Should Michigan Ban Partial-Birth Abortions?
Detroit News
Friday, July 11th, 2003 By Tim O'BrienThe well-organized pro-life forces in the Michigan Legislature hope to ban what they provocatively term "partial-birth abortion." This procedure, properly called "intact dilation and extraction," is a drastic remedy used rarely and in dire circumstances. Proponents readily admit they are uncompromisingly opposed to all abortion procedures. Since this extremist view is not shared by most people, their strategy has been to make incremental restrictions. Emotional rhetoric notwithstanding, there is no debate about whether a zygote-embryo-fetus is "human life." It is at every stage. But then so were the sperm and egg from which it came. If destruction of all forms of human life were prohibited, we'd be prosecuting every doctor who ever removed an appendix. Neither does the fact that it is a unique whole, distinguishable from its mother, affect the case. If genetic distinctiveness were the criterion, termination of one of a pair of identical twins would be acceptable since the DNA line would persist into the next generation in a brother or sister. Nor are human lives intrinsically sacrosanct. Virtually everyone believes in self-defense, even when it is lethal. Even the innocence of childhood is no sure protection. Our military recently killed hundreds of Iraqi children, calling it "collateral damage," without philosophical objection from pro-life advocates. Once we get beyond all the religious sophistry, there are only two relevant considerations on abortion restrictions. The first is legal -- defining the point in human gestation when the fetus has rights worthy of protection by the state. Advances in medical science have made people increasingly uncomfortable with the old "first breath" rule. However, the "moment of conception" standard advocated by the pro-life community is also problematic. It leads to such bizarre implications as legally transforming intra-uterine birth control devices into ipso facto murder weapons. Every fertile woman's womb becomes a potential crime scene every month. The "moment of conception" standard is relatively recent. The traditional Christian view traced the beginning of a new human being to a "moment of ensoulment," said to occur sometime between the second and fifth month of pregnancy. In fact, because ensoulment is a fundamental tent of reincarnation, it is this older doctrine that continues to be held today by most people of faith in the world. Of course, an "ensoulment" standard is no less arbitrary than the trimester approach enunciated by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. Therein lies the problem. Life is a continuum. No such singular, scientifically definable point exists. That leads to the other relevant consideration -- which is political. Because pro-life advocates dominate the Legislature, they may, barring a sustainable veto by the governor or overruling by the courts, succeed in banning intact dilation and extraction procedures. But, in a free society, all law ultimately rests on the consent of the governed. So they will never be able to enact any anti-abortion law with which half the population disagrees. That's why they continue to whittle away at the margins. They might be more effective if they expended their considerable energies advocating a standard based on viability. The larger society would find this more compelling than either "moment of conception" or "first breath" precisely because it attempts to strike a balance between the rights of the pregnant woman and those of an offspring. A woman need not be reduced to the status of an enslaved incubator. However, from the point of viability onward, killing a "pre-born baby" in the process of ending a pregnancy would be regarded as using excessive force -- a time-honored, common law concept. Admittedly, viability is a subjective standard as well. But it's probably as close to consensus as we're likely to get. Tim O'Brien is an Allen Park free-lance writer.
By Kristen HemkerLegislators both in Washington and Lansing are considering legislation that would have the effect of banning the procedure commonly called partial-birth abortion. Many may presume this battle is just another ideological debate between the hard-core advocates on both sides of the abortion issue. A closer look shows that even Americans who are generally uncomfortable taking a side on this controversial issue have taken sides in the partial-birth abortion debate. According to a January 2003 Gallup poll, 70 percent of Americans favored a law that would ban partial-birth abortions. A look at the facts surrounding this procedure may help to explain the public's call to pass this legislation. To begin, partial birth abortions are real, common, and the majority performed every year are not for the "hard cases" (for example, threat to the mother's life or severe fetal deformities). Ron Fitzsimmons, executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, estimated that the method was used 3,000 to 5,000 times annually. "In the vast majority of cases, the procedure is performed on a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along," Fitzsimmons said in the New York Times in 1997. In a partial-birth abortion, a healthy child developing within her mother during the last two trimesters of a normal pregnancy is legally destroyed by being pulled out feet first through the birth canal. With only the baby's head remaining inside the mother's body, a hole is punched into the base of the skull and the brain is suctioned out. It is at this point where facts, common sense and universal values should come together to end this debate. Partial-birth abortions are grotesque and inhumane. Except for the most extreme viewpoint, even those who support legal abortion see this procedure more as infanticide than abortion (including the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y.). A live baby delivered up to the head and visible outside the mother's body is not some mysterious entity who may or may not be a "person." He or she is one of us -- a member of the human family -- entering the world in the same manner most of us did. And deserving of the protection of the law. At the federal level, Congress is trying for the third time to pass a ban that specifically targets, in painstakingly crafted language, the partial-birth abortion procedure. The Michigan Legislature is taking a novel approach by pressing the question of when a human being can be considered legally born. The Legal Birth Definition Act being advanced in Lansing attempts to put an outer boundary on abortion by declaring that a partially born human being is considered a legally born person for all purposes of the law. Once you are legally born, you cannot be killed -- not even under the name "abortion." The Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion that was handed down 30 years ago has resulted in the highest court in the land of liberty and freedom declaring that children who are more born than unborn can be legally killed in the name of choice (Stenberg v. Carhart, 2000). Regardless of how one views, accepts, rejects or justifies abortion performed within a mother's body, to say our laws ought not protect a child more born than unborn is to abandon common sense and universal human values of civility and decency. Those who believe this battle is just another example of government intrusion into private lives dismiss the fact that it is literally a matter of life and death. The debate at hand is about whose lives will be protected by the law. Defining a partially born child to be a legal person deserving of protection under the law is a minimally necessary step if we want to claim any sense of humanity and justice in our society. Kristen Hemker is legislative liaison for Right to Life of Michigan in Lansing.
| 
