1. Intelligent, eloquent, and progressive women who insist that they cannot take a pro-choice stand because the issue is ‘too emotional’ for them and they can’t ‘think about it rationally.’
Women, this is an emotional issue, but that doesn’t disqualify you from having a valid opinion. Emotion is not the antithesis of rationality, no matter what law school tells you.
2. When people say, “But the partial birth abortion ban has an exception for women’s lives!”
Yes. And it doesn’t have one for health. Do you really so little value women’s health that you would allow it to be damaged, so long as it actually stopped short of killing them?
3. People who say, ‘well, I’m pro-choice, but I’m really uncomfortable with partial-birth abortions. I mean, at that point, why doesn’t she just have the baby? But it should have an exception for a woman’s health.’
Okay, I’ll provide a list of reading for you, but I’ve really reached my limit on how many times I can explain that ‘partial birth abortion’ doesn’t exist. It’s a made up name for a medical procedure that is performed when it is the safest way to have an abortion, but it is by no means the only way. Yeah, I will grant you it’s really, really gross. But gruesomeness is no basis to outlaw a medical procedure that, though rare, is done because it is medically necessary.
Why do people think that women undergo such a procedure for fun? Who could imagine thinking that a pregnant woman is sitting there going, well, I could give birth at this moment were labor induced, to a totally healthy baby with no harm to myself but instead I want this really scary procedure. That’s not how it works people. (but you know what? I’m so pro-choice that even if it did, I’d still support it, because in my personal balancing test, the woman’s interest in her own body always outweighs the state’s interest in what the courts have declared to be a potential life.) But this is the real world, with real women, and the truth of the matter is that this is a procedure rarely used, but when it is, it is used because the fetus is dead, or is not going to live, and/or will severely hurt the woman if carried any further.
Putting a health exception on this ban would have essentially made it ineffective, something anti-choicers clearly understood, and that is why they intentionally left it off.
Other articles and posts on the subject:
Terminating Women's Rights by Jill @ Feministe.
Do Women Have lives by Amanda Marcotte @ Pandagon.
Health v. Life, Trying to Clear Things Up by Cecily @ And I Wasted All That Birth Control.
Intentionally Choosing by Terrance @ The Republic of T.
Father Knows Best: Dr. Kennedy's magic prescription for indecisive women. by Dahlia Lithwick @ Slate.
Gambling with Abortion: Why Both Sides Think they Have Everything to Lose by Cynthia Gorney @ Harper's Magazine.
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