I’m a bit late posting this, but what the heck. It’s a good op-ed from the Boston Globe describing how the PBA ban President Bush just signed would, if it became law, ban not just late-term abortions (as pro-lifers dishonestly claimed) but second-trimester abortions as well.
The two procedures differ only in where they take place — inside the woman’s uterus, or in the birth canal. Because the bill does not make that distinction, all dilation-and-extraction procedures are likely to fall under its restrictions.
In all abortions, “you certainly know that you will start with a living fetus and that it will be dead by the end of the procedure,” said Nebraska surgeon LeRoy Carhart, who opposes the bill. “But when you start a second-trimester abortion, you don’t know when the fetus will die. Every patient is different. If any part comes out before it dies, bang, I’m in jail. This law will ban all D&Es. It will change the number of safe places to have an abortion. This could close every abortion clinic in the US.”
Carhart is exaggerating in the last sentence – but he’s certainly right that the PBA ban, as written, applies to much more than late-term abortions. Pro-lifers who claim otherwise are either liars or, more often, have been duped by their leadership.
Fortunately, the ban is unconstitutional, and several lower courts have ruled that it cannot be carried out. Unfortunately, the bill (or future bills like it) could be made constitutional with just one Bush appointment to the Supreme Court.
(Via The Light of Reason)
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