|
  |
Join our e-Mail list! |
|
|
Join our e-Mail list! |
Mission Statement Pro-Life Message Sponsor Links
|
Federal Legislation September 29, 2003This is an update from the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) in Washington, D.C., issued Friday, September 29, 2003. For further information, call 202.626.8820, send email to LegFederal@aol.com, or visit the NRLC website.PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION BAN TO ADVANCE THIS WEEK; GANNETT NEWS SERVICE REVIVES MYTHS ABOUT ROE V. WADE AND ABOUT THE BILL WASHINGTON (Sept. 29, 2003) -- The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (S. 3) will advance in Congress this week, with final approval possible from at least one house by week's end. Both houses approved the legislation earlier this year by about two-to-one margins. The only substantive difference between the House and Senate versions is the Harkin Amendment, an expression of support for Roe v. Wade, which was narrowly adopted in the Senate. A House-Senate conference committee is expected to convene on Tuesday, September 30, to produce a "clean" bill -- without the Harkin Amendment -- which will then receive a final vote in both houses. The bill represents the first direct national restriction on any method of abortion since the Supreme Court legalized abortion on demand in 1973. President Bush urged Congress to pass the ban in his January 28 State of the Union speech. A January Gallup poll found that 70 percent of the public favors the ban. The prime sponsors of the bill are Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Congressman Steve Chabot (R-Oh.). NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson commented, "President Bush, 70 percent of the public, and four Supreme Court justices say there is no constitutional right to deliver most of a living baby and then puncture her head with a scissors. But in the Stenberg v. Carhart ruling in 2000, five Supreme Court justices said that Roe v. Wade guarantees an abortionist's right to perform a partial-birth abortion whenever he chooses. We hope that by the time this ban reaches the Supreme Court, at least five justices will be willing to reject such extremism in defense of abortion." Further details on the bill are provided in a memo titled "Recent Developments on Partial-Birth Abortion". A number of long-discredited myths about both partial-birth abortion and about the scope of Roe v. Wade have reappeared in some recent news coverage of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Some specific instances are discussed below under the subheading, "Revived Myths." For example, a Gannett News Service story that appeared on September 28 incorporates two of the more prevalent myths about Roe v. Wade, in addition to substantial distortions regarding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. WHAT THE PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION BAN ACT DOES The bill legally defines a partial-birth abortion as any abortion in which the baby is delivered "past the navel . . . outside the body of the mother," OR "in the case of head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother," BEFORE being killed. The bill would allow the method if it was ever necessary to save a mother's life. "Partial-birth abortion" is a legal term of art, contained in the congressional legislation (and in laws enacted in more than half the states, although these laws currently are not being enforced because of the 2000 Supreme Court opinion). It is erroneous to equate the method banned by the bill with any of a number of pseudo-medical terms that have been coined by abortion providers in recent years, some of which clearly apply to some procedures not banned by the bill, and others of which would exclude some abortions banned by the bill. For details, see, "Call It Partial-Birth Abortion -- It's the Law!". REVIVED MYTHS A few journalists have resurrected the myth that partial-birth abortions are performed mostly or only in cases in which the baby has profound disorders or the mother faces a dire physical threat -- even though such claims were thoroughly discredited in 1996 and 1997 by investigative journalists and by the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, among others. In truth, the method is used thousands of times annually, and the vast majority of partial-birth abortions are performed on healthy babies of healthy mothers. For details and links to documentation, see "Discredited Myths About Partial-Birth Abortion -- and Some Journalists Who Won't Give Them Up". For a collection of mythological material, see "Abortion Fight Looms in D.C.," by Pamela Brogan, a highly tendentious article distributed by Gannett News Service and published in Gannett papers beginning September 28. It appeared in the September 28 Detroit News here. The first three paragraphs of this story depend entirely on Gannett's acceptance of the assertion by some opponents of the bill that it will or might ban ALL abortions after the first trimester of pregnancy. (The woman described in the article did NOT have a partial-birth abortion.) Although this assertion is an extravagant misrepresentation that is contradicted by the plain language of the bill, no specific rebuttal of the claim by any supporter of the ban was presented in the story. The same story presents, in Gannett's own voice, two claims about Roe v. Wade that are demonstrably erroneous, which are discussed next. THE "FIRST TRIMESTER" MYTH The Gannett story asserts: "The [Roe v. Wade] decision . . . said abortion decisions in the first trimester must be left to physicians. The court further said states could regulate or restrict abortion in later stages of pregnancy but must provide an exception for the health of the mother." The notion that the "right to abortion" being enforced under Roe v. Wade is limited in some special way to "the first trimester" is a gross misconception, which has been repeatedly refuted by the Supreme Court itself. References to "the first trimester" or "the first three months" are so misleading that they were formally abandoned by many mainstream news outlets decades ago. In Roe, and in many subsequent decisions, the Court made it clear that abortion had to be allowed for ANY REASON whatever through "viability." "Viability" refers to the baby having lungs sufficiently developed to survive independently of the mother with technological assistance, which is a point currently reached in the late weeks of the SECOND trimester (often by 23 weeks, and