late term abortions are illegal unless the fetus is aborted within the womb.

Very few late term abortions are not done in Canada unless there is a genetic or extreme danger posed to the woman. But the other thing this court seems to be saying is that fetus has rights independent of the woman. That is not usually the case. Most courts have ruled that the fetus has no rights until it breathes independently and until that time the mother comes first.

This is a dark day for women's rights. This judgement was made by five men for all of America's womanhood. Do they have any idea how much suffering a woman goes through when the decision to abort is made between the woman and her doctor? Many women will not be free to travel to countries where abortion is legal. Women will possibly endanger their own lives by the delay that is caused by abortions not being legal in the country where they live.

And will this decision foster legislation and decisions that chip away at a woman's right to make decisions about their own bodies? This Supreme Court decision is a retrogressive step for more than 50% of the United States population.

There is no medical procedure called partial birth abortion and there never has been.

The court's internal logic is that they aren't impacting the right of any woman at all to obtain an abortion -- only to have an abortion conducted using a certain procedure. They hold open the door to an "as-applied" challenge, saying in effect "If we *did* impact a woman's access to abortion, other than by an arbitrary choice of technique, then bring us a challenge to the law on *that* basis."

-t

AT which point, the woman will be dead.

Again, please show a case where a woman will be unable to obtain an abortion because of this law. And, when time is of the essence, SCOTUS has recently reaffirmed (in a medical marijuanna case) the broad possibilities of a medical necessity defense in ex-post-facto proceedings, should you imagine a doctor who, in the heat of the moment, sees no other possibility.

-t

I've posted the College of Obstetrician's brief on the front page. I'm so glad that you, Congress, and the Supremes think they know more about what is healthy for pregnant women than the College of Ostetricians.

Such criticism is soundly, rightly directed against Congress who passed this "do very little" law for political theater, mostly. Don't blame SCOTUS, though, for correctly saying that since they can't see from what's before them that it harms anyone, and since Congress gave a nominally acceptable reason to regulate this way, Congress was acting within their perogative. That's just sound jurisprudence.

-t

Wrong. This is a direct contradiction of previous rulings. And if you don't believe me, believe Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

I'm so glad, by the way, to see that having been smacked down on the original assertion that it would cost women's lives, you've shifted to a different argument - that it's a good judgement, but a bad law.

Either way, women are going to die, and the blood is on the hands of those who could have stopped those deaths and chose not to.

(Although I could misunderstand perhaps you think that Congress and the Supreme Court know what women need during pregnancy better than the College of Obstetricians? Is that what you're arguing?)

Y'know, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who knows a thing or two about the law, thinks you could have had a good ruling that would have struck this down and that not striking it down ignores precedent - and we both know that if the makeup of the court hadn't changed in the last two years, it would have been struck down.

This was a political decision by the court - Alito and Roberts were chosen specifically because it was known they would make this sort of decision; in violation of prior precedent.

And as a result women will die. And yes, all those who contributed to those women's death bear the moral responsibility for those deaths.

I would think this law was a bad law no matter what, but what moves it into the outrageous category is that there's no health exception, when the College says it actually is often needed for heatlh.

And, of course, "partial birth abortion" isn't even a medical term, so doctors now aren't entirely sure what is forbidden, sending a chill through the profession.

Wonderful. Bad law all around.

I have not shifted positions in the slightest, and you have not offered an iota of evidence that any woman will be harmed or denied access to abortion as a result of this decision.

-t

These folks had no problem finding the term in a medical dictionary.

http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/PBAdictionary.html

They also have a illustrated explanation of what it is at this URL:

http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/pba/index.html

I suspect you can also find what the abortionist is suppose to do if the child is “accidentally” born – comes far enough out of the mother to take its first breath - at this URL. Then you can guess what the abortionist probably does if the unborn “accidentally” becomes an infant.

Calling it barbaric is being kind.

No people should ever do this to their offspring.

To my way of thinking any nation that calls this a freedom is giving up any right to something called the “moral high ground.”

I guess the woman dying is preferable to you. And I guess the nrlc, a partisan organization, knows better than the COLLEGE OF OBSTETRICIANS what a medical procedure is and when it is needed.

If you’re really interested in the health of the woman then you probably know that only a small percentage of abortions are performed for health reasons.

According to this biased site

LINK

93% of abortions are performed as a method of birth control. The other 7% of the abortions are performed because of the reasons beyond the mother’s control – including rape and incest, problems with the fetus, and threats to the mother’s health.

If you and I were two politicians deciding whether to legalize abortion I’d gladly agree to legalize the 7% if you were willing to outlaw the other 93%.

If your concern is for the number of women who died from illegal abortions before RvW, you might want to read the page at the following URL.

LINK

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Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of the National Abortion Rights Action League, admits his group lied about the number of women who died from illegal abortions when testifying before the Supreme Court in 1972. "We spoke of 5,000 - 10,000 deaths a year.... I confess that I knew the figures were totally false ... it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics?"

That claim of thousands of maternal deaths due to illegal abortion doesn't measure up when compared with other statistics. About 50,000 women of child-bearing age die each year -- from all causes combined. To suggest that 10,000 of these deaths were from illegal abortion would make that the cause of one out of every five deaths, or twenty percent. This would have made illegal abortion the leading cause of death among women in that age group.
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More realistic estimates of deaths from illegal abortions are included on the link.

Perhaps you’re more concerned about the collapse of an industry serving the needs of irresponsible men.

Perhaps you’re more concerned about the collapse of an industry serving the needs of irresponsible men.

That is really insulting and uncalled for

Canuck, you can begin to change my thinking on this if you can show me a good reason to believe that any women will be unable to obtain a formerly permitted abortion as a result of this decision. I can believe you can show that certain medical practices are prohibited and others permitted but why should I believe that access to abortion is reduced by this decision? SCOTUS seems to believe that access is not reduced.

-t

thread

They debated the legal jargon of the decision extensively. Women will be denied abortions, doctors will be arrested and possibly lose their license to practice. The penalty for illegal late-term abortions is two years.

According to you no-one will be stopped from having procedures...so what in your mind is the reason for the two-year sentence if abortions won't be denied? If that thread doesn't convince you, pose your question in the KOS thread because experts in the legal terminology of it would be better able to explain it than I. BTW, I had read it from the beginning to about reply #460.

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Thanks for the clarification Tina.

You are confusing the prohibition of a particular technique of abortion for a general prohibition of abortion. This is such a basic error that I have to imagine you either dissembling or frothing in a fevered manner. There is no penalty for late-term, pre-viability abortions -- only for late-term, pre-viability abortions that use certain techniques.

-t

I believe that once someone replies to a comment it can't be edited.