Not a Time to Kill

I understand why the American public is divided on the issue of abortion, especially regarding abortions that take place early in the pregnancy. I personally believe that life begins at conception, but I understand that to a lot of people, a fertilized egg is just a mass of cells. However, when it comes to partial-birth abortion, which involves partially delivering a 5-6 month old fetus before killing it, it is very difficult for me to stomach any argument for why such a procedure should ever be permitted, except to preserve the health of the mother. In 2000 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of this procedure, but then it was outlawed in 2003 by the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to consider again the constitutionality of this abominable procedure. If the Court were to find the ban unconstitutional, thereby allowing this horrific practice, it would not only be rejecting an opinion held by the majority of Congress, but also a view held by 70% of Americans.

To be clear, the 2000 decision defines partial-birth abortion as a procedure that involves “intentionally delivering into the vagina a living unborn child, or a substantial portion thereof, for the purpose of performing a procedure that the [abortionist] knows will kill the...child and does kill the...child.” So while one could argue that a several-week old fetus is still a bunch of cells, the writers of the law are clear that regardless of your ideas about whether or not life begins at conception, by twenty weeks, the organism in question is a “child.” A living, breathing child, which is about a foot long in length, weighs about a pound, and has arms, legs, fingers, and toes. He or she has distinct facial features, with wrinkly reddish skin, eyes, lips, and a nose. Many babies delivered at this point and after are able to survive indefinitely outside the body of the mother.

There is even scientific evidence that between weeks 20 and 30, the unborn child is even more sensitive to pain than a living child or adult. Despite having the ability to experience pain, the unborn child does not develop mechanisms to dull the effect of pain until week 30. Subjecting an unborn child to an extremely painful procedure at the time when it is most vulnerable to pain is unquestionably inhumane.

And yet this is exactly what partial-birth abortion involves. By the fifth month, the child’s head is so large that it is not possible to completely deliver the baby – so the physician delivers a baby to the point where only the head remains inside the womb but then punctures the back of the skull to remove the brain.

Despite the gruesomeness of this procedure, there are still people who believe that a woman should have the right to choose to have a partial-birth abortion. They argue that this procedure is rare, it only accounts for 1% of abortions performed. Indeed, 2,200 partial-birth abortions are performed per year, the vast majority on healthy mothers with healthy fetuses. Yet the fact that something rarely occurs is not a valid argument for why it should be permitted, if it is otherwise morally reprehensible.

Still, supporters of partial-birth abortion insist the Court has no right to make a judgment call that, in their opinion, should be up to the woman and her doctor as to how to best terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Considering the fact that there are laws restricting how much pain butchers (for lack of a better word for people who work in slaughterhouses) are allowed to subject animals to, there should be a legal limit to how much pain a doctor is allowed to inflict on a fetus. Section 2 of the Humane Slaughter Act, used to protect animals, states that a method of slaughter is deemed legally humane only if “all animals are rendered insensible to pain by a single blow or gunshot or an electrical chemical, or other means that is rapid and effective, before being shackled, hoisted, thrown, cast or cut.” While the laws of the land ensure that animals are not subjected to unnecessary amounts of pain, there are still people who believe that a doctor has the legal right to terminate a pregnancy by puncturing a fetus’s skull with seven-inch scissors, an unquestionably painful procedure, especially considering the vulnerability of the fetus between 20-30 weeks.

Then there is the slippery slope argument, raised by pro-choice advocates who are concerned that banning partial-birth abortion is a step towards restricting abortion altogether. As mentioned earlier, the abortion question is tough because it requires policymakers to come to a consensus as to when life begins. But by the fifth month, when the child has developed limbs, facial features, and is sensitive to pain, the argument that the woman should have the privacy to decide what she wants to do with her body – when, in fact, the child can survive outside her body – no longer holds.

New York District Judge Richard Casey was right when he said that “The Court finds that the testimony at trial and before Congress establishes that D&X [partial-birth abortion] is a gruesome, brutal, barbaric, and uncivilized medical procedure.” Unless the health of the mother would be seriously endangered, there is no reason why the Supreme Court should allow such a morally repugnant procedure to continue.