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Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Abortion

Abortion is a personal subject, generating emotional resistance from both sides of the aisle, as it were. Whereas one will focus on the rights of women to make choices and links itself to the 1920's women's rights movement, the other will focus on the rights of children to be born and compare itself to the 1860's movement to end slavery.

As with much else, it is useful to have a historical perspective on the issue first.

-Rights: The right to life is inalienable according to the Declaration of Independence, and given by a Creator, rather than dependent on any individual, desire for an individual, or estimation. Privacy is not a right, it is a privilege, just like control of one's body. One cannot murder another in the privacy of his or her own home or use their fist to punch someone; they cannot use their voice to shout fire in a crowded opera house.i The bottom line is that the right to throw a punch should stop where another's nose begins. I am all for women's rights, but nobody's right should include the right to murder their fellow man; to infringe upon another's inalienable right to life.
The 4th amendment stops unreasonable searches and seizures, not all searches and seizures. Police can still get an arrest warrant if you’re murdering someone in your house. Privacy does not allow you to murder someone in your own home, just like it should not allow you to murder someone in your own body. Therefore, privacy is a privilege, not a right.

-Caution: It is disputable when a person becomes a human being. Blacks were once considered less than human as well. So were Native Americans, and Hispanics. Trying to decide based on trimesters is arbitrary. When they pass that 12-week limit, are they suddenly inhuman one day and human the next?
In playing God, we are ultimately going to be guilty sooner or later of taking another human life, and of the 1.2 million abortions performed each yearii, even if right most of the time, that is still a lot of blood on an abortionist's hands.
We ought to be erring on the side of caution when potentially taking another human life, not trying to skirt that line and seeing how close we can get. Though most consider abortions most safe/moral in the first trimester (12 weeks), 11.3% of all abortions, which in 2004 equated to 136,730 abortions, are performed after the 12th week.iii

-Choice: As I've said, nobody should have the choice to harm another human being. With 'choices' should come consequences, commitments, and responsibilities. We recognize that a man who impregnates a woman should be accountable and have to pay child support. Why is it that a woman should be able to pass on the consequences of her lifestyle actions onto her unborn child? Abortion is irresponsible, saying that one can do whatever they want without consequences.

