Posts tagged Abortion

The Gosnell Murder Trial

47
3 weeks ago
by Monotreme in
Dr. Kermit Gosnell

Dr. Ker­mit Gosnell

If even a small frac­tion of what is being said about Dr. Ker­mit Gos­nell is true, he’s a despi­ca­ble human being.

Gos­nell is on trial in Philadel­phia, charged with the death of seven babies and one woman.

The woman, 41 year old Kar­na­maya Mon­gar, died from an over­dose of Demerol admin­is­tered by his untrained staff dur­ing an abor­tion pro­ce­dure. She was a native of Bhutan who lived in Vir­ginia and sought a late-​​term abor­tion from Gosnell.

The Gos­nell mur­der trial has become a cause cele­bré, how­ever, not because of the grisly details revealed at his trial. Rather, it has exploded into a media firestorm because the polar­ized right wing accuses the polar­ized left wing of ignor­ing the trial because of an indif­fer­ence to the deprav­i­ties that went on in Gosnell’s so-​​called med­ical clinic.

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Ultrasounding Board

13
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

A trans­vagi­nal ultra­sound of a devel­op­ing fetus at 5 weeks, from the Advanced Fer­til­ity Clin­ics of Chicago. The orig­i­nal cap­tion to this image says: “The fetus is too small to be seen this early in preg­nancy”. The black hole is the sac con­tain­ing the devel­op­ing embryo and is 6.25 mm (about 1/​4″) in diam­e­ter, or about the size of a pea.

In pre­vi­ous arti­cles, I’ve dis­cussed how the so-​​called Repub­li­can War on Women got started, how the meme caught fire, and how the Repub­li­can reac­tion to the fight of Chi­nese dis­si­dent Chen Guangcheng crit­i­cizes some of the same behav­iors that Republican-​​controlled state leg­is­la­tors have exhib­ited over the past year.

In par­tic­u­lar, one leg­isla­tive approach that has gained increas­ing pop­u­lar­ity in the last year are laws that man­date an ultra­sound of preg­nant women seek­ing an abor­tion. Before five weeks ges­ta­tion (i.e., about three weeks after the first missed period), abdom­i­nal ultra­sounds are not fea­si­ble. These laws man­date ultra­sounds as early as three weeks ges­ta­tion pur­port­edly to show a woman her child’s “beat­ing heart” (actu­ally a col­lec­tion of rhythmically-​​contracting mus­cle cells that will become a heart in time). Since the only such ultra­sound that can be per­formed at three weeks ges­ta­tion is a trans­vagi­nal ultra­sound, these laws essen­tially require a woman to undergo a med­ically unnec­es­sary inva­sive pro­ce­dure in order to get an abor­tion. North Car­olina, Texas and Okla­homa have the most strin­gent require­ments.
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Your War Bad, Our War Good

12
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

Chen Guangcheng. Source: Chinaaid/​European Press Photo Agency

Last week, Chi­nese human rights activist Chen Guangcheng escaped bru­tal house arrest and beat­ings and fled to United States pro­tec­tion in the Amer­i­can Embassy in Bei­jing. News sources within China report that Chen has now left the embassy with a guar­an­tee of safe pas­sage and will remain in China. Chen’s escape from house arrest coin­cides with a visit to China by Sec­re­tary of State Hillary Clin­ton.

With the state visit, Repub­li­cans have amped up their pres­sure on Pres­i­dent Obama to force China to stop beat­ing and har­rass­ing Chen, his fam­ily, and his sup­port­ers. Pre­sumed Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee Mitt Rom­ney Sun­day called on Pres­i­dent Obama to “take every mea­sure” to pro­tect Chen. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Chris Smith (R-​​Trenton, NJ) said, in a press release,

Over the next few hours/​days, what­ever it takes, every­thing dis­cussed in China between Sec­re­tary Clin­ton and Pre­mier Wen, as well as their staffs,  must be through the prism of the strug­gles, tor­ture, escape and jus­tice over­due Chen Guangcheng, his fam­ily and other human rights activists in China.

Chen and his fam­ily are being per­se­cuted by local offi­cials (with the appar­ent col­lu­sion of the Chi­nese Gov­ern­ment) for the “crime” of speak­ing out in defense of women who are being forced to suf­fer unwanted med­ical pro­ce­dures, forced abor­tion and forced ster­il­iza­tion. For exam­ple, Chi­nese women have had an intrauter­ine device inserted with­out their con­sent, and those try­ing to stop local offi­cials from doing so have been beaten.

The left and right of the Amer­i­can polit­i­cal spec­trum are united in call­ing for Chi­nese offi­cials to leave women’s bod­ies alone, and give women the choice to refuse inva­sive pro­ce­dures. But accord­ing to Rep. Smith and other Repub­li­cans, it’s per­fectly fine to insert vagi­nal probes into women against their will, sim­ply for hav­ing the temer­ity to seek a legal med­ical pro­ce­dure. (more…)

It’s Not Political, It’s Personhood

13
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

“Today, I Am a Man” (Photo: Stan Beyler, Ph.D., Uni­ver­sity of North Carolina.)

Last week, the Mis­sis­sippi Supreme Court cleared the way for a Novem­ber 8, 2011, pop­u­lar vote on Amend­ment 26, which would rede­fine “per­son” in the Mis­sis­sippi State Con­sti­tu­tion as a cell, or cloned cells, at the moment of con­cep­tion or cloning.

