486, have been available in New York City since 1997, three years before formal FDA approval. But the drug is not widely prescribed here. It is catching on faster in places where abortion is more taboo; Texas, Missouri, and South Carolina all have higher rates of use than New York City. Utah, the most conservative state in America, has the highest percentage of medical abortions, 24.1. Down on Bleecker Street, Dr. Paul says she’s seeing a growing black market in misoprostol, the drug that is taken with mifepristone to induce abortion but which is cheaper and easier to obtain than its sibling. The drug is popular with some immigrants from Latin America, where it is often used in places where abortion is illegal. “When you just use misoprostol alone, the success rate is very low,” says Dr. Paul.


One-third of the Margaret Sanger Center’s patients rely on Medicaid for their health care. In New York, Medicaid treats abortion no differently than any other health issue. But in 29 states, the program is barred from funding abortions in most cases except rape, incest, or to save a woman’s life. The prohibition is the most effective of all state laws in preventing abortions. “One-third of women who are covered by Medicaid and would have Medicaid abortions continue their pregnancies when Medicaid funding isn’t available,” says Stanley Henshaw of the Alan Guttmacher Institute. In 2003, Medicaid paid for 43 percent of abortions in New York City. Every year, pro-life legislators try to ban it, and every year they fail. “That’s one of the reasons we have one of the highest abortion rates in the country,” says Christina Fadden Fitch, the legislative director of the New York State Right to Life Committee. “It’s really sad. It’s like throwing abortion at the poor.”

Over the last year, Dr. Paul has noticed a singular trend: “We are providing more out-of-state abortions.” The number of women coming to Planned Parenthood’s New York City clinics has risen 21 percent.

The few existing studies on states that have passed abortion restrictions confirm the obvious: Women who want abortions leave the state to have them. Mandatory-delay laws, now on the books in 24 states, require a woman to wait usually 24 hours before getting an abortion. The versions that are the most effective in stopping abortions require women to make two trips to the provider, an obstacle for some who have to travel long distances, take days off work, or arrange day care. The most comprehensive study of these two-trip laws, a 1997 Journal of the American Medical Association paper on Mississippi’s experience, showed that three things happened in the state after the law went into effect. Total abortions went down by 12 percent. The percentage of late abortions (after twelve weeks) went up by 40 percent. And the percentage of Mississippians going out of state for abortions also went up by 40 percent. “For an economist, those are really strong behavioral responses to the law,” says Ted Joyce, the paper’s lead author.





The most common state restrictions have been the parental-consent or notification laws. Along with the delay laws, these cause women to travel out of state. Thirty-five states have a version of the law on the books. Nine other states have had their versions enjoined by a court, including New Hampshire, the state that is the subject of the Ayotte case. But as long as abortion is available somewhere, these laws have limited effect. “When Massachusetts imposed a consent statute, abortion rates fell a lot, 43 percent among minors,” says Joyce. “Yet if you measured abortion rates by state of residence, there was no change. Kids just poured across the border.”

Regulating abortion in the United States is like playing whack-a-mole. Every time a state tightens its laws, abortions rise somewhere else. If Roe is overturned, Cristina Page, author of the forthcoming How the Pro-Choice Movement Saved America, estimates that as many as 30 states would likely move toward criminalization, vastly increasing the traffic of abortion seekers into New York, just like in the early 1970s.

But then what? The lesson from the 1870s and the 1970s is that the more the city becomes a place of last resort for abortion, the more uncomfortable New Yorkers become with the procedure. Restellism produced bans nationwide. After the 1970 law was passed, several abortion-rights legislators in New York were drummed out of politics, including the tearful George M. Michaels. Later, the Assembly actually repealed the new abortion law, though it was vetoed by Rockefeller. When Roe was decided in 1973, it was like a giant release valve. The city was no longer inundated with planeloads of women dropping into town for the procedure. The end of New York’s monopoly brought the end of the more unsavory operators and practices that marred the early seventies.



Despite their overwhelming support for abortion rights, New Yorkers, like Americans generally, start to get queasy when confronted with the best weapons in the pro-life arsenal.



