As you likely know by now, the US Supreme Court voted 5-4 a couple days ago to uphold a law banning "partial birth abortions". Framer over at Arizona Eighth has a good post on the matter here.
There are a variety of reasons this ruling is problematic, but I want to address the practicalities of the situation.
The ruling does nothing to limit abortions per se. If a woman still desires an abortion she can get one. What the ruling does do is prohibit a certain abortion procedure.
Now, I stipulate the procedure in question (Dilation and Extraction) is an ugly, gruesome procedure. If we can disregard the image of it, however, various studies (here and here are a couple examples) have found this approach to be at least as safe, and usually safer, than other forms of abortion used for second (and third) trimester fetuses.
Assuming the abortions will be performed anyway, the implication is the law will increase the risk of death or complications for the mother based purely on the "ugliness" factor of the procedure being banned. It's particularly striking this squeamishness is most commonly found amongst the set that supports gun rights for all. One wouldn't usually consider them to have such delicate sensibilities.
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I don't have time to cite the stats, but these abortions are very rare. I am sure research could quickly yield the numbers, but the vast majority of abortions are first trimester. These late term procedures are most frequently associated with an unusual circumstance, i.e. something has gone wrong, and we have that utterly hypocritical situation where somehow the life of the baby takes precedence over the life of the mother.
I argue that the abortion issue is not about abortion for the vast majority of the folks all riled up about it. My view is that it stems from a backlash against the Feminism of the 1970's and a fear of female sexuality on the part of Falwell / Robertson types.
My thoughts in more detail.
The hypocrisy runs deep, Sirocco. I can go one better than their support for gun's rights. Despite their opposition to abortion, they fight against sex education and the contraception that would reduce the incidence of abortion in the first place.
Instead they want abstinence programs.
Not the brightest branches on the tree, this bunch.
Yeah, abstinance programs have a long history of simply not working ... "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results".
I recall doing some research in response to a post of Framer's that convinced me there simply isn't enough demand for adoption to handle all the new, unwanted children if abortion were banned, deespite what the anti-abortion crowd claims. The numbers aren't even close to adding up.
The procedure in question is a pretty rare one (most studies I found were looking at, say, 120 cases over 10 years in a certain region), but it's not fair to say it's only used when the risk to the mother may be serious -- I found at least several doctors who claimed to use the procedure exclusively (regardless of the mother's condition), as they felt it was the least risky for the mother in terms of possible complications.
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