Author: Leah Fishbein
As many already know, last Wednesday the Supreme Court contradicted its own 2000 decision to overturn a Nebraska ban on “partial birth abortion,” upholding the Federal Abortion Ban Act legislation passed by Congress and signed by Bush in 2003. This criminalization of a medical procedure is an unprecedented setback for women and those who care about them. The Supreme Court has never, in the 30-plus years since the right to abortion was won in Roe V. Wade, made a decision restricting women’s reproductive rights without providing for cases in which a woman’s health is at stake.
This ruling, powerful evidence of the Bush Administration’s and the Christian right’s profound influence on society, spread over this country like a silent alarm, the opposition and outrage necessary to stop this and further attacks on women has been palpably missing from most of the country, at least so far. It slapped us in the face, challenging the basic assumption that health care decisions should be made between doctors and patients (not by non-medical, outside parties, leaving the patient out entirely). This ruling poured over us like a bucket of ice cold water; hopefully it will wake us up to the reality that this is the ultimate sign: that Bush and his counterparts in the Supreme Court do not value women’s health. Especially not in the face of support from their theocratic political base or their “moral values,” (values that don’t contradict the possibility of free fire zones in Iraq or of using the death penalty). If permitted-if there is not massive uprising in the face of this ruling-the Christian Right, c/o the Bush Regime, will move to overturn Roe. V Wade, with the stated goal of federally outlawing abortion as a whole. This is not my idea of scare tactics, just look up the positions the Christian Fundamentalists hold in this Administration and at their goals (on the websites of the National Right to Life Committee, Focus on the Family, or Operation Rescue/Save America) and this is obvious.
Blatantly missing from this whole debate is the science that is invaluable in understanding why the procedure banned in yesterday’s decision should never have been up for debate in the first place. First, the very language of the ban is confounded by a familiar forgetfulness of the media and of the culture in this country. Where are the reports of the origins of this term “partial birth” in light of the ban? Are we so quick to forget that the very people attempting to outlaw abortion invented this non-medical term, one not even acknowledged by the scientific community, to scare people into railing against this process (really called D&X or Dilation and Extraction).
Coined by the National Right to Life Committee in 1995 with the hopes that “as the public learns what a ‘partial-birth abortion’ is, they might also learn something about other abortion methods, and that this would foster a growing opposition to abortion,” the term was introduced in the title of Republican-sponsored legislation to ban the new procedure.D&X is a dilation of the cervix in order to pull the fetus out of the woman’s body. The doctor then punctures the fetuses’ head, sucking the fluid out so that the cranial area might compress enough to extract the fetus entirely. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists indicates that in certain circumstances the D&X procedure is the best one for a woman’s health. Otherwise, the procedure is not encouraged. The American Medical Association bylaws actually prevent physicians from performing D&Xs unless the patient’s health is at risk. But this is not enough for people who are not concerned with science, medicine or women’s rights, people who would, in God’s name, see women chained to the unpredictability of childbearing.
In 2000, The Alan Guttmacher Institute found that only 0.2 percent of the 1.3 million abortions were D&X procedures. D&Xs are almost never performed after fetal viability-according to the “pro-life” movement itself, this ban wouldn’t even be effective with a fetal viability stipulation because those cases hardly exist. Many D&Xs occur because of a fetal condition called hydrocephalus in which the cranium is abnormally enlarged up to 20″ (compared to a normal adult 7-8″).This develops in 1 of every 2000 feti, making delivery dangerous and even fatal for both the fetus (especially in a c-section) and the mother. Hydrocephalus is hard to detect before or even early in the second trimester-hence a major part of the justification for the legality of this procedure.
Aside from all of this, it is necessary to understand a couple of things. Namely that exclusion of the patient from the patient-physician relationship is a violation of civil rights and several U.S. laws. This ban will also disproportionately affect working class people and people of color in the U.S. who already have limited access to family planning services and are less likely to be able to abort early. For these groups and others, this means unsafe, back-alley abortions that often result in severe injury and death. We must also push forward with an understanding of the plans of the Christian Right for women and society and a firm belief in the autonomous power women must hold over their own bodies and futures in order to have justice, real human dignity and a future in which all are really equal. Any encroachments on this autonomy equals a negation of the basic principles it rests on-the equality of women and their right to any future they choose, or more simply the inherent human value of half the world’s population.
The recent Federal Deficit Reduction Act means a huge price hike on birth control pills on college campuses (130% at Emmons). What does it really mean when abortion procedures are being outlawed at the same time as birth control is being made much less accessible?
In light of all this, we must move forward, understanding and acting on this Supreme Court decision as the flash point that it is and encourage massive, unprecedented resistance to the whole Bush program. Not one of us wants to see the end to Roe V. Wade. This event really and truly is their second major victory (the first being getting someone so easy to manipulate in office) and a signal that Bush and his support base are clearly stepping up this cultural battle. In the war on women, this is their Sand Creek Massacre, and if we don’t resist this, they will be able to push the rest of this whole program forward whether we change our minds or not. They will push this through as long as they have disproportionate institutional power, and they will have that power as long as Bush stays in office. Two more years is TOO LONG. So what are you going to do about it?
Leah Fishbein is a junior AHVA major. She can be reached at lfishbein@oxy.edu.
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