Why the debate?

After the Supreme Court decision upholding the partial-birth abortion ban last week, I was curious how the pro-abortion faction would spin things. The partial-birth abortion is such a barbarous act that *most* reasonable people, even those in favor of abortion, have a difficult time defending it.

How silly of me to think the activists would pause for even a second before beginning their shrill defense. The response of choice is that this decision is a set-back for women’s health. According to Nancy Pelosi,

“This isn’t really an abortion issue. This is about a procedure that any parent would want her daughter to have access to if she needed it. And to frame it as an abortion issue is doing a disservice to medicine and to our young women and our country…This Supreme Court is deciding what medical procedures are necessary for child-bearing women.”

An appeal to women’s health is always good for votes, but in this case, as so often happens, Pelosi has the facts all wrong.

According to the AMA, “There does not appear to be any identified situation in which [it] is the only appropriate procedure.” And Dr. Pamela Smith, Director of Medical Education, Dept. of Ob-Gyn at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Chicago, has stated: “There are absolutely no obstetrical situations encountered in this country which would require partial- birth abortion to preserve the life or health of the mother.” Dr. Smith also notes several serious risks and complications that can result from the procedure. And another clear statement by Dr. Boehm of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, “There are no medical circumstances in which a partial-birth abortion is the only safe alternative.”

The evidence is clear that this procedure is not medically necessary, nor necessarily “safe”. Consider also that while the partial-birth (D&X) procedure is now banned, the Dilation and Evacuation (D&E) is still allowed, as well as an induction. Justice Ginsburg herself alluded to this when she noted that not a single fetus would be saved by this ban.

So what are we arguing about? From the pro-life side, any movement against abortion is good. The partial-birth procedure was banned because it truly is not medically necessary, but also because it went too far–killing a baby that is entirely out of the womb except for the last few inches is just too much for most reasonable human beings. The debate might rage about when exactly the fetus becomes a person, but most people agree that at the point of birth at least it is a life.

It is this point that makes the pro-abortion side so angry. They might be screaming about women’s health issues, but what really upsets them is the idea that people are willing to draw a line and declare something a life. They aren’t truly that upset that an unnecessary procedure has been eliminated, but they are furious that anyone would view a *technically* unborn child as a life.

What we see is an angry defense of anything abortion related. Even from the days of the ghastly portraits of back alley coat hanger abortions the argument has never been about health. It has always been about defending the indefensible. The greatest lie of the abortion debate is that the baby is not a life, but the second lie, almost as big as the first, is that abortion doesn’t hurt women. Abortion does hurt women, and deeply hurt individuals often respond in anger. Behind the angry response of the pro-abort side, I believe, there is an army of hurting women, desperately seeking to believe they did the right thing and hysterically trying to justify their actions by promoting abortion at all cost.