Despite the state’s overwhelming support for legalization, New Yorkers, like Americans generally, start to get queasy when confronted with the best weapons in the pro-life movement’s arsenal: graphic descriptions of rarely used late-term-abortion methods, and the fact that thousands of New York women return each year to clinics for a third or fourth abortion. When we nod our heads at Bill Clinton’s famous formulation that abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” or Hillary Clinton’s more recent proclamation that abortion is “a sad, even tragic choice,” we admit some discomfort with the procedure.

Among New York’s pro-choice leaders, reaction to this message is divided. Political groups like NARAL say they understand the need for conceding to public opinion. But to providers, the Clintonian reframing of the issue capitulates to pro-lifers. “Hillary can say anything she wants about whether an abortion is a tragedy,” says Dr. Paul. “What I know when I perform an abortion for a patient is that the overwhelming feeling is one of relief. Because the abortion has solved a huge problem in her life, whether it’s because she couldn’t afford another child, couldn’t afford to be a good mother to another child, or doesn’t have the money to raise a child.” She becomes increasingly passionate as she speaks. “Every time I do an abortion I save a woman’s life. If you want to call that a tragedy”—she pauses and exhales a sharp sigh—“I don’t consider it a tragedy, I’m sorry.” Dr. Anne Davis of Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center thinks that even as New York retains its status as a restrictionless oasis, the larger war over normalizing abortion is being lost. “We would like to keep abortion part of regular medical care,” she says. “Our view is, abortion is nothing special. Abortion is right up there with having a baby or getting the care for whatever other medical needs you have.”


Naturally, Hillary Clinton has spent a lot more time poll-testing her position than have these doctors in the trenches of health care. State abortion regulations have marched across the American landscape because they strike the sweet spot of the abortion debate, that place between criminalization and abortion-on-demand that commands broad majorities. These state laws are very often only superficially reasonable, especially if one believes, as the Supreme Court said in Roe, that abortion is a “fundamental right.” But their superficiality is their genius. Consciences are pricked by “partial birth” abortion. Parents become mystified that their teenager can have an abortion without their permission. Requiring a woman to cool her heels for 24 hours before an abortion seems like a common-sense precaution. New York has remained a fortress in the face of these laws. But in the next stage of the abortion wars, when laws tighten and women begin seeking refuge in blue metropolises, New York will be more fully confronted with its status as America’s abortion capital, and New Yorkers will be confronted with how culturally distant they have become from many other Americans. It is by no means certain how they will react.

[MockMc]

Aren't we supposed to post our own thoughts, rather than those of journalists?

Me on abortion:

Abortion is a tricky subject. First of all, because it's very hard to pour respect for human life into laws - yet the public expects moral policies from the government. This is the cause for many repressive laws. You can't make a law that forces people to be good parents, to only use abortion in cases when it's legitimised but to have respect for human life in other cases, or to use drugs respectively. You can make laws that give some semblance of moral policy.

Secondly, because so many people are idiots. Let's not joke around here - everybody has an opinion about abortion, very little people have thought about it. And why would they? They can just shout a nice little slogan, can't they? And if more people shout a slogan - if a thousand people all say the same thing, then no voice of reason can defeat them. Strength in numbers. Because so many people are idiots, the idiot voice grows in strength all the time. It is of course this idiot voice that makes politicians start the idiotic laws as well. Cater to the idiots, because you know they won't be taking their responsabilities and actually give their children a decent education themselves, oh no.

Thirdly, because nobody really knows what goes on with abortion. Baby dies, sure. But was it a human life already? It was going to be one eventually, but is it a crime to kill something that doesn't live yet?

I'm in favor of abortion. Not because I think it has benefits to the parents, not for the sake of society, not for the baby, and how it won't get a good education if it's parents hate it. But just because IT IS EVERY HUMAN BEINGS DAMN RIGHT TO DO WHAT THEY WANT AS LONG AS IT DOESN'T HARM OTHER PEOPLES RIGHTS TO DO SO.

A foetus gets killed. So what? Mind y our own business. It's not your foetus. And worse crimes happen in the world that nobody, ever, pays attention to.

Children are raped in congo. Three year olds are being prostituted in the phillipines. Women are abused by their husbands and stay living in those conditions because they're afraid and somehow think they don't deserve a better life.

