Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘abortion’

Read this. Then read this:

A federal judge on Thursday ruled against the government’s ban on so-called partial birth abortions, saying the measure was unconstitutional because it failed to provide an exception to protect a mother’s health.

I wonder if I can use the novel’s ending to predict what will happen next in reality.

. . . was nice.

I headed down there over the weekend, and I managed to squeeze some city exploring in between the business I had to do. It’s been a number of years since my last visit, and I can’t get over how much the city has changed. Not just the conspicuous absence of a couple of towers. But also how much more patriotic everyone seems. And how clean the city is in general, compared to what I remember from my last time there. Still expensive though. That hasn’t changed.

At any rate, I missed a bunch of news over the weekend, and rather than play catch-up, I’ll post a few links:

Allison, Lynn, and Harry commemorate Yom HaZikaron. Barry has been all over the North Korean train crash story. David weighs in on the abortion debate. And Meryl tries to take back the F-word from the nutbags. (In case you’re wondering, the F-word in question is feminism.)

In other news, seems like the only Habs fan cheering these days is none other than Vinny Lecavalier. *Sigh*.

Yet another example of why, if I were American, I would never vote Republican no matter how cozy the party is with Israel:

The U.S. Senate, after an emotional debate, easily passed legislation on Thursday to make it a federal crime to harm or kill an “unborn child,” an issue that spilled into the battle over abortion rights.

On a 61-38 vote, the Republican-led Senate sent the measure, earlier approved by the House of Representatives, to President Bush.

Bush applauded the Senate vote and said he was looking forward to signing the legislation into law.

This legislations specifically excludes abortion, and thus doesn’t infringe on abortion rights.

BUT (and there’s always a but) anti-abortion groups are applauding it as a “step” towards granting the unborn the same rights as the living.

Don’t get me wrong – I think violence against a pregnant woman is despicable and anyone who commits it ought to be punished to the full extent of the law. But there are ways of stressing this without giving a fetus the same legal status as a person. A fetus has the potential to be a person, and thus deserves rights… but a fetus is not yet a person, and this murky legal definition is really just a political victory for those who would seek to deny the right to choose to all women regardless of belief.

Our neighbours to the south aren’t wasting much time in further restricting the rights of women, by legislating a ban on partial-birth abortions:

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved a ban on “partial birth abortions,” bringing anti-abortion forces within easy reach of a long-sought victory.

The U.S. Senate is expected to act within weeks, sending it to President Bush, who plans to sign it.

The procedure, often distorted by anti-abortion activists and misunderstood by most (male) legislators, is really only used when a fetus is severely deformed and there’s a risk to the life or health of the pregnant mother. But this new law aims to eliminate it, without providing an exception to protect the health of pregnant women:

Opponents of the ban say it is unconstitutional because it does not provide an exception to protect the health of a pregnant woman. Some also argue that the bill will actually apply to other more common abortion techniques, not just one particularly troublesome one.

New York Democrat Louise Slaughter said that backers of the ban are distorting it to suggest that it is a common procedure undertaken cavalierly on healthy fetuses. She argued that it is most often used when there are severe fetal deformities. “These are not children who will be born and run around the room,” she said.

I’m no fan of abortion but I think that the worst thing a government can do is to restrict the rights of a woman to choose. And this bill isn’t even aimed at people who callously abuse abortion as a form of birth control. Instead, it’s aimed at women whose health or even life may be at risk from a troubled pregnancy.

This is Congress practicing medicine – and not too well, for that matter. Legislators should stay away from meddling with the private reproductive rights of women.

The U.S. Senate has approved a ban on partial-birth abortions. President Bush is said to be eager to sign the ban into law.

One of the most interesting books I’ve read lately is Protect and Defend by Richard North Patterson. It’s political and legal fiction set in the future, but the central issue examined in the book is that of partial-birth abortion. It deals with a case of a fifteen-year-old girl fighting for the right to abort her hopelessly defective fetus in aims of preserving her reproductive health and ability to bear future children. Due to a fictional “Protection of Life Act”, she needs parental consent for this procedure, which her staunchly pro-life parents refuse to give, so she takes them to court. Meanwhile, a new president is fighting to get his nominee for the Supreme Court confirmed by senate, and the very political future of the country hinges on the case of this fifteen-year-old.

The surrounding issues in the book – viability of the fetus, physical and mental health of the mother, parental consent laws, and, most importantly, how the issue is used by politicians to advance their own careers at the expense of privacy – seem almost prophetic, given today’s announcement. In fact, the following quote is almost identical to one contained in the novel:

California Democrat Barbara Boxer said “partial birth” is not a medical term, but a political one.

“They made up the term partial birth abortion,” she said. “There isn’t such a thing. … It’s a very emotional term but what we’re talking about here is a procedure that is used in situations where any other procedure might cause grave harm to the woman.”

For the record, I’m not “pro-abortion” in the same sense that I’m not “pro-war”. Abortion, like war, is always regrettable. But I am very definitely pro-choice. I don’t believe that the state has any right to meddle in the reproductive rights of a woman. Each and every situation is different, and the woman is always in a better position to weigh and judge the situation than some legislator lobbying for votes.

