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I Don’t Think Abortion Is Murder, And Neither Do You

I Don’t Think Abortion Is Murder, And Neither Do You

At the heart of the pro-life movement is a basic premise: Abortion is murder. An Idaho state senator, however, got unusual attention in February when he voiced that sentiment that to a group of students lobbying for birth control measures.

Conservative writer Kevin Williamson was recently hired by The Atlantic magazine — and promptly fired over old tweets in which he referred to the procedure as a “homicide” that should be treated “like any other homicide.” He added that those who support capital punishment (which he doesn’t) should favor the death penalty for women who get abortions.

The view that terminating a pregnancy amounts to baby-killing is standard among anti-abortion activists, but it has currency beyond them. Karlyn Bowman, a polling expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, writes, “When pollsters ask Americans whether abortion is an act of murder or the taking of a human life, pluralities or majorities say that it is.”

But this is a rhetorical device or a moral conceit, not a well-thought-out conviction. The vast majority of people who endorse it really don’t mean it. Even they exhibit a deep sense that a fetus has an appreciably lower status than an actual person.

Williamson’s controversy is proof. What doomed him was a comment suggesting that women who get abortions should be hanged — though he later wrote, “I was making a point about the sloppy rhetoric of the abortion debate, not a public-policy recommendation.”

If abortion is morally indistinguishable from killing a newborn, though, why shouldn’t those who procure abortions be severely punished? It’s the clear logical implication of the pro-life argument.

Donald Trump inadvertently deviated from the pro-life playbook in 2016 when he said women who get abortions should face “some sort of punishment,” only to recant. Mike Pence insisted that he and Trump “would never support legislation against women who make the heartbreaking choice to end a pregnancy.”

Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, said then, “No pro-lifer would ever want to punish a woman who has chosen abortion. We invite a woman who has gone down this route to consider paths to healing, not punishment.”

“Healing” is not what people normally think is appropriate for cold-blooded killers, and murder is rarely portrayed as a “heartbreaking choice.” Those who speak this way are effectively conceding that abortion is fundamentally different from homicide.

Trump is one of them. He regularly calls for tough measures to curb Chicago’s homicides, which totaled 650 last year. Nationally, however, there are some 650,000 abortions annually. If they amount to murder, then the non-fetuses who die are a small share of the homicide total.

But hardly anyone truly regards having an abortion as equal in evil to killing an adult or a child. Hardly anyone thinks a woman who has an abortion belongs in a cell next to a guy who strangles his child.

About 1 of every 4 American women will have an abortion by age 45, according to the Guttmacher Institute. If you regard abortion as murder and think your sister, daughter, aunt, niece, cousin or friend should go to prison for decades — or be executed — if she ever terminated a pregnancy, you’re being consistent. If you regard abortion as murder and think they deserve a gentle path to healing, you’re not.

But few opponents of abortion grasp what it would mean to seriously regard the embryo as a full human starting at conception. As Northwestern University bioethicist Katie Watson notes in her recent book Scarlet A: The Ethics, Law and Politics of Ordinary Abortion, half of fertilized eggs fail to implant, and up to 20 percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage.

“If fertilized eggs are morally equivalent to born people,” she asks, “why aren’t we devoting tremendous research dollars to stopping miscarriages?” The silence on “natural” losses in pregnancy speaks volumes.

If abortion is not murder, it is impossible to justify banning it, early in pregnancy or later. Women have the right to control their own bodies — have knee surgery or not, donate blood or not, go sky diving or not. The freedom to end a pregnancy is part of that physical autonomy.

Steve Chapman blogs at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chapman. Follow him on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

IMAGE: A protester holds up a sign in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on the morning the court took up a major abortion case, Washington March 2, 2016. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

 

Judge: North Dakota’s Ban On Abortions After Six Weeks Is Unconstitutional

Judge: North Dakota’s Ban On Abortions After Six Weeks Is Unconstitutional

By Paresh Dave, Los Angeles Times

North Dakota’s law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy is unconstitutional, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, striking down what critics had called the nation’s most extreme limit on the procedure.

The law, which was approved last year but never took effect, made it a crime for a woman to abort a fetus with a detectable heartbeat. Offending doctors faced up to five years in prison. An exception was allowed for medical emergencies.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland said the law was “in direct contradiction” to the Supreme Court’s 40-year-old decision in Roe v. Wade, which established “viability” as the critical point at which states could begin restricting abortions. North Dakota and several other states already ban abortions when a fetus is considered viable, typically at about four months.

“The United States Supreme Court has spoken and has unequivocally said no state may deprive a woman of the choice to terminate her pregnancy at a point prior to viability,” Hovland wrote.

He said that while the “emotionally fraught” controversy over a woman’s right to choose would continue, courts are obligated to uphold the existing precedent until the U.S. Supreme Court weighs in again.

An Arizona measure that sought to ban abortions starting at 20 weeks and an Arkansas ban on abortions after about 12 weeks were also struck down recently by federal judges. The Arkansas and North Dakota measures were the strictest measures passed in 2013, the National Women’s Law Center said.

The challenge to the North Dakota law was brought by the state’s only abortion clinic, Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, with the help of the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York City.

Nancy Northup, the center’s president and chief executive, celebrated the decision and admonished lawmakers.

“Women should not be forced to go to court, year after year in state after state, to protect their constitutional rights,” she said in a statement. “We hope today’s decision, along with the long line of decisions striking down these attempts to choke off access to safe and legal abortion services in the U.S., sends a strong message to politicians across the country that our rights cannot be legislated away.”

North Dakota Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem was not immediately available for comment, his spokeswoman said.

In court filings, the state admitted that it was trying to ban all abortions. A physician speaking for the state argued that viability was reached at the point of conception.

Hovland acknowledged that viability was a flexible point to be determined by doctors. Although medical advances mean viability can be earlier than it used to be, he said that he was in no position to accept the state expert’s “giant leap.”

“To take the position that viability occurs at the moment of conception results in a complete ban of all abortions which is in clear defiance of United States Supreme Court precedent,” Hovland wrote.

The clinic argued that most women don’t realize they are pregnant for about a month, leaving them a week to seek an abortion. About 91 percent of the abortions it performs are at and after six weeks, the clinic told government regulators. And the clinic typically performs abortions only one day per week, making the time constraint an undue burden on women.

“The state can impose regulations aimed at ensuring a thoughtful and informed choice, but only if such regulations do not unduly burden the right to choose,” the judge wrote in agreement.

The North Dakota Supreme Court is still weighing a challenge from the same plaintiffs about legislation that bans medicated abortions.

Photo from Flickr Commons/World Can’t Wait