-Abortion lies: Co-founder of NARAL, Bernard Nathanson, admitted that NARAL fabricated the results of fictional polls to sell the American people on lies about the number of illegal abortions occurring by as many as 10 times the actual number.iv They used the process of the self-fulfilling lie, repeating the falsehood to the media enough times that they tricked the public into thinking illegal abortion far more prevalent than it was. Abortion is built upon deception, not truth.
Sources:
-Rare circumstances: Rape, incest, and pregnancies due to the mother's life in danger result in a total of just .53% of all abortions.v As such, they are not defensible for abortions overall. Only in such cases are abortions even to be considered as moral, since in the case of rape/incest, the woman did not make a lifestyle choice she should be held accountable for, and in the case of her life endangered by the pregnancy, her right to life is equally at stake.
Furthermore, even before Roe v. Wade, abortion was legal in many states in such cases. Begun with Colorado in 1967, states began passing laws to allow abortion in such cases, and by the time of Roe v. Wade (1973) 17 states had passed laws allowing abortion in such circumstances.vi Some states even had much older laws allowing abortion only in case of the mother's life or severe fetal deformity.vii New York, for example, had one dating back to 1830, which was overturned in 1967 by Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller. Abortion was legalized for other reasons, and thus such rare issues are a moot point.
-Public support: According to Gallupviii, which has been tracking the abortion issue since 1976, never have more than 34% of all Americans said abortion should be legal under all circumstances. Currently that number is at 21%.
The majority of Americans each year have said abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances (48-61%). That number is right now at 57%. Furthermore, for the first time since Gallup began tracking, a majority of Americans now identify as pro-life instead of pro-choice, 51% to 42%.ix
According to a 2003 Gallup poll, 82% agree with allowing abortion when the mother's life is endangered, 72% when the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest, and 60% when the child would be born with a life-threatening illness. Only 50% supported abortion when the child would be born mentally disabled, and only 41% when the woman doesn't want the child for any reason. A 2007 Gallup poll found 72% believe partial birth abortion should be illegal. A 2005 Gallup poll determined 69% of Americans support parental notification laws, while 64% support notifying the husband of a married woman if she wants an abortion.
As such, the majority of Americans support abortion only in rare cases such as rape/incest/life of the mother, and not when 'choice' is the only factor. They also support reasonable requirements for notification of spouses and parents.
-About Control?: This is not about men telling women what they can and can't do with their bodies. Rather it's about telling abortion providers that they cannot provide services which potentially harm other human beings. Not until 2010 was any law passed, and even then Utah has been the only state, to allow prosecution of women who have abortions.x Ultimately, this is not about punishing women who have abortions, but if anyone, the abortion providers. The main thing is stopping this abhorrent trade in child murder.
Many of the major Pro-Life organizations and movements are led not by men but by women. The National Right to Life Committee is led by Wanda Franz.xi Susan B. Anthony's List is led by Marjorie Danenfelserxii, who is both President and Chairman of the Board. Democrats For Life of America, the national organization of Congressional pro-life Democrats, is led by Executive Director Kristen Day.xiii Judie Brown is President and Co-Founder of the American Life League. Jill Stanek is another major pro-life leader known for her opposition to Barack Obama's voting record on partial birth abortion.xiv
The Right to Life movement, as such, is led by women with an interest in allowing other women as well as men the right to be born.
-Right to Life Movement: Some accuse the Right to Life movement of only trying to stop abortions, not caring for single mothers. Teen Mothers Choices International, headquartered in northern Illinois in 1989, seeks to provide mentors and volunteers to help single mothers live free of government assistance with emphasis on college and the workplace. TMCI has launched internationally with a goal of reaching 3,000 churches and community organizations in 50 states.xv Likewise, an organization called New Hope, affiliated with Bergen County's Right to Life movement, has just passed its 25th anniversary in assisting teen mothers.xvi
-Death penalty conflict: Concerning the death penalty, many innocent people have been found on Death Row due to DNA evidence, suggesting as a man you are guilty until proven innocent in our U.S. court system. If we can't put the right people on death row, perhaps we should remove the death penalty altogether. However, there are pro-life people who both oppose abortion and the death penalty, most notably the pro-life Democrats (DFLA, Democrats For Life of America) with their 'consistent life ethic' that opposes not just abortion but human trafficking and the death penalty.xvii So not all who oppose abortion, myself included, support the death penalty.
Sources:
-Partial Birth Abortion: That the abortion movement continues to support the abhorrent and now federally illegal practice of live birth abortion, shows just where their hearts are really at. As testified before Congress by nurses Jill Stanek and Allison Baker, babies who survived the late-term Intact Dilation and Extraction abortion process were being left to die and, under the law, were legally allowed to starve to death in soiled back rooms or simply were thrown into waste baskets or on tables to perish.
