Copyright 1999 P.G. Publishing Co.
Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette
November 3, 1999, Wednesday, SOONER EDITION
SECTION: EDITORIAL, Pg. A-23
LENGTH: 728 words
HEADLINE:
STEALTH TACTICS;
ABORTION OPPONENTS NEVER GIVE UP
DATELINE: BOSTON
BODY:
So it's going to be this kind of a year, is it?Anyone who thought
we'd get through just one election cycle without having the personal matter of
abortion turned into a political matter, can abandon all hope. Stay tuned to
your mailbox for fund-raising letters saying that the rights of women or the
rights of the fetus all hang on the voters.
This unhappy glimpse into
the future comes via the Midwest where the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
just upheld the laws of Illinois and Wisconsin banning the procedure known
colloquially and incorrectly as "partial-birth" abortion. The
ruling, with its narrow 5-4 majority, was announced exactly one year and one day
after the murder of Buffalo's Dr. Barnett Slepian. Talk about chilling effects.
With a legal sleight of hand, the 7th Circuit upheld laws almost identical to
those the 8th Circuit struck down. And since it isn't exactly kosher for women
of Nebraska, Arkansas and Iowa to have different constitutional rights than the
women of Illinois and Wisconsin, it appears that we are headed - take it again
from the top - back to the U.S. Supreme Court.
It's been nine years
since the court last ruled on abortion, when a shaky majority tried to put the
issue to rest. I wish the current justices good health, but this case is a
reminder that the next president will surely get to choose at least two
justices. The choice of president will, in short, dictate reproductive choices.
As for the Capitol dwellers? The Senate, you may recall, just approved a
partial-birth abortion ban for the third time in three years. It is sure to be
vetoed by this president. But just to give you an idea of how slim the
pro-choice majority is in the Senate, when Tom Harkin called for a
"sense-of-the-Senate" vote, 47 members said they were opposed to the entire Roe
vs. Wade decision.
Frankly, I preferred the old days when the
right-to-life strategy was at least principled. Pro-lifers lobbied for a
flat-out ban on abortions. They were out front about their goals.
But
having lost this argument with the public, the strategy shifted from trying to
make abortion illegal to trying to make it impossible. One radical arm of the
movement now attacks clinics, another arm creates legislative hurdles to place
in front of women and doctors.
In the last five years or so, the stealth
strategy has been to limit abortion, one procedure at a time, beginning with the
rare surgical technique known as dilation and extraction. This is almost
entirely reserved for pregnancies that have gone tragically awry, often
threatening the pregnant woman. But pro-life propaganda effectively marketed an
image of healthy women arbitrarily, willfully, perhaps whimsically, aborting
healthy fetuses in the birth canal just before their due date.
They
pinpointed the abortion of a fetus in the birth canal, "partially born," as
morally and legally different from the abortion of the fetus in a womb. One ban
at a time.
So far, 30 states have voted to impose these bans. In
Missouri, the Legislature went so far as to pass an "Infant's Protection Act"
that defined this procedure for the first time as infanticide. The Missouri law,
which is stayed until a court hearing, is written in such a way that a doctor
conceivably could be legally murdered by someone stopping a "murder."
It's no wonder that until now, most courts have blocked or limited these
bans. The state laws are so vague they could apply to many kinds of abortion,
even early term abortions. More to the point, Roe already prohibits
third-trimester abortions unless the woman's health or life is at risk. These
laws allow states to practice, or malpractice, a kind of gynecology that
specifically ignores the woman's health.
I never thought I would be
quoting the words of the conservative Reagan-appointed judge, Richard Posner of
the 7th Circuit. But in his searing dissent from the tortured reasoning of the
majority, Posner got to the heart of the matter. These statutes, he wrote, are
only concerned with one thing, "making a statement in an ongoing war for public
opinion. The statement is that fetal life is more valuable than women's health."
That's a line to take into any voting booth. Once again, ready or not,
like it or not, the right to choose will hang on the right vote.
ELLEN
GOODMAN IS A SYNDICATED COLUMNIST FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE.
LOAD-DATE: December 22, 1999 
