4.18.2007

u.s. supreme court practices medicine without a license

In a long-awaited victory for women haters and fetus lovers, the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the nationwide ban on an abortion procedure.

The 5-4 ruling said the so-called "Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act" that Congress passed in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

This marks the first time the court has banned a specific medical procedure.

This procedure - correctly known as "dilation and extraction" or D&X - is used very rarely, and normally only as an absolute last resort.

I had a close friend who had already suffered two spontaneous abortions (commonly and incorrectly called "miscarriages"). On her third try, an amnio revealed the fetus was severely deformed; it lacked most of its brain. It would either have been born dead or lived for a few minutes outside the womb. It never could have survived, either on its own or on a life support system.

My friend was more than five months pregnant at the time. She wanted a baby more than anything in the world. Had the D&X procedure not been available, she would have had to carry the pregnancy to term, and go through labour, knowing the fetus would not survive. (Inducing labour was not a medically safe option.)

Only the tiniest percentage of abortions are performed by D&X, and as far as anyone can substantiate, those are always medically necessary.

That's why this isn't about the procedure itself. It's about finally stripping American women of the right to control their reproduction, and their lives.

Without access to safe and legal abortion, women can never be free and equal people.

Read Katha Pollitt on this nationwide scam. The example in her lede is the group I used to work with in New York.

Read me on the state of women's reproductive freedom in the US. I wrote that in 2005. You can safely assume it's only gotten worse.

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