-Physicians: As Physicians For Life, a coalition of pro-life medical professionals, points out, the first rule of a physician should be, "First, do no harm." This guiding principle is taught in medical schools nationwide, as a tenet for all students to follow when entering the medical profession, yet is clearly not the standard when it comes to abortion.
As the National Library of Medicine recognizes, this phrase is found in the well-known Hippocratic Oath of ancient Greece, which also includes the lesser-known statement, "I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion."xviii
-The Judiciary: Henry J. Friendly is widely considered one of the great judges in the nation's history. And as brought to light by federal Judge A. Raymond Randolph, "What is not known is that in 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade, Judge Friendly wrote an opinion in the first abortion-rights case ever filed in a federal court. No one knows this because his opinion was never published. I have a copy of the opinion, and his papers are now at the Harvard Law School, awaiting indexing."xix
Friendly, three years before Roe v. Wade, would debunk the notion of a right to privacy as consistent with prior law, and emphasize that privacy should exist only when it does not harm others. The words of this great judge were as follows:
A holding that the privacy of sexual intercourse is protected against governmental intrusion scarcely carries as a corollary that when this has resulted in conception, government may not forbid destruction of the fetus. The type of abortion the plaintiffs particularly wish to protect against governmental sanction is the antithesis of privacy. The woman consents to intervention in the uterus by a physician, with the usual retinue of assistants, nurses, and other paramedical personnel, indeed the condition calling for such intervention may very likely have been established by clinical tests. While Griswold may well mean that the state cannot compel a woman to submit to an abortion, but see Buck v. Bell ___U.S. ___ (___), it is exceedingly hard to read it as supporting a conclusion that the state may not prohibit other persons from committing one or even her doing so herself.
Plaintiffs say that to confine Griswold to the protection of marital privacy is to read the case too narrowly. They regard it as having established a principle that a person has a constitutionally protected right to do as he pleases with his—in this instance, her—own body so long as no harm is done to others. Apart from our inability to find all this in Griswold, the principle would have a disturbing sweep. Seemingly it would invalidate a great variety of criminal statutes which existed generally when the 14th Amendment was adopted and the validity of which has long been assumed, whatever debate there has been about their wisdom. Examples are statutes against attempted suicide, homosexual conduct (at least when this is between consenting unmarried adults), bestiality, and drunkenness unaccompanied by threatened breach of the peace. Much legislation against the use of drugs might also come under the ban.
...
One would have to be insensitive indeed not to be deeply moved by the evidence the plaintiffs have presented. Testimony is scarcely needed to understand the hardship to a woman who is carrying and ultimately bearing an unwanted child under the best of circumstances. The evidence shows how far circumstances often are from the best. It stressed the plight of the unmarried mother, the problems of poverty, fear of abnormality of the child, the horror of conception resulting from incest or rape. These and other factors may transform a hardship into austere tragedy. Yet, even if we were to take plaintiffs’ legal position that the legislature cannot constitutionally interfere with a woman’s right to do as she will with her own body so long as no harm is done to others, the argument does not support the conclusion plaintiffs would have us draw from it. For we cannot say the New York legislature lacked a rational basis for considering that abortion causes such harm. Even if we should put aside the interests of the father, negligible indeed in the many cases when he has abandoned the prospective mother but not in all, the legislature could permissibly consider the fetus itself to deserve protection. Historically such concern may have rested on theological grounds, and there was much discussion concerning when “animation” occurred. We shall not take part in that debate or attempt to determine just when a fetus becomes a “human being”. It is enough that the legislature was not required to accept plaintiffs’ demeaning characterizations of it. Modern biology instructs that the genetic code that will dictate the entire future of the fetus is formed as early as the ___ day after conception; the fetus is thus something more than inert matter. The rules of property and of tort have come increasingly to recognize its rights. While we are a long way from saying that such decisions compel the legislature to extend to the fetus the same protection against destruction that it does after birth, it would be incongruous in their face for us to hold that a legislature went beyond constitutional bounds in protecting the fetus, as New York has done, save when its continued existence endangered the life of the mother.
We would not wish our refusal to declare New York’s abortion law unconstitutional as in any way approving or “legitimating” it. The arguments for repeal are strong; those for substantial modification are stronger still. Apart from the humanitarian considerations to the prospective mother that we have outlined, the state’s interest with respect to abortion would seem very much less in an era when the birth rate constitutes perhaps the most serious single danger to society than when a young nation needed people for its development. But the decision what to do about abortion is for the elected representatives of the people, not for three, or even nine, appointed judges.
