Respect for Life, But Whose?

What has five penises, white hair, a black robe, and an ambitious respect for life? Unfortunately, the majority does. On April 18, 2007, the Supreme Court Justices voted, in a five to four opinion, to uphold the “Partial Birth” Abortion Ban Act that President Bush put into law in 2003. It is the first time the court has upheld a ban on a specific abortion procedure since 1973, when the landmark case of Roe vs. Wade established a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

I was curious to read what the justices had to say for themselves, so I went online and skimmed the court’s majority and dissenting opinions. (Get a cup of coffee; it’s seventy-three legal-jargoned pages long!) The five in the majority made their case by asserting that the banned procedure, known medically as “intact dilation and extraction” (D&E) was not upholding the States “respect for the dignity of human life” and was getting a little too close to infanticide for comfort. Intact D&E involves removing the fetus in an intact condition rather than dismembering it. Both procedures are used to terminate pregnancies in the second trimester and are therefore relatively rare; eighty-five to ninety percent of abortions take place within the first trimester.

Although the ban will only affect a small proportion of women seeking abortions, there was a much deeper message in Justice Anthony Kennedy’s written majority opinion that really made my stomach hurt. It has to do with the conflicted idea that this ban “expresses respect for the dignity of human life.”

Because, after about page five or six of the ruling, you have to wonder whose life is getting the respect. Even though the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Public Health Association, and the California Medical Association attest that “intact D&E carries meaningful safety advantages over other methods,” the court made no exception to protect a woman’s health. That means that not doing the procedure puts a woman at risk, but doing the procedure could land a doctor in jail for two years. That’s not much respect for the views or decisions of the medical community, who the justices disparagingly refer to as “abortion doctors.” Would the justices refer to urologists as “prostate doctors?” I can just see Rodney Dangerfield now, throwing up his arms in the name of all obstetric gynecologists and screaming, “No respect!”

Then there is the disrespectful use of the phrase “partial birth abortion.” According to the American Medical Association, this is not a medical term.