It may surprise some regular readers of the blog, but it’s precisely reasons like this one that turn me off from the right-wing political contingent both in the U.S. and here in Canada. A political party that presumes to dictate its own version of “morality” to the public – often at great expense – is not one I’d want to have anything to do with. Foreign policy and the war on terror has overshadowed some of these issues, but they still exist. And for the women caught in the middle of the debate, their hard-won rights are being curbed a bit more every day.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that racketeering laws cannot be used against anti-abortion groups using violence and intimidation as tactics.

By an 8-1 vote, the high court said in an opinion by Chief Justice William Rehnquist the judgment that the anti-abortion activists had violated the racketeering laws must be reversed.

The civil lawsuit against Operation Rescue, the Pro-Life Action League and three of the league’s leaders was brought by the National Organization for Women and others. At issue were tactics that included violent demonstrations to block access to clinics.

This is yet another miserable example of the courts engaging in social engineering. What does it say about the U.S. judicial system, whereby judges are appointed by the administration in power and make decisions in line with the party who appointed them?

If violence and intimidation are being used on a case-by-case basis, the perpetrators should be prosecuted for those crimes. But when these tactics are being used on an organized, planned basis across a country, then individual prosecutions are no longer sufficient. That was the intention of racketeering laws (usually used against organized crime organizations such as the Mafia) – to prevent wide-scale use of threats and intimidation to coerce people or businesses into closing or committing illegalities.

Apparently, women seeking abortions – or doctors performing the service – aren’t seen as deserving of these protections, according to the Supreme Court. Disgusting.

According to Elana S., I was the Site of the Day on RightWingNews.com.

I guess now would be a good time to re-state my positions on certain issues: Pro-choice, against religion in public schools, pro-gun control, and pro-social programs.

I will resist being labelled until the end!

In the time since I started this blog, I haven’t exactly shied away from controversy in my postings. But with all the issues being debated – Mideast politics, Concordia politics, the US and potential war on Iraq, terrorism – I seem to be getting the most critical e-mails about my post below on Jim Turnbull and the Canadian gun lobby.

Now, the gun registry’s got problems and it might not be the most popular viewpoint out there to oppose those opposing it, but come on, this is far from the most controversial topic that’s come up here! So I wondered why it’s getting so much attention. Then it came to me: because I’m pro-Israel, people assume I must be right-wing in my politics and that I’m therefore a supporter of what our neighbours to the south call the “right to bear arms”.

Simply put, I attracted a right-wing readership with my main topic of discussion, and then alienated them by doing a 180 on an issue that I happen to disagree with them about. Don’t get me wrong, I agree to disagree – some of the smartest bloggers I know want to toss the gun registry out the window (check out the links on the lefthand side of this page) and it’s not like I don’t understand where they’re coming from. But I have to ask sometimes: what does wanting more restrictions on gun ownership and licensing have to do with supporting Israel?

Anyone notice anything strange about those combinations? They don’t logically follow. And I categorically reject the idea that we need to pick a side and go along with all the pet issues that have come to represent one side or another.

In my FAQ, I specifically state that I don’t identify with either the Left or the Right. My views are simply my views, and I think that the real hypocritical thing is to change them simply because the political stage has shifted in one direction or another. If I said I was a Liberal, and tomorrow all Liberals decided that their new pet issue was opposing all people with orange socks, and I disagreed with that, then it would be silly to go along with it simply because of a label, wouldn’t it?

I take issue with the Left for its overspending of our tax dollars, its hatred of anything with a profit motive, and its absolutely disastrous foreign policy – especially when it comes to the Mideast, but in general as well.

I take issue with the Right for butting into our private lives in issues of abortion, gay rights, and religion, and its insistence that the right to own a gun is more important than the right for the next guy not to get shot, and its refusal to associate rights and freedoms with responsibilities.

Most of all, I take issue with people who assume that it’s a spectrum of “either-or” and that everyone has to pick one side or the other.

So I’m just going to keep on saying what I think, without worrying about whether it’s fashionable on the Left or on the Right, and trust that people out there reading can recognize the difference between labels and views. I also happen to hold an inkling – maybe naively idealistic – that if we can just get past these labels, and pick and choose the good from both sides, maybe we can get somewhere closer to where we want to be as a society.

The abortion debate once again rears its ugly head. James Kopp, a fervent anti-abortionist, is on trial for second-degree murder. He admitted shooting Dr. Barnett Slepian, but claimed to regret having killed him.

Yeah, right. This guy has been murdering doctors for years.

Kopp is wanted in Canada for allegedly wounding three doctors. He is charged with the 1995 attempted murder of Hugh Short, a doctor shot at in his home in Ancaster, Ont., near Hamilton.

He is also wanted for questioning in the shooting of a Winnipeg doctor, another in Vancouver and has been implicated in a similar shooting in Rochester, N.Y.

And he also fired his original lawyer, apparently because he “had pledged not to turn the trial into a forum for the abortion debate”. I suppose he thinks he has a better chance with an anti-abortion lawyer, who will attempt to turn the trial around and put abortion rights on trial. The only question is whether this a calcluated legal strategy to better his chances for acquittal, or whether he’s delusional enough to think that he’s somehow entitled to kill doctors who perform abortions?

I’m fervently pro-choice, but I can (somewhat) respect the views of people who merely believe abortion is wrong. As long as they stick to verbal arguments rather than violence, they’re entitled to their views as much as I’m entitled to mine (so long as they don’t impose them on others). But I’m frequently amazed at the hypocrisy of any movement calling itself “pro-life” whose members go around KILLING people.