Policy choices with respect to abortion are not limited to drastic prohibition like New York’s on the one hand or complete freedom on the other. One variant is a liberalization of grounds. Here there are subvariants. The proposal in the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code, which includes danger not only to the life but to the health of the mother, conception as a result of incest or rape, and probable abnormality of the child, is the best-known example. A legislature might decide to enlarge upon this list. It might permit abortions whenever the mother was below (or above) a certain age, whenever she was unmarried, when the parents could establish inability to care for the child, when there were already more than a certain number of children in the household, etc. There is room also for considerable differences in procedures—how far to leave the decision to the physician performing the abortion, how far to require concurrence by other physicians or, where appropriate, psychologists or social workers. One can also envision a more liberal regime in the early months of pregnancy and a more severe one in later months. There is also opportunity for debate, both on ethical and on physiological grounds, as to what is early and what is late. The legislature can make choices among these variants, observe the results, and act again as observation may dictate. Experience in one state may benefit others; this is conspicuously an area for application of Mr. Justice Brandeis’ view that the Fourteenth Amendment should not be so utilized as to prevent experimentation in the laboratories of the several states. In contrast a court can only strike down a law, leaving a vacuum in its place. To be sure, when it does this, it may sometimes be able to indicate how the legislature may remodel the statute to conform it to constitutional requirements. [Cite instances, e.g., FELA, obscenity, wiretapping]. But if we were to accept plaintiffs’ argument based on Griswold, we would have to condemn any control of abortion, at least up to the uncertain point where the fetus is viable outside the womb. We find no basis for holding that by ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment the states placed at risk of judicial condemnation statutes then so generally in effect and still not without a rational basis, however one may regard them from a policy standpoint.
An undertone of plaintiffs’ argument is that legislative reform is hopeless, because of the determined opposition of one of the country’s great religious faiths. Experience elsewhere, notably Hawaii’s recent repeal of its abortion law, would argue otherwise.
But even if plaintiffs’ premise were correct, the conclusion would not follow. The contest on this, as on other issues where there is determined opposition, must be fought out through the democratic process, not by utilizing the courts as a way of overcoming the opposition of what plaintiffs assume but we cannot know to be a minority and thus clearing the decks, thereby enable legislators to evade their proper responsibilities. Judicial assumption of any such role, however popular at the moment with many highminded people, would ultimately bring the courts into the deserved disfavor to which they came dangerously near in the 1920's and 1930's. However we might feel as legislators, we simply cannot find in the vague contours of the Fourteenth Amendment anything to prohibit New York from doing what it has done here.
-Population: As the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. conclude, “The earth could, in theory, feed very many more people than now inhabit the globe.”xx The problem is that the earth is not one nation and thus the resources of farming-rich nations aren’t utilized effectively for all. We pay farmers, for instance, NOT to grow as many crops as they could, even as people elsewhere starve.xxi
We could build more vertically, high-rise complexes to house more people with joint recreational and public facilities. Here in the U.S., we have a very good land per capita rating (land per person), ranking 62nd of 233 countries.xxii Unfortunately, land is not being used most effectively for all. Ideally, more building would be done in areas with lower chance for catastrophe and away from areas with the best farming potential to make best use of crop growth. Obviously none of this is done, and is in part because of national differences. Not only are comparatively smaller countries like India packed with some of the largest populations, but their poorer economies do not allow for the sort of building that would most adequately house their populations.
As such, our nation with its abundance of natural resources and land has the ability to house many people, and is nowhere near the crisis level of India or China. The world has the ability to house many more as well if cooperation were used in sharing land and resources globally to assist in housing and caring for the poor.
-Other issues: We need to reform our adoption system, making it cheaper to adopt here in the U.S. There are still tens of thousands of adoptions each year, but numbers rose in recent years for international adoptions, though now declining once more. Furthermore, we need to ensure women are taken care of.
Part of this problem occurs because of divorce law. When 'irreconcilable differences' was allowed in the courts starting in 1970, this allowed couples to divorce for any reasons and avoid the responsibility that should come with the vows 'til death do us part'. As a result, women are not protected by marriage now, and we are seeing more single mothers. Removing irreconcilable differences might eliminate some of the necessity poor women have for seeking abortions.

