In reading my morning news, I came across this article about the most recent abortion/parental notification debate in the supreme court. While reading this article, I was totally stunned by the twisting of facts going on and the lack of understanding shown by even the judges in the case. One of the biggest reasons we have not progressed further in this debate is because we let complete fallacies stand as fact. The first and foremost falsehood is the so-called "health of the mother" exception in every abortion law. This is what stands at the center of the current debate and what has stood in the way of many other debates in the past. Abortion proponents insist that every law even being attempted contain broad exceptions for the "health of the mother." What they don't want you to hear, however, is that:

1. The "health" of the mother is a judgement call based upon each individual doctor's interpretation. It doesn't mean that she's going to die if she doesn't have an abortion. It could mean something as trivial as her body won't be in as good a shape as it was before she had the baby.

2. Health exceptions always include mental health. If a doctor determines that a woman may be mentally unstable because she's pregnant, he can use the health exception to perform an abortion. This has included cases where the woman was simply "unhappy" with her pregnancy.

And yet these are the types of things that don't get talked about during the debate. Instead, we get this "inspired" line of questioning from Justices Souter and Bryer: [Justice Souter] went right to the heart of the arguments made by abortion advocates and asked New Hampshire Attorney General Kelly Ayotte how the statute would affect teens in dire health situations. Ayotte said another New Hampshire law and policies drafted by her office would make sure abortion practitioners were not prosecuted in cases when they thought an abortion was in the best health interests of the girl. Justice Stephen Breyer thought that answer wasn't good enough. "How do we know that's the law?''

You notice the subtle change in the answer by Ms Ayotte. "...would make sure abortion practitioners were not prosecuted in cases when they thought an abortion was in the best health interests of the girl. So we're just to trust abortion practitioners to decide what is in the best health of our children? And if one decides that it is in the best health interest of all girls to not be pregnant? Could he actually be prosecuted?

But even this doesn't get to the heart of the matter. As I stated before, I have yet to see a case of abortion that has saved the mother. No one has ever been able to point one out to me and I can't imagine any situation in which it would be necessary. And even if there were such a case, what does it possibly have to do with parental notification? If a girl is in such extreme health circumstances, I believe she would be rushed to an emergency room and not an abortionist. And if she weren't in bad enough shape that she needed immediate hospital treatment then how could an abortion without parental notification possibly be justified as necessary for the "health of the mother?"

Of course now someone is going to go out and find a lone case that "proves" abortion saves mothers lives. Don't bother. I've searched and already found it. In this article by a pro-abortion women's group, they claim that they have intereviewed a woman who's life was saved by abortion. Furthermore, they claim that there's no such thing as "partial-birth" abortion. Let me show you exactly what sort of word game they're playing.

Unlike many American voters, Watts knows that "partial-birth abortion" does not exist. Coined by anti-choice activists, this term cannot be found in any medical dictionary. Its imprecision, according to defenders of choice, could target a whole host of procedures.

First, they're attempting to claim that the partial birth abortion ban could be used to target a whole group of procedures. But anyone who has been following this debate knows exactly what is being talked about.

Because her baby was already dying and because this put her own life at stake, Watts had an intact dilation and extraction (D and X), the procedure that Bush condemns as "brutal."

So they'd rather call it "intact dilation and extraction?" Well, I can certainly see why. Let's mask what really happens in this procedure with obscure medical terms so that no one thinks about it very much. If you don't think that these two procuedures are the same, then let's check with a disinterested third party.

OK, so now that we've argued over the terminology, let's get down to the facts. Why would an abortion save this woman and a c-section wouldn't? They don't bother telling that. For that fact, why couldn't they induce labor? I'm no doctor, but if you're going to claim that the abortion was necessary to save this woman, then you have to show me that no other alternative was going to work. In this case, the only thing that you proved to me is that she decided to have an abortion and then did it.

Of course we also have another face to the "health" exception argument. People who claim that we must have abortions to save women from back-alley butchers. The argument goes something like this. Even if abortions are illegal, women are going to seek them out so let's keep them legal and safe. Of course the argument given on the page above falls well short of any sort of proof.

ack in 1964, those "good" old days before Roe v. Wade, Gerri Santoro was the mother of two daughters, and recently estranged from her abusive husband. For whatever reason, Gerri met another man, Clyde Dixon, and (gasp!) had sex with him. She became pregnant. Fearful of what her husband would do to her if he returned to town and learned she was pregnant by another man, Gerry and Clyde decided that they had to terminate the pregnancy. By any means necessary. Of course, they couldn't afford to pay off some doctor in a nice hospital to do a purported D&C, as rich women could back then. Or hop on a plane and go to Mexico. Apparently, they couldn't afford even a back-alley abortionist (what--abortion being illegal didn't stop people from performing abortions???). No, these people were so poor, and so desperate, that they decided to do what far too many people in like circumstances saw as the only way. They decided to perform the abortion themselves. And they agonized over this decision so long, that Gerri was 6 1/2 months pregnant when they decided to take matters into their own hands.

Dixon acquired a medical book and equipment. They got a motel room, and he attempted to operate on her there. As expected, everything went completely wrong. Very quickly. Realizing he had made a mistake, realizing what could happen to him if he were there when Gerri died, Dixon fled the scene. She tried to stop the hemorraghing, but nothing worked.

Now, this person admits that there were several alternatives available.

1. Go to the hospital for D&X.
2. Go to Mexico
3. Go to a doctor who performs illegal abortions

And yet she couldn't afford any of these options, so she decided to do it herself. Could you possibly explain to me how abortions being legal would have saved this woman's life? She STILL woudn't have had the money to have an abortion and most likely STILL would have gone and done something stupid. Witness the two kids a few years back who had a baby at a school dance, dumped in in a trashcan and then went back to the dance. Having "safe and legal" abortions didn't seem to help them much.

Saying that we should legalize abortion to keep it safe is, at best a stretch of the imagination and at worst an outright lie. It's akin to saying we want to keep people who are addicted to crack alive, so we'll make crack legal so we can make sure it's pure and they don't smoke too much at one time. And the fact of the matter is, abortion, even legal, is not safe. Abortion proponents will point to statistics showing that only 20-30 women per year die of legal abortions. Unfortunately, this is a bending of the statistics. These figures only show women who's death can be directly attributed to the abortion process. That means that if they die on the table in the abortioninsts office, then this death is counted. However, as this article shows, there are many other ways to die from an abortion. Many unfortunate women die days or even weeks later from a perforated uterus, an infection cause by an incomplete abortion, blood clots or many other complications. Thousands more are left sterile from botched abortions. And these figures don't even begin to include the emotional scarring left by such an event.

If you want abortion, let's have an honest debate. Come on out and say you just want it as a matter of convenience and admit the rest is just hogwash. Let's have an honest debate about the real facts and see how much support is left for this brutal practice in the end.

Posted by: Drew at 08:47 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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