The US Supreme Court has upheld a ban on a certain abortion procedure which was previously legal where needed to protect the health of the woman.The ruling marked the first time that the court has upheld a ban on a specific abortion procedure. It also marked a departure from the Supreme Court's past practice of requiring a "health exception" in laws governing abortion to allow the procedure when a woman's health would otherwise be at risk.
The ruling went 5-4. One of the opposing Judges, Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote,
"Today's decision is alarming. It tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. . . . And, for the first time since Roe, the Court blesses a prohibition with no exception safeguarding a woman's health."
The turnaround is highly significant because, The ruling buoyed abortion opponents who have placed their hopes in Bush's conservative nominees to the Supreme Court....The dramatic decision delivered to abortion opponents the promise of a more conservative court as reconstituted by Bush, who praised the majority's rejection of what he called an "abhorrent procedure" and suggested that he would continue working for greater restrictions on abortion.
Some battles are never won.
6 comments:
This makes illegal the act of mostly birthing a baby by pulling the child out of the mother feet first, leaving most of the baby's head in the mother, then puncturing the back of the baby's skull and sucking their brains out.
As babies can now survive from 23wks, it is done on late-term pregnancies so as to ensure the baby dies.
Hi Lucyna .. I'd be interested in your opinion on mine.
I continue to disagree with PC on his 'pre-human' definition of an embryo/foetus, nor am I personally comfortable with the practice of abortion.
But I'm considerably more uncomfortable with the govt, in this case the US Supreme Court, having the power to impose its belief upon all American women.
You find this procedure abhorrent. So do I as a matter of fact. But as technological advances allow continually clearer visual images of life in the womb, perhaps gynaecologists may in time change their minds about certain procedures currently deemed acceptable.
My point is an example of libertarianism in action. I have faith in the philosophy of human beings being left alone to progress and create the best possible outcomes.
Remember: the state that can give you want you want is the same state that can take it all away.
Sus,
There is a reason murder is illegal. Even though human beings can clearly see that the person that they kill is clearly human, that does not tend to stop them in a small number of cases. Making murder legal, relying on the goodwill of human beings to not murder their fellow human beings would not work. As we can see, with murder being illegal, people still kill others.
Likewise with the unborn. I'm sure there will be a number that will see the humanity of their unborn child and decide not to kill him or her. But, our lives ought not to be held to ransom by whether or not others think we are worthy of life. That is why we have murder laws.
Like Sus, I find the practice abhorrent as well. However, if it was a matter of the mother's life being at risk, then who are the Supreme Court to deny the process? For the first time they are disallowing a health exception. I have to agree with the dissenting Judge. Appalling.
Lindsay, though, how could it possibly be argued that this procedure is necessary in order to save the mother's life? The baby is mostly born before being stabbed in the skull.
The baby could be completely birthed without explicitly killing him or her - except that may not create the desired outcome, which is a dead baby.
This procedure is infanticide in all but name, and it ought to be banned.
Lucyna, I am sure there will be rare circumstances where the mother's health could be genuinely at risk.
But I can also imagine circumstances whereby a baby may be severely deformed through a mothers addictions or through domestic violence and she has not gotten herself along to a scan, or perhaps not even acknowledged she is carrying until 3 or 4 months into the pregnancy. Perhaps you believe all babies should be born regardless of an incapacity to experience quality of life. I don't.
It could also be that the health of the mother refers to her future mental health if she is forced to continue with the birth of a child as described and support it for the rest of her years. We have no right to force that on a person.
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