usually by 24 weeks -- or about five-and-one-half months in layman's language). The original Roe/Doe ruling left the door open for minor medical-practice regulations to protect women's health in the second trimester, but it was clear from the language of the decision that these regulations could not amount to much, and they never did. After months of research on the partial-birth abortion debate, Washington Post medical writer David Brown, M.D., accurately summarized the Roe v. Wade ruling in an article published in the Sept. 17, 1996, edition of that newspaper, as posted here (PDF format). Dr. Brown wrote: < The landmark Supreme Court decisions Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton, decided together in 1973, permit abortion on demand up until the time of fetal "viability." > [Note: References to Roeare generally understood to apply to Doe as well, since both decisions were issued on the same day, and the Court said in Roe, "That opinion and this one, of course, are to be read together."] The Washington Post story went on to explain that even after "viability," the Court said that states must permit abortions sought for reasons of "health," explicitly defined to include (quoting the Court in Doe), "all factors -- physical, emotional, psychological, familial and the woman's age -- relevant to the well-being of the patient." Dr. Brown concluded, "Because of this definition, life-threatening conditions need not exist in order for a woman to get a third-trimester abortion." The "first three months" or "first trimester" shorthand was formally declared erroneous in the early 1980s by senior news executives of The New York Times, the Associated Press, and others. See the documents posted here. Moreover, anyone still laboring under the misconception that there is something legally distinct about "the first trimester" was corrected by the Supreme Court itself in the 1992 Casey ruling. In that ruling, the Court reaffirmed Roe v. Wade on a vote of 5 to 4, and held that the "abortion right" applied with equal force throughout the first and second trimesters until "viability." The Court explicitly repudiated ANY DISTINCTION WHATEVER between the first and second trimesters, writing, "We reject the trimester framework, which we do not consider to be part of the essential holding of Roe." Yet eleven years later, in this week's story, Gannett gave its readers a misleading summary of the state of the law, relying on the "trimester framework" that was explicitly "reject[ed]" by the Court itself in 1992. Further documentation on the "first three months myth" is posted here. THE 5-TO-4-ON-ROE MYTH The September 28 Gannett story asserts, in Gannett's own voice: "A Bush appointment to the Supreme Court could provide a majority that would vote to overturn the court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion." National Right to Life believes that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, the result of which would be to allow elected legislators to enact protective legislation to the degree desired by those who elect them. Therefore, it would be welcome news if in fact "only" five Supreme Court justices supported Roe. Regrettably, however, six current justices have voted to affirm Roe v. Wade: Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Kennedy, O'Connor, Souter, and Stevens. Only three of the current justices have ever voted to overturn or substantially scale back Roe: Justices Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas. In order to assert that a single appointment could overturn Roe , Gannett had to count Justice Kennedy as a supporter of overturning Roe v. Wade. But in the real world, Justice Kennedy in the 1992 Casey ruling voted to REAFFIRM Roe and to allow abortion for any reason up to "viability" -- with the result that Roe WAS reaffirmed, 5-4, rather than being overturned. Since then, one of the four anti-Roe justices, Byron White, was replaced by a pro-Roe justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, producing a current court that favors Roeby 6 to 3. In the 2000 Stenberg decision, Justice Kennedy voted to uphold Nebraska's ban on the partial-birth abortion method as consistent with Roe/Casey. In that case, he said nothing whatever to suggest that he was backing away from his 1992 reaffirmation of Roe as guaranteeing legal access to abortion for any reason up to "viability." Prof. Jeffrey Rosen of George Washington University Law School, who identifies himself as a "pro-choice critic of Roe," has said, "Justice Kennedy said nothing in Stenberg to suggest that he was backing away from his position in Casey, reaffirming Roe. And of course there's no more dramatic confirmation of this than his expansive decision in the 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, the sodomy case, where he specifically reaffirmed the broadest possible reading of Casey." For further information, see Prof. Rosen's essay in The New Republic here. If Gannett counts Justice Kennedy as an opponent of "Roe v.Wade," merely because he voted to uphold a ban on partial-birth abortion, then Gannett should also count 70% of the public as opponents of "Roe v. Wade," since 70% favored a ban on partial-birth abortions in either the second or third trimesters, in a Gallup poll earlier this year. The Gannett story appears to be another illustration of how in the hands of some journalists, "Roe v. Wade" is a very elastic concept that can easily be expanded or contracted depending on which version serves a particular story line -- and even used in clearly inconsistent ways within the very same story. Time magazine provided as described here. ADDITIONAL RESOURCES The NRLC website contains the most extensive archive of documentation on partial-birth abortion available anywhere on the internet, including documentation on all disputed issues surrounding partial-birth abortion, White House statements on the issue, groundbreaking reports by investigative journalists for major newspapers and periodicals, and expert-certified color illustrations of the method, all here. The color illustrations of the partial-birth abortion method that were displayed on the Senate and House floors during the debates this year, along with documentation of their accuracy by eminent medical authorities, are here. A basic resource, "Key Facts on Partial-Birth Abortion," is posted here. The NRLC archive also contains NRLC's in-depth testimony presented to Congress, with citations to primary sources, here. Back to Federal Legislation |
