news you can use

JUDGE CORRECT TO UPHOLD RIGHT TO ABORTION



It is a woman's individual rights--to her life, to her liberty, and to the pursuit of her happiness--that sanctions her right to have an abortion.



By Glenn Woiceshyn



U.S. District Judge Richard Casey of Manhattan was right to declare the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act--signed last year by President Bush--unconstitutional. Such a ban constitutes a grave threat to women's health and a violation of their rights and should be struck down.



When abortion was illegal in America, many women died or suffered serious medical problems from either self-induced or illegal back-alley abortions. Women streamed into emergency rooms with punctured wombs, massive bleeding, and rampant infections.



Thanks to the Roe v. Wade (1973) Supreme Court decision, women today have access to safe abortions by medically trained professionals under sanitary conditions. But anti-abortionists are changing all this.



A law banning partial-birth abortions establishes a precedent for criminalizing other types of abortion--as America slides down the dangerous slope to back-alley abortions. Those who are truly pro-life must grasp the ominous implications of and underlying motives behind such anti-abortion laws--before it's too late.



Partial-birth abortion, also known as intact dilation and extraction (D&X), is designed primarily to be used in the case of 5- and 6-month-old fetuses that are dying, malformed, or threatening the woman's health or life. The procedure involves pulling the fetus from the womb, except for the head which is too large to pass without injuring the woman. The head is then collapsed to allow removal. This procedure is designed for the maximum protection of the woman. The late-term alternative to D&X, one that doesn't require partial removal, involves dismembering the fetus in the womb before extraction-a much riskier procedure.



Anti-abortionists coined the term partial birth to suggest that the partially removed fetus is no longer unborn, and, therefore, Roe vs. Wade no longer applies (so they allege). But linguistic manipulation can't create an essential distinction when none exists. A woman has a right to her own body, and if she chooses to abort, then all effort should be made to protect the woman from injury. To rule otherwise is to negate this right.



Banning any type of abortion to protect the fetus necessarily grants rights to the fetus--an utter perversion of individual rights. If a woman has no right to her own body, then by what logic does a fetus (which, by definition, is a biological parasite) have a right to the woman's body? Properly, an infant's rights begin after the fetus is removed from the mother's body.



It is a woman's individual rights--to her life, to her liberty, and to the pursuit of her happiness--that sanctions her right to have an abortion. Once fetal rights are granted to one stage of the pregnancy, nothing will prevent their extension to all stages. Fetal rights are a gimmick to destroy a woman's individual rights.



Tragically, many pro-choicers have conceded the partial-birth debate to the anti-abortionists and accept a ban as a compromise (and merely quibble about its scope). Such pro-choicers have apparently been hoodwinked by the anti-abortionists' strategy of emotionalism and evasion designed to disguise their deeper purpose.



The anti-abortionists' strategy involves focusing solely on the fetus and describing the abortion in gruesome detail. Their professed compassion for the fetus apparently leaves no room for considering the woman's health and happiness. For them, waving a picture of a bloody, mangled fetus constitutes an argument. If so, then so does waving a picture of a woman whose future was ruined because she was denied an abortion - or of a woman bloody and mangled by a back-alley abortion.



A picture is not an argument--and should not be allowed as a cover-up.



While anti-abortionists' attacks are primarily focused on rarely performed late-term abortions, they zealously want all abortions banned. Helen Alvare, a spokeswoman for the Catholic Bishops and a staunch enemy of D&X, has declared, In a moral sense all abortions are equally awful.



According to anti-abortionist dogma, God places the soul in the womb at conception. Hence, via a leap of faith, the fertilized egg-a tiny cell-is granted the status of human being. At that moment, the woman's status is demoted to that of slave and breeding mare-and her womb becomes God's property (which, in practice, means the government's property). The rights of the woman have therefore been sacrificed to the alleged rights of the fetus. According to this dogma, abortion is murder at any stage of the pregnancy (which explains why some pro-lifers feel morally sanctioned to kill doctors and bomb abortion clinics).



The anti-abortionists' war against partial-birth abortions is a smokescreen to ban all abortions. Abortion is a woman's moral right. Pro-choicers must reject compromise and fight any law prohibiting abortion on principle--the principle of individual rights--the principle upon which this pro-rights country was founded.






Glenn Woiceshyn is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif. The Institute (http://www.aynrand.org/site/R?i=rkhXLS4HhhPNJpPISs87hA.. ) promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead. Send reactions to reaction@aynrand.org.



Copyright 2004 Ayn Rand Institute, 2121 Alton Parkway, Suite 250, Irvine, CA, 92606. All rights reserved.



David Holcberg -- Media Department, Ayn Rand Institute Phone: (949) 222-6550 ext. 226 E-mail: media@aynrand.org


Design copyright Scars Publications and Design. Copyright of individual pieces remain with the author. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...