What's a damn foetus, that hasn't even a clue that it's alive. Just smoke the fucker. Let's solve some real problems first.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Originally Posted by MockMc

Aren't we supposed to post our own thoughts, rather than those of journalists?

No, we're supposed to actually read what people post before we comment. That's usually pretty helpful.

You can't make a law that forces people to be good parents, to only use abortion in cases when it's legitimised but to have respect for human life in other cases, or to use drugs respectively. You can make laws that give some semblance of moral policy.

We do have laws that at least set bear standards for parenting. The government doesn't tell people what being a great parent is, but it does tell you what you absolutely can't do.

You can't get a woman pregnant and then dump parenting solely on her lap. You can't beat your children to the point that it exceeds harmless discipline. You can't starve your children, and generally, you can't deny them basic public education until they are presumably conscious enough to make that decision on their own.

It's not crazy to think that the representatives of a state could legislate to minimalize what is essentially a destructive and risky procedure. States have the power to do it when it comes to something trivial like cosmetic surgery, why can't they have the power to set a bear standard for what is acceptable abortion policy?

Cater to the idiots, because you know they won't be taking their responsabilities and actually give their children a decent education themselves, oh no.

I'm not entirely sure what this means, but if I'm interpreting you correctly, it sounds like the same old argument about abortion and childcare in this country. I mean, if a child is going to be poor, uneducated, and mistreated, why should they live, right? Aborting him or her would really be doing them a favor, right?

This eugenics-light kind of argument isn't too far from what led Margaret Sanger to become such a strong abortion advocate. So rather than the state deciding who is worthy to live, we have parents (along with abortion doctors and pp clinics) deciding who deserves to die. Sounds fair to me.

Thirdly, because nobody really knows what goes on with abortion. Baby dies, sure. But was it a human life already? It was going to be one eventually, but is it a crime to kill something that doesn't live yet?

Well sure, this is the main debate right here. But again, you don't need to approach abortion from a Bible-thumping perspective in order to be skeptical about abortion. States decide all of the time what is appropriate and inappropriate for us to do to ourselves. We have liberty, we have freedom, but we're not free to exceed what the general public as a whole may perceive as too vulgar, too extreme, and too risky.

Why is polygamy illegal? It doesn't necesarily hurt anybody, and it's people doing what they choose with their bodies, no? The reason it's illegal is because society looks down upon it, and thus public push made it illegal. People don't care what you do with however many people in your own closed bedroom, but they don't want the state to acknowledge and accept your behavior. People didn't want to sign off on the practice by defacto.

I'm in favor of abortion. Not because I think it has benefits to the parents, not for the sake of society, not for the baby, and how it won't get a good education if it's parents hate it. But just because IT IS EVERY HUMAN BEINGS DAMN RIGHT TO DO WHAT THEY WANT AS LONG AS IT DOESN'T HARM OTHER PEOPLES RIGHTS TO DO SO.

Where is this stated in the U.S. Constitution? Could you point it out to me?

A foetus gets killed. So what? Mind y our own business. It's not your foetus. And worse crimes happen in the world that nobody, ever, pays attention to.

Most people are capable of multi-tasking. Ya know, I can have problems with abortion, and still work to improve the education system in my city. I hear legislators do this every day. It's pretty impressive, no?

And btw, that foetus wouldn't be a foetus without my assistance in the matter. So actually, a part of it, without question, is "mine."

Children are raped in congo. Three year olds are being prostituted in the phillipines. Women are abused by their husbands and stay living in those conditions because they're afraid and somehow think they don't deserve a better life.

And?

What's a damn foetus, that hasn't even a clue that it's alive. Just smoke the fucker. Let's solve some real problems first.

Hopefully getting a clue is somewhere on that list of yours.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4520576.stm

Abortion 'leaves mental legacy'

An abortion can cause five years of mental anguish, anxiety, guilt and even shame, a BMC Medicine study suggests.

University of Oslo researchers compared 40 women who had had a miscarriage with 80 who chose to have an abortion.

Miscarriage was associated with more mental distress in the six months after the loss of a baby - but abortion had a much longer lasting negative effect.

