Nearing The End of Roe

Let me revise and extend my remarks about the Supreme Court upholding the so-called "partial-birth abortion" ban, in case they weren't clear. I called the procedure imaginary, and what I meant was that the phraseology "partial-birth abortion" is imaginary. The procedure of dilation and extraction is very real, and as there's no exception for the woman's health in the upheld law, this will mean that this procedure which can save lives will be outlawed. Here's a very powerful example of that in action.

As a young child -- I guess I was about 3 years old, given that my youngest sister is two years younger than me -- my mother had a late-term abortion. Now, to be fair, I don't know if she had a D&E or some other procedure -- it's a very painful memory for her, understandably, and I'm not going to ask her about it. But the circumstances were as follow:

The baby was sick. I don't know exactly what was wrong, but the doctors told my parents that there was only about a 50/50 chance the baby would survive to term. They also said the chances my mother would survive childbirth -- I'm one of four kids, and apparently the only one whose labor was relatively easy -- were only infinitesimally better than the probability of finding the missing WMD in Iraq. Even if my parents didn't have four children aged five or younger at the time, the decision to have an abortion would have been a no-brainer -- as painful a decision as it was, my mother's life and health were, are, and forever will be far more important than the potential for the life and health of another human being not even born yet.

And so my mother had a late-term abortion that saved her life.

Abortion foes like to deflect this criticism by saying that it doesn't happen very often. One mother who has to die needlessly because a bunch of male judges say that she has to is one too many. And that's the reality of what was done today. Let there be no abstraction in this debate; there's a real cost in lives. I don't like abortion; nobody does. I want to see less of them. But to deny medical treatment to women who will surely die is unnecessarily cruel. And every one of these sitting Democratic senators who voted for the original bill cannot think about their vote in abstract terms. There's a human cost.

Lincoln
Pryor
Biden
Carper
Bayh
Landrieu
Conrad
Dorgan
Nelson
Reid
Johnson
Leahy
Byrd

One of these Senators is running for President. Another is the Majority Leader. On certain issues I like all of them. But this is really shameful.

This is the beginning of the end of Roe v. Wade as we know it, as many states will now continue to chip away bit by bit until the law has no meaning. "Elections have consequences" is a headline I've seen all over the blogosphere today. How true that is.

UPDATE: I should mention that all of the top-tier Democratic Presidential candidates are lambasting this decision. Obama:

I strongly disagree with today’s Supreme Court ruling, which dramatically departs from previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women. As Justice Ginsburg emphasized in her dissenting opinion, this ruling signals an alarming willingness on the part of the conservative majority to disregard its prior rulings respecting a woman’s medical concerns and the very personal decisions between a doctor and patient. I am extremely concerned that this ruling will embolden state legislatures to enact further measures to restrict a woman's right to choose, and that the conservative Supreme Court justices will look for other opportunities to erode Roe v. Wade, which is established federal law and a matter of equal rights for women.

Clinton:

"This decision marks a dramatic departure from four decades of Supreme Court rulings that upheld a woman's right to choose and recognized the importance of women's health. Today's decision blatantly defies the Court's recent decision in 2000 striking down a state partial-birth abortion law because of its failure to provide an exception for the health of the mother. As the Supreme Court recognized in Roe v. Wade in 1973, this issue is complex and highly personal; the rights and lives of women must be taken into account. It is precisely this erosion of our constitutional rights that I warned against when I opposed the nominations of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito."

Edwards:

"I could not disagree more strongly with today's Supreme Court decision. The ban upheld by the Court is an ill-considered and sweeping prohibition that does not even take account for serious threats to the health of individual women. This hard right turn is a stark reminder of why Democrats cannot afford to lose the 2008 election. Too much is at stake -- starting with, as the Court made all too clear today, a woman's right to choose."