The pro­po­nents of this mea­sure, Per­son­hood Mis­sis­sippi (also called “Yes on 26″), clearly expect that pas­sage will result in a ban on all abor­tions in the state. In par­tic­u­lar, they seem to be forc­ing a chal­lenge in the United States Supreme Court over the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ity of the mea­sure, appar­ently since Chief Jus­tice Burger and Jus­tices White and Stew­art used this logic as a poten­tial route to ban abor­tion in an exchange regard­ing hypo­thet­i­cal sce­nar­ios dur­ing the 1973 Roe v. Wade delib­er­a­tions. (Pro­po­nents of “per­son­hood” are con­ve­niently ignor­ing the part of the response where Roe’s attor­ney says, “it would have to be adjudicated”.)

The text of the pro­posed amend­ment, in full, is:

Be it Enacted by the Peo­ple of the State of Mis­sis­sippi: SECTION 1. Arti­cle III of the con­sti­tu­tion of the state of Mis­sis­sippi is hereby amended BY THE ADDITION OF A NEW SECTION TO READ: Sec­tion 33. Per­son defined. As used in this Arti­cle III of the state con­sti­tu­tion, “The term ‘per­son’ or ‘per­sons’ shall include every human being from the moment of fer­til­iza­tion, cloning or the func­tional equiv­a­lent thereof.” This ini­tia­tive shall not require any addi­tional rev­enue for implementation.

The pro­po­nents of this leg­is­la­tion believe it will ban all abor­tions and human cloning within the bor­ders of Mis­sis­sippi. I think this is true, at least until it can be adju­di­cated by the courts, but I would be wary of the Law of Unin­tended Con­se­quences in this case. (more…)

Doomsday

171
1 year ago
by filistro in

Social con­ser­v­a­tives tend to be fond of end-​​time sce­nar­ios from an escha­to­log­i­cal per­spec­tive, but not too many of them know (or will admit) that a dif­fer­ent sort of dooms­day is threat­en­ing the Repub­li­can party…and this one is based on demographics.

A cou­ple of months ago I wrote “El Prob­lemo de los Repub­li­canos,” exam­in­ing one half of this soci­o­log­i­cal wreck­ing ball that is hurtling toward the GOP. That is the grow­ing pop­u­la­tion of minori­ties in the United States, all groups who have his­tor­i­cally not been well-​​treated by con­ser­v­a­tive law­mak­ers and have no par­tic­u­lar rea­son to feel voter loy­alty toward them. Now let’s take a look at the other half of that demo­graphic doomsday…the increas­ingly lib­eral social views of a whole gen­er­a­tion of younger voters.

Smart con­ser­v­a­tives are not entirely unaware of the danger…but at this point they are still fool­ing them­selves (and each other) with arti­cles like this one by Michael J. New, enti­tled “Should Social Con­ser­v­a­tives Worry About the Next Gen­er­a­tion?” The answer is always the same as the one reached in New’s arti­cle. “No,” they say. “Everything’s fine.” They reach this con­clu­sion by cit­ing stud­ies that show younger peo­ple are more opposed to abor­tion than they used to be, and same-​​sex mar­riage is still not widely accepted.

But are they just whistling past the grave­yard, and run­ning a grave polit­i­cal risk by refus­ing to mod­er­ate their rigid atti­tudes on social issues? It appears that answer may be yes. (more…)

January 22, 1973: Roe v. Wade

0
2 years ago
by Monotreme in

Norma McCor­vey, the tit­u­lar plain­tiff “Jane Roe.” Source: AP

Today marks the 38th anniver­sary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade deci­sion, which legal­ized abor­tion on demand in the United States.

The Wikipedia entry sum­ma­rizes the facts of the case lead­ing to the Supreme Court’s deci­sion: Norma McCor­vey (known as “Jane Roe”) dis­cov­ered she was preg­nant in June 1969. In an attempt to cir­cum­vent Texas law, which then allowed abor­tion in the case of rape, she first falsely claimed she was raped. That false claim failed because there was no police report.

In 1970, attor­neys Linda Cof­fee and Sarah Wed­ding­ton filed suit in a U.S. Dis­trict Court in Texas. … The defen­dant in the case was Dal­las County Dis­trict Attor­ney Henry Wade, rep­re­sent­ing the State of Texas. …

The dis­trict court ruled in McCorvey’s favor on the mer­its, and declined to grant an injunc­tion against the enforce­ment of the laws bar­ring abor­tion [Note: McCor­vey has since become an anti-​​abortion advo­cate]. The dis­trict court’s deci­sion was based upon the Ninth Amend­ment, and the court relied upon a con­cur­ring opin­ion by Jus­tice Arthur Gold­berg in the 1965 Supreme Court case of Gris­wold v. Con­necti­cut, regard­ing a right to use con­tra­cep­tives. Few state laws pro­scribed con­tra­cep­tives in 1965 when the Gris­wold case was decided, whereas abor­tion was widely pro­scribed by state laws in the early 1970s.

Roe v. Wade ulti­mately reached the U.S. Supreme Court on appeal.

…The court issued its deci­sion on Jan­u­ary 22, 1973, with a 7-​​to-​​2 major­ity vote in favor of Roe. [White and Rehn­quist dissenting.]

I’m always ready to chan­nel my inner Boehner, so here’s the text of the Ninth Amend­ment. (I’m read­ing it out loud, I swear, but I refuse to include an audio file link so you’ll just have to imag­ine it.)

The enu­mer­a­tion in the Con­sti­tu­tion, of cer­tain rights, shall not be con­strued to deny or dis­par­age oth­ers retained by the peo­ple. (more…)

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