04.20.07
A clue! I need a clue over here! Does anybody have a clue?!
Ross, subbing for Andrew Sullivan, just doesn’t seem to get why the “partial-birth abortion ban” and SCOTUS’ affirming stance is such a problem.
I guess I don’t think of laws banning prostitution, or even laws banning drugs, primarily as public health regulations – I think of them as morals legislation, outlawing practices that the majority considers sufficiently offensive to human dignity to deserve an outright ban. And in this context, I don’t see why killing one’s unborn offspring, even if the offspring isn’t a legal person and the crime therefore isn’t the same as murder, shouldn’t be something that the state has an interest in regulating on moral grounds. (We have laws against animal cruelty, for instance, even though animals aren’t legal “persons.”)
This, incidentally, is why so many conservatives hated on Lawrence v. Texas – not because it did away with sodomy laws, but because Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion seemed to hint that any and all morals legislation was effectively unconstitutional. That was the substance of Scalia’s dissent, which warned that laws against everything from prostitution to obscenity would be threatened by the decision. For now, though, that threat hasn’t been fulfilled – and as long as morals legislation in general is still safe from Supreme Court override, there’s no reason a state or Congress shoudn’t be able to restrict abortion (in a post-Roe world, that is) even without claiming legal personhood for the fetus.
No that’s not what it’s about. Most on our side of the fence of this issue see the human element that is at stake here. There are many circumstances at which a woman might want to or need to have a private relationship with her doctor and discuss such a “late term abortion”, as it’s more aptly called. This law makes no exception for the health of the woman. Circumstances where the fetus has a terminal illness and is likely going to die anyways either in the womb or shortly after the womb. Also circumstances where carrying the baby to full term could endanger the life of the mother or cause such permanent damage to the woman that she will never have the ability to have children again in her lifetime.
Abortion is never an easy decision for a woman to make! In most cases it is a mother’s decision to determine what is best for her and her child unborn or not. The government has no business making decisions like this for her. Conservatives want smaller government but at the same time want to regulate what happens inside of a woman’s body and in her own bedroom. RU486, or “Plan B” as it’s called is just one of many examples of this.
When it comes to public health issues the government has an interest in maintaining the lives of all currently born and future generations of its citizens which is why mandated HPV vaccinations are so important. Just like we were able to erradicate small pox and polio to almost complete non-existence, we should work to do the same with other diseases, especially ones that have been shown to cause cervical cancer.
In general most conservatives only see what is “moral” in their Leave it to Beaver fantasies of American life. What is reality and what is practical takes a back seat to fantasyland visions of 1950’s television sitcoms. The SCOTUS decision is just a step in the direction towards such a fantasyland, one where women find it necessary to get “back alley abortions” or travel to neigboring countries with the fear of jail to terminate an unwanted pregnancy to avoid the anguish of carrying to term her rapists baby. Ahh yes, the good ‘ole days.