Pro-choice campaigners said there was no evidence abortion directly caused psychological trauma.


The researchers said their work underlined the importance of giving women information about the psychological effects of losing a baby - either through miscarriage or abortion.

The Oslo team found that, after 10 days, 47.5% of women who had miscarried suffered from some degree of mental distress compared with 30% of the abortion group.

The proportion of women who had a miscarriage suffering distress decreased during the study period, to 22.5% at six months and to just 2.6% at two years and five years.

But among the abortion group 25.7% were still experiencing distress after six months, and 20% at five years.

The researchers also said that women who had an abortion had to make an effort to avoid thinking about the event.

Complex response

The researchers, led by Anne Nordal Broen, said the responses of the women in the miscarriage group were similar to those expected after a traumatic life event.

However, the abortion group had more complex responses.

Richard Warren, from the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said: "It has always been considered, and this study also shows, that the decision to terminate may bring with it long-standing feelings of anxiety and guilt.

"While most women are able to manage and cope with these feelings, when necessary, the need for ongoing support and counselling should be recognised and appropriate help given."

Anna Pringle, from the anti-abortion charity Life, said: "This confirms years of experience with women who come to us for counselling after abortion.

"The emotional suffering can be massive."

Thoughtful decision

However, a spokeswoman for the British Pregnancy Advisory Service - the UK's leading provider of abortion services - said most women weighed up the consequences fully before opting for an abortion.

"We don't see that many women for post-abortion counselling.

"We offer that service but women very rarely come back because they are able to cope with it by themselves."

A spokeswoman for the Family Planning Association, said: "There is no evidence to suggest that abortion directly causes psychological trauma.

"Women can experience mixed feelings after an abortion such as relief or sadness.

"These are natural reactions and few women experience long-term problems."

[ziggytrix]

Originally Posted by KevinTheOmnivore

We do have laws that at least set bear standards for parenting.

aawwwwww!

Pro-choice campaigners said there was no evidence abortion directly caused psychological trauma.

Well, in the event the woman changes her mind after the abortion, it's gonna cause stress. If, and I realize this is a bad comparison, but I don't have a womb, so BEAR with me... IF I had an infection in my arm, and the doctors said, "We can amputate or treat. Amputation will be 100% effective at preventing spread of this infection, but treatment will have a 20% chance of death." Well, 5 years later, you can bet I'm gonna wonder if I might still be living with a whole arm if I elected for amputation, and I wouldn't even have the stigma of being called a whore-murderer-slut to worsen any mental distress I was feeling.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Bear standards are the best kind.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

IF I had an infection in my arm, and the doctors said, "We can amputate or treat. Amputation will be 100% effective at preventing spread of this infection, but treatment will have a 20% chance of death." Well, 5 years later, you can bet I'm gonna wonder if I might still be living with a whole arm if I elected for amputation, and I wouldn't even have the stigma of being called a whore-murderer-slut to worsen any mental distress I was feeling.

I'll call you slut if it makes you feel better.

You're right, but I think that example in itself outlines the problem. You losing your arm is tragic, because although it was deemed necessary (even though I could extend this comparison to make it fit abortion....why were you constantly injected that virus in to your arm if you didn't want to get it?) for you to live, you still had to stop and think about how much this would change your life.

Do you think that applies all of the time with abortion? Do you think it's always presented that way to women? I guess my question is do we as a society take the procedure, and in my opinion at least a potential life, very seriously....? If so, why does PP fight alternative counseling prior to abortions?

[ziggytrix]

It's more serious than having your arm cut off, in my opinion. But like I said, I don't have a, uh, womb in this fight.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

But you do, and that's my other point.

God help us, but you may be a father some day. As a society, we expect that you will take at least a financial interest in your child. It would be great if you actually stuck around, nurtured the child, taught him/her, and raised him/her to be a swell person.

How can society say to men that if you get a woman pregnant you damn well better take it seriously, and you also better understand your role in that relationship....unless of course it's while the woman is pregnant, in which case there's always that 9 month reconsideration period to think about your behavior in the matter.

We only start asking things of fathers after the fact. It seems to be a very alley cat approach to things, IMO.