SOURCES

i SCHENK v. U.S., 249 U.S. 47 (1919). FindLaw. Retrieved from http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=249&invol=47
ii Abortion in the U.S. [Report combines statistics from the CDC and Guttmacher Institute.] National Right to Life Committee. Retrieved from http://www.nrlc.org/Factsheets/FS03_AbortionInTheUS.pdf
Johnston, W.R. (2010, May 9). Summary of Registered Abortions Worldwide, through April 2010. Johnston's Archive. Retrieved from http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/wrjp3310.html
iii (2010, May). Facts on Induced Abortion in the United States. Guttmacher Institute. Retrieved from http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_induced_abortion.html
iv Ex-abortionists expose America's greatest scandal. WorldNetDaily. Retrieved from http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=30216
v Johnston, W.R., Dr. (2008, October 9). Reasons given for having abortions in the United States. Retrieved from http://www.johnstonsarchive.net/policy/abortion/abreasons.html
vi Lokal_Profil, Patstuart (2007, December 3). File:Map of US abortion laws pre-1973.svg. Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_US_abortion_laws_pre-1973.svg
Vestal, C. (2006, June 22). States probe limits of abortion policy. Stateline.org. Retrieved from http://www.stateline.org/live/ViewPage.action?siteNodeId=136&contentId=121780
vii Abortion History Timeline. National Right to Life Committee. Retrieved from http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/facts/abortiontimeline.html
viii Abortion. Gallup. Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
ix Saad, L. (2009, May 15). More Americans "Pro-Life" Than "Pro-Choice" for First Time. Gallup. Retrieved from http://www.gallup.com/poll/118399/more-americans-pro-life-than-pro-choice-first-time.aspx
x Neville, W. (2010, March 10). Utah: Prosecuting women is a "national model" for the anti-abortion movement. AmplifyYourVoice.org. Retrieved from http://www.amplifyyourvoice.org/u/AFY_Will/2010/3/10/Utah-A-national-model-for-the-antiabortion-movement
xi Franz, W. (2009, January 22). Statement of Wanda Franz, Ph.D. National Right to Life Committee. Retrieved from http://www.nrlc.org/press_releases_new/FranzStatement012209.html
xii Marjorie Danenfelser. Susan B. Anthony List. Retrieved from http://www.sba-list.org/site/c.ddJBKJNsFqG/b.4145571/k.48C0/Marjorie_Dannenfelser.htm
xiii Meet Kristen, Executive Director of DFLA. Democrats for Life of America. Retrieved from http://www.democratsforlife.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=64&Itemid=49
xiv Jill Stanek.com. Retrieved from http://www.jillstanek.com
xv Breaking Poverty: Pro-life Charity Says Train Teen Moms First. Benzinga. Retrieved from http://www.benzinga.com/press-releases/b70497/breaking-poverty-pro-life-charity-says-train-teen-moms-first
xvi (2010, March 18). Bergen county charity helping single moms. NorthJersey.com. Retrieved from http://www.northjersey.com/news/non-profit/events/88330102_Bergen_County_charity_helping_single_moms.html
xvii Member Groups. Consistent Life. Retrieved from http://www.consistent-life.org/members.html
xviii (2009, June 1). Greek Medicine – The Hippocratic Oath. National Library of Medicine. Retrieved from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/greek/greek_oath.html
xix Randolph, A.R. Before Roe v. Wade: Judge Friendly's Draft Abortion Opinion. Retrieved from http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol29_No3_Randolph.pdf
xx Dimensions of need – How many people can the land support? Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Retrieved from http://www.fao.org/docrep/u8480e/u8480e0e.htm
xxi (2008, April 15). U.S. seeing worst food inflation in 17 years. Associated Press. Retrieved from http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24127314/from/ET/
xxii Area land (per capita) by country. NationMaster.com. Retrieved from http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/geo_are_lan_percap-geography-area-land-per-cap

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