[IMC-Editorial] Op-Ed: Ban on "Partial-Birth" Abortion Would Be a Blow to Women's Rights

[The Ayn Rand Institute]

Dear Editor, 

Please consider this Op-Ed submission from the Ayn Rand Institute.


Ban on "Partial-Birth" Abortion Would Be a Blow to Women's Rights

By Glenn Woiceshyn

Given last week's Senate vote, Congress will soon ask President Bush
to sign a bill banning "partial-birth" abortions. Such a ban would
constitute a grave threat to women's health and a serious blow to
individual rights.

When abortion was illegal in America, many women died or suffered
serious medical problems from either self induced or illegal
"back-alley" abortions. Women streamed into emergency rooms with
punctured wombs, massive bleeding, and rampant infections.

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

A law banning "partial-birth" abortions establishes a precedent for
criminalizing other types of abortion--as America slides down the
dangerous slope to "back-alley" abortions. Those who are truly
pro-life must grasp the ominous implications of and underlying motives
behind such anti-abortion laws--before it's too late.

"Partial-birth" abortion, most commonly known as intact dilation and
extraction (D&X), is designed primarily to be used in the case of 5-
and 6-month-old fetuses that are dying, malformed, or threatening the
woman's health or life. The procedure involves pulling the fetus from
the womb, except for the head which is too large to pass without
injuring the woman. The head is then collapsed to allow removal. This
procedure is designed for the maximum protection of the woman. The
late-term alternative to D&X, one that doesn't require partial
removal, involves dismembering the fetus in the womb before
extraction--a much riskier procedure.

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

Banning any type of abortion to "protect the fetus" necessarily grants
rights to the fetus--an utter perversion of individual rights. If a
woman 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 the
woman's body? Properly, an infant's rights begin after the fetus is
removed from the mother's body and its umbilical cord cut.

It is a woman's individual rights--to her life, to her liberty, and to
the pursuit of her happiness--that sanctions her right to have an
abortion. Once "fetal rights" are granted to one stage of the
pregnancy, nothing will prevent their extension to all stages. "Fetal
rights" are a gimmick to destroy a woman's individual rights.

Tragically, many "pro-choicers" have conceded the "partial-birth"
debate to the anti-abortionists and accept a ban as a compromise (and
merely quibble about its scope). Such "pro-choicers" have apparently
been hoodwinked by the anti-abortionists' strategy of emotionalism and
evasion designed to disguise their deeper purpose.

The anti-abortionists' strategy involves focusing solely on the fetus
and describing the abortion in gruesome detail. Their professed
compassion for the fetus apparently leaves no room for considering the
woman's health and happiness. For them, waving a picture of a bloody,
mangled fetus constitutes an argument. If so, then so does waving a
picture of a woman whose future was ruined because she was denied an
abortion--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 rarely
performed late-term abortions, they zealously want all abortions
banned. Helen Alvare, a spokeswoman for the Catholic Bishops and a
staunch enemy of D&X, has declared, "In a moral sense all abortions
are equally awful."

According to anti-abortionists' dogma, God places the soul in the womb
at conception. Hence, via a leap of faith, the fertilized egg--a tiny
speck of cells--is granted the status of human being. At that moment,
the woman's status is demoted to that of slave and breeding mare--and
her womb becomes God's property (which, in practice, means the
government's property). The rights of the woman have therefore been
sacrificed to the alleged rights of the fetus. According to this
dogma, abortion is murder at any stage of the pregnancy (which
explains why some "pro lifers" feel morally sanctioned to kill doctors
and bomb abortion clinics).

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

Glenn Woiceshyn develops curriculum materials for schools and
homeschoolers, and is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute
(www.aynrand.org) in Irvine, California. The
Institute promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of Atlas
Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

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