NRL News
Page 2
June 2007
Volume 34
Issue 6

Advancing the Public’s Understanding about Abortion
BY Dave Andrusko

For many and various reasons, sometimes there is a kind of delayed reaction to an important development. We’ve seen that in some respects in response to Gonzales v. Carhart, the April 18 Supreme Court decision that upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. (As we see below, however, pro-abortionists did not waste a moment.) Not surprisingly, National Right to Life News and NRLC’s daily web feature, “Today’s News & Views,” did not fall into the category of news outlets that underestimated the importance of Gonzales. But when many “mainstream” reports were not turning Gonzales into the death knell for Roe v. Wade, they were making the opposite error: often treating the 5–4 decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, as little ado about little.

A more balanced picture is now emerging. Gonzales did not just ban an abortion procedure for the first time since 1973, important as that was and is. It added layers of intellectual, moral, and real-life complexity.

Prior to Gonzales, it was as if the Supreme Court talked about abortion in one-syllable words. As complicated as the legal jargon might be, the discussion was absurdly simplistic and, therefore, radically misleading.

This time, it was as if reading the briefs and listening to the oral arguments, suddenly it was “Earth to Justice Kennedy.” We’ve written about how that played out in his opinion umpteen times. But, so, increasingly, are publications such as the New York Times, as it did in a May 22 story by Robin Toner.

Of course, there are problems with “Abortion Foes See Validation for New Tactic,” beyond mischaracterizing when the partial-birth abortion technique is used. But let’s focus on three ways the account advances the public’s understanding.

First, while pro-abortionists [surprise, surprise] characterize our concern for both unborn child and mother (in the words of NARAL President Nancy Keenan) as being “motivated by politics, not by science, not by medical care, and not for the purposes of compassion,” the reader will come away from Toner’s story knowing (as NRL President Dr. Wanda Franz said) that “We believe that when you help the woman, you help the baby”—that we are, in fact, “very pro-woman.”

Second, the importance of the long-term systematic effort to allow women to speak out about their abortions was on display in Kennedy’s opinion, as Toner recognizes. She quotes Kennedy, “While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained. Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow.” (In fact Kennedy went much further than this brief excerpt suggests.)

Kennedy was alluding to a “friend-of-the-court brief” which “submitted statements from 180 of those women who said that abortion had left them depressed, distraught, in emotional turmoil,” according to Toner.

“‘Thirty-three years of real life experiences,’ the brief said, ‘attests that abortion hurts women and endangers their physical, emotional and psychological health.’”

Third, Toner correctly puts this in the wider context of genuine informed consent. Please understand that it is nearly impossible to exaggerate how critical it is to the pro-abortion cause that women not be informed about what can and does happen to them, especially if they later find out the truth about how their baby died. No wonder they went ballistic when Kennedy introduced a dose of reality into abortion jurisprudence.

“In a decision so fraught with emotional consequence some doctors may prefer not to disclose precise details of the means that will be used, confining themselves to the required statement of risks the procedure entails,” Kennedy wrote. “This is likely the case with the abortion procedure here in issue. ... It is, however, precisely this lack of information concerning the way in which the fetus will be killed that is of legitimate concern to the State.

... The State has an interest in ensuring so grave a choice is well informed. It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know; that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child, a child assuming a human form.”

States all over the country are already answering the call. That array of legislation will include a requirement (at a minimum) that if an abortionist uses ultrasound as part of the abortion procedure, he offers the woman a chance to view her unborn child prior to the abortion.

This, of course, will be derided as “dictating medicine.” In fact, the only thing it is “dictating” is that women be given the opportunity to make an informed “choice.”

In a very different way, pro-abortionists are also “advancing” the public’s understanding. Prominent Democratic members of Congress, the day after Gonzales, reintroduced the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act” (FOCA), a proposed federal law to nullify virtually all federal and state limitations on abortion. “In the interests of truth in advertising, the bill should be renamed the ‘Freedom for Partial-Birth Abortionists Act,’” observed NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson.

Newcomers can be forgiven if they don’t know that this is Round Two for FOCA. Suffice it to say in the early 1990s, when pro-lifers took on the Abortion Establishment, the pro-abortion Democratic leadership in Congress, and sweet-talking, pro-abortion to the bone President Bill Clinton, no one expected we would prevail. But we did.

Naturally, FOCA’s advocates did everything humanly possible to persuade the public that FOCA would do nothing beyond “codifying” Roe! This time around, they are much more candid about FOCA’s extraordinary sweep. As Johnson noted in NRL News last month, “during the debates over the FOCA in the early 1990s, many proponents of the bill often tried to deny some of its more radical effects—effects that they have already admitted with respect to the new bill, such as the invalidation of all restrictions on government funding of abortion.”

For example, Planned Parenthood’s web page joyfully announced that “FOCA will supercede anti-choice laws that restrict the right to choose, including laws that prohibit the public funding of abortions for poor women or counseling and referrals for abortions. Additionally, FOCA will prohibit onerous restrictions on a woman’s right to choose, such as mandated delays and targeted and medically unnecessary regulations.”

Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Ca.), in a press release issued when she introduced FOCA in 2004, gave a number of examples of current laws that would be invalidated by the bill, including:

· Laws restricting government funding of abortion. (The Hyde Amendment prohibits federal funding of most abortions, and many states have similar laws. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1980 that these laws do not violate Roe v. Wade.)

· Laws prohibiting abortions in public hospitals. (The Supreme Court ruled in 1977 that such policies do not violate Roe v. Wade.)

· Laws requiring that girls and women seeking abortion receive certain information on matters such as fetal development and alternatives to abortion, and then wait a specified period before the abortion is actually performed, usually 24 or 48 hours. In her press release, Boxer referred to these as “antichoice propaganda lectures.” (The Supreme Court said in its 1992 Casey ruling that such regulations are constitutional as long as they do not impose an “undue burden” on obtaining an abortion.)

This spurt of honesty is about as likely to survive as a teaspoon of water in the Sahara. Sooner, not later, evasions will replace straight talk, convoluted answers will smother candor, and bald-face lies will replace the kind of gleeful truth-telling found on PPFA’s web page and in Sen. Boxer’s press release.

In the meanwhile, pro-lifers can continue to rejoice that the Supreme Court shone light on one of the darkest facets of abortion on demand. Gonzales was a crucially important first step in winning the battle against evil.