[ziggytrix]

First week after the EPT reads "oh shit" for some girl, do I have a right to say that she has to spend the next eight and a half months bringing my child into the world?

I'm not so sure about that.

At any rate, it's a situation I'd rather avoid by driving with my brain instead of my glands, but sometimes things don't work out like you plan, so I don't hold that against anyone.

[derrida]

[quote="KevinTheOmnivore"]

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

If so, why does PP fight alternative counseling prior to abortions?

Do you pull shit like this out of your ass on a regular basis?

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Maybe you'd like to read this article by the president of PP's NYC chapter. She calls mandated anti-abortion counseling an "undue burden on women seeking an abortion."

NYC, btw, has become the abortion capital of America. So clearly, counseling hasn't been much of a burden there.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

First week after the EPT reads "oh shit" for some girl, do I have a right to say that she has to spend the next eight and a half months bringing my child into the world?

If all that thing she's carrying is an eight and a half month burden, then i guess you're right.

At any rate, it's a situation I'd rather avoid by driving with my brain instead of my glands, but sometimes things don't work out like you plan, so I don't hold that against anyone.

But things can be planned pretty well. You know that if you have sex, even if you use a condom, shit can happen. You roll the dice every time. I think we need to start thinking about these things before the whoopy, and stop thinking about it before that "oh shit!" EPT moment.

This goes beyond pregnancy and abortion, of course. This applies to STDs and shitty diseases like HIV as well. But that would require partners that transcend simply sexual partners, wouldn't it?

EDIT: And btw, I'm not pushing abstinence on anybody, nor am i trying to paint such a bleak picture. I think condoms, pills, sex education, have all contributed to safer relationships, less teen pregnancies, etc. This is a good thing.

[derrida]

I think there is a critical distinction between voluntary and mandatory counseling, don't you?

[KevinTheOmnivore]

If I need a board certified surgeon to approve me getting breast implants, and if I can't even get the silicone kind that would make my breasts look extra special due to silly laws, why would it be wrong to mandate counseling for a pregnant woman who wants an abortion? That doesn't mean she doesn't get it, but why should we work to make abortion like a McDonald's drive-thru window?

[ziggytrix]

That McDonald's remark is a slippery slope arguement and you know it, Kev.

Mandate counseling, sure. Mandate anti-abortion counseling? No.

The goal shouldn't be to tell her, YOU ARE DEFYING OUR WILL IF YOU HAVE AN ABORTION. She should be made to know her real alternatives, but with the safe/morally acceptable timeframe for an abortion being as gray as it is, she should not be forced to undergo months of therapy if she specifically declines it, especially if no legitimate party (parent/parter/whatever) is contesting her decision.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

A slippery slope towards what? I think I've been pretty open about abortion being harder rather than easier. I think everybody on both sides has said that it's a bad thing, whether necessary or not. I think it should be treated that way. :/

And I think you're right on the counseling part. I doubt proponents of the counseling (with perhaps some Christian-Right exceptions) call it "anti-abortion" counseling. That was the language used by the PP lady, who of course has her own agenda, too.

[ziggytrix]

A slippery slope toward the "walk-in pregnant, walk-out unpregnant" utopian dream foisted by the people who make derida's sig.

I doubt even the PP lady thinks it needs to be as easy and casual as a drive-thru at McD's.

Heh, PP lady...

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

I doubt even the PP lady thinks it needs to be as easy and casual as a drive-thru at McD's.

I'm sure you're right, and of course PP does more than simply provide on-demand abortions. I think they do a lot of good, actually.

I just think they also cultivate the argument that men should be a secondary consideration in all of this stuff, which would seem contrary to their name.

[KevinTheOmnivore]

Originally Posted by ziggytrix

A slippery slope toward the "walk-in pregnant, walk-out unpregnant" utopian dream foisted by the people who make derida's sig.

"This is far from the truth. Women as the goddess incarnate in all her forms and in particular in the shape of the hag, shrew, or fury who devours life in her gaping mouth with her sharp fangs, has sovereign power over issues of life and death. Let us not forget that when she decides her children are fated to die, so be it!"
-- Church of Euthanasia

I see what you mean.