The Supreme Court’s recent decision on partial-birth abortion is sickening. Its four-paragraph description of an abortion doctor at work, only snippets of which have been quoted in the mainstream press, sounds like something out of Jeffrey Dahmer’s basement.
Such as: “The doctor grips the fetal part with the forceps and pulls it back through the cervix and vagina, continuing to pull even after meeting resistance from the cervix. The friction causes the fetus to tear apart. For example, a leg might be ripped off the fetus as it is pulled out through the cervix and out of the woman. The process of evacuating the fetus piece by piece continues until it has been completely removed.”
That is how the Supreme Court described a procedure that was not challenged and remains legal. This is how it described the procedure that is now banned:
“The doctor extracts the fetus in a way conducive to pulling out its entire body, instead of ripping it apart.” Once the fetus’s body is past the cervix, the doctor “forces scissors into the base of [its] skull… spreads the scissors to enlarge the opening,” then “evacuates the skull contents.”
The court quotes an operating-room nurse who was present for one of these procedures: The “baby’s little fingers [were] clasping and unclasping and his little feet kicking” until the doctor thrust the scissors into its skull, the “baby flinched” and then “went completely limp…. He threw the baby in a pan along with the placenta and the instruments he had just used.”
You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand who benefits from these horrifying descriptions. Remember the right-to-life loonies who used to stand on busy street corners and thrust under our noses pictures of “unborn babies” in bottles? Those who share their anti-choice views now occupy five of the nine seats on the highest court in the land.
We in the pro-choice movement have always been careful to refer to the unborn as “fetuses.” I have a friend who did so throughout her own recent pregnancy; it was not “the baby” until the moment he was born.
Nice try, but that strategy has now been crushed along with some fetal skulls. We, the good guys, will still try to keep the conversation focused on the autonomy and health of women — Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s scalding dissent, delivered orally from the bench, was a battle cry — but for now at least, if we merely ignore those bottled fetuses we will write ourselves out of the conversation.
In hindsight, it is clear that the right-to-lifers’ focus on the fetus has been brilliant. Rights movements are all about creating and exploiting empathy. Scholars tell us that it is people’s increasing capacity for empathy — identifying with the feelings or thoughts of another — that spurred the rights movements of the 18th and 19th centuries.
In the 20th and 21st centuries, the same strategy has served the animal-rights movement well. In the movement’s bible, “Animal Liberation,” Peter Singer describes, among other unpleasantries, the de-beaking of poultry: “Between the horn and the bone is a thin layer of highly sensitive tissue, resembling the ‘quick’ of the human nail. The hot knife used to debeak cuts through this complex of horn, bone and sensitive tissue, causing severe pain.”
Singer’s description was enough to make me pass up the turkey one Thanksgiving a few years ago; I find myself eating fewer and fewer hamburgers. As Jeremy Bentham asks in his classic “Introduction to the Principles of Moral Legislation”: “