stopping emails from the Ayn Rand Institute Re: [IMC-Editorial] Op-Ed: Ban on "Partial-Birth" Abortion Would Be a Blow to Women'sRights

[Chris Kaihatsu]

Hi, all,

I've gotten three emails privately in support of asking the Ayn Rand
Institute to stop posting emails to this list. If there are no objections,
I'll be sending a request for them to stop.


Chris




----- Original Message -----
From: "The Ayn Rand Institute" <media at aynrand.org>
To: <imc-editorial at lists.indymedia.org>
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2003 1:07 PM
Subject: [IMC-Editorial] Op-Ed: Ban on "Partial-Birth" Abortion Would Be a
Blow to Women'sRights


> 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.
>
> If you plan to use this Op-Ed, please send an email to
> media at aynrand.org with your publication's
> name and the expected date of publication. Thank you.
>
> David Holcberg
> Media Department, Ayn Rand Institute
> 2121 Alton Parkway # 250, Irvine, CA 92606
> Phone: (949) 222-6550 ext. 226
> E-mail: davidh at aynrand.org
>
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>
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