Ban on Partial-Birth Abortion Is a Blow to Women's Rights

President Bush has just signed a bill banning partial-birth abortions. Such a ban constitutes a grave threat to women's health and a serious blow toindividual rights.

When abortion was illegal in America, many women died or sufferedserious medical problems from either self induced or illegalback-alley abortions. Women streamed into emergency rooms withpunctured wombs, massive bleeding, and rampant infections.

Thanks to the Roe v. Wade (1973) Supreme Court decision, women todayhave access to safe abortions by medically trained professionals undersanitary conditions. But anti-abortionists are changing all this.

A law banning partial-birth abortions establishes a precedent forcriminalizing other types of abortion--as America slides down thedangerous slope to back-alley abortions. Those who are trulypro-life must grasp the ominous implications of and underlying motivesbehind such anti-abortion laws--before it's too late.

Partial-birth abortion, most commonly known as intact dilation andextraction (D&X), is designed primarily to be used in the case of 5-and 6-month-old fetuses that are dying, malformed, or threatening thewoman's health or life. The procedure involves pulling the fetus fromthe womb, except for the head which is too large to pass withoutinjuring the woman. The head is then collapsed to allow removal. Thisprocedure is designed for the maximum protection of the woman. Thelate-term alternative to D&X, one that doesn't require partialremoval, involves dismembering the fetus in the womb beforeextraction--a much riskier procedure.

Anti-abortionists coined the term partial birth to suggest that thepartially removed fetus is no longer unborn, and, therefore, Roe vs.Wade no longer applies (so they allege). But linguistic manipulationcan't create an essential distinction when none exists. A woman has aright to her own body, and, if she chooses to abort, then all effortshould be made to protect the woman from injury. To rule otherwise isto negate this right.

Banning any type of abortion to protect the fetus necessarily grantsrights to the fetus--an utter perversion of individual rights. If awoman has no right to her own body, then by what logic does a fetus(which, by definition, is a biological parasite) have a right to thewoman's body? Properly, an infant's rights begin after the fetus isremoved from the mother's body and its umbilical cord cut.

It is a woman's individual rights--to her life, to her liberty, and tothe pursuit of her happiness--that sanctions her right to have anabortion. Once fetal rights are granted to one stage of thepregnancy, nothing will prevent their extension to all stages. Fetalrights are a gimmick to destroy a woman's individual rights.

Tragically, many pro-choicers have conceded the partial-birthdebate to the anti-abortionists and accept a ban as a compromise (andmerely quibble about its scope). Such pro-choicers have apparentlybeen hoodwinked by the anti-abortionists' strategy of emotionalism andevasion designed to disguise their deeper purpose.

The anti-abortionists' strategy involves focusing solely on the fetusand describing the abortion in gruesome detail. Their professedcompassion for the fetus apparently leaves no room for considering thewoman's health and happiness. For them, waving a picture of a bloody,mangled fetus constitutes an argument. If so, then so does waving apicture of a woman whose future was ruined because she was denied anabortion--or of a woman bloody and mangled by a back-alley abortion.

A picture is not an argument--and should not be allowed as a cover-up.

While anti-abortionists' attacks are primarily focused on rarelyperformed late-term abortions, they zealously want all abortionsbanned. Helen Alvare, a spokeswoman for the Catholic Bishops and astaunch enemy of D&X, has declared, In a moral sense all abortionsare equally awful.

According to anti-abortionists' dogma, God places the soul in the wombat conception. Hence, via a leap of faith, the fertilized egg--a tinycell--is granted the status of human being. At that moment,the woman's status is demoted to that of slave and breeding mare--andher womb becomes God's property (which, in practice, means thegovernment's property). The rights of the woman have therefore beensacrificed to the alleged rights of the fetus. According to thisdogma, abortion is murder at any stage of the pregnancy (whichexplains why some pro lifers feel morally sanctioned to kill doctorsand bomb abortion clinics).

The anti-abortionists' war against partial-birth abortions is asmokescreen to ban all abortions. Abortion is a woman's moral right.Pro-choicers must reject compromise and fight any law prohibitingabortion on principle--the principle of individual rights--theprinciple upon which this pro-rights country was founded.