The Folly of the Partial-Birth Obsession

The early headlines referred to celebrations by

“anti-abortion activists,” but no one who cares about the well-being
of babies prior to their birth should take any comfort in this decision.

Republicans
responded enthusiasticaly April 18 to news that the Supreme Court had upheld
the constitutionality of the “Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of
2003,” a measure similar to a state law the Court had ruled against only
seven years earlier. The early headlines referred to celebrations by
“anti-abortion activists,” but no one who cares about the well-being
of babies prior to their birth should take any comfort in this decision.

No
abortion anywhere in the nation will be prevented by this law, which represents
a victory primarily for the conservative political strategists who have sought
to hide a host of policy sins — from war to nuclear modernization to
deregulation of polluters — behind their seemingly moral stance on the
rights of the unborn. Abortions by their nature are extirpative, and those
fetuses that would have succumbed before to this rare partial dismemberment
procedure will now be subject to the complete dismemberment that constitutes
the abortion technique employed greater than 99% of the time.

Given
the absence of any overall benefit to the fetus, why have conservatives
invested so much energy in passing similar laws in 28 states and in Congress
during two presidential administrations? The reason has little to do with
concern about the un-born. First, highlighting this tiny fraction of abortions,
many of which occur shortly after the point at which the results of pre-natal
genetic testing become available, is an assertion of the principle that it is
reasonable to impose criminal penalties for performing abortions.

There
is no data to support a role for the use of criminal law in decreasing
abortions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention collects severely
incomplete data, and has been sorely hampered in its ability to study the
reasons women seek abortions. Indeed, no serious attempt has been made in the
past twenty years to study the potential effectiveness of laws in reducing the
actual number of abortions. It could be argued that the high number of
abortions that took place prior to Roe-v-Wade proves that laws are not
effective in preventing abortion. The Guttmacher Institute has estimated that
prior to 1973, the abortion rate in the US was 16/1000 women
of reproductive age per year, which is the same rate we have now according to
the current CDC estimates.

The
Catholic Democracy Institute has projected that greater than 90% of women in
the US reside in states that would be
unlikely ever to restrict women’s access to abortion, further minimizing
any effect a potential reversal of Roe v. Wade might have on the total number of
abortions.

The
more important reason for the conservative zeal in passing these partial
delivery laws has been their role as a cheap litmus test to label politicians
as “pro-life” or “pro-abortion,” even if these
respective labels have no relevance to whether a legislator might work to
reverse social factors that underlie a woman’s pursuit of an abortion.

These factors, more than any punitive laws in small red states, will determine
whether the abortion rates that plummeted during the Clinton years will ever
fall further — or will continue to stagnate, as they have throughout the
Bush presidency according to both the current CDC and Guttmacher data. Whether
legal or illegal, the ending of a pregnancy will always be a matter of personal
moral discernment. Simplistic labels may help Republicans court Catholic and conservative
voters, but the Court’s validation of this exercise in political branding
will never replace the hard work of supporting women and appealing to
individual conscience for those who truly care about preserving life in its
earliest stages.