Guest Column: Bush Supreme Court Hostile to Reproductive Rights
May 11th, 2007by Cheryl T. Sabel
State President, Alabama
National Organization for Women
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in Gonzales v Carhart upholding Congress’ abortion procedure ban was no surprise. Women’s rights organizations predicted it and fought hard against confirmations of Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito, who clearly lied under oath at their confirmation hearings during their “respect-for-precedent” testimony.
In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Stenberg v. Carhart, ruled against an almost identical ban enacted in Nebraska; that precedent was the reason three U.S. Courts of Appeal declared the federal ban unconstitutional. Last year, although only six years earlier clear precedent had been set, the Bush administration pressed on with appeals to the Supreme Court by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, because now the Court was packed with judges whose records reveal their disdain for women’s rights. This ruling has nothing to do with protecting the health and best interest of women, but is a paternalistic imposition of the personal moral code of a powerful, self-righteous few. It discounts scientific, medical evidence and women’s health.
Medical evidence reveals that “Intact Dilation and Extraction” is the safest procedure for some women with certain medical conditions. It is a rarely-used procedure that a physician could perform to abort a non-viable fetus where the health of the patient would be best protected. The record in this case, and those before it, provide detailed information regarding the specific safety benefits, including minimized risk of trauma and perforation of the cervix and uterus by reducing the number of times a physician must insert instruments into the uterus, and decreased chance of fetal tissue retained in the uterus, which can cause infection, hemorrhage, and infertility. Appeals courts have relied on these facts in safeguarding women’s health and women’s rights. This ruling was a reckless political decision that has no basis in medical fact, and will adversely impact women who need this specific procedure to protect their health and safety. “Partial-birth abortion” is not a medical term, but has become accepted misnomer language, like “baby” or “unborn child’ rather than zygote or embryo or fetus; and “pro-life” rather than anti-choice.
Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg disagreed with the majority opinion, stating that it “tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found ‘necessary and proper’ in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists,” and noting that it “jeopardizes women’s health and places doctors in an untenable position.” Politicians have been allowed to substitute their judgment for that of a woman’s doctor.
J. Ginsberg concludes her dissent, stating: “In sum, the notion that the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act furthers any legitimate governmental interest is, quite simply, irrational. The Court’s defense of the statute provides no saving explanation. In candor, the Act, and the Court’s defense of it, cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this Court - and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women’s lives.”
Lynn Paltrow, Executive Director of National Advocates for Pregnant Women, stated the day after the ruling that the “abortion ban has grave implications for all pregnant women, not only those seeking to end pregnancies” and that the ruling “marks a significant attack on the rights and health of all pregnant women. There is now little to stand in the way of a federal law banning abortions everywhere if Roe is overturned. In other words, abortion is not really a question of states’ rights, but rather of controlling all pregnant women regardless of the state in which they live.”
In upholding the ban, Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy quotes Congress’ medically unsound and false rationale: “A moral, medical, and ethical consensus exists that the practice of performing a partial-birth abortion … is never medically necessary and should be prohibited.” He asserts that if the ban is not upheld, it “will further coarsen society to the humanity of not only newborns, but all vulnerable and innocent human life.”
Boy howdy.
J. Kennedy then intones, “While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon … some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained. Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow.” Did you get the “no reliable data” part? Appallingly, Kennedy perpetuates a myth contained in “brochures” proffered by protestors who harass and intimidate at women’s clinics. (The “brochures” falsely claim, among other untruths, that huge percentages of women who have abortions become depressed and suicidal.) Statistics show that by age fifty, one in three women will have had an abortion, and the majority feel relief, not sorrow.
The pious, hollow words of J. Kennedy and his neo-Con brethren as they usurp women’s rights, and President Bush’s praise referring to the ruling as “an affirmation of the progress we have made over the past six years in protecting human dignity and upholding the sanctity of life” are repugnant.
In this political environment hostile to reproductive rights, those of us who care about justice, equality, and democracy must find our voices, and assert ourselves.
AL NOW
alabamanow@hotmail.com
Tags: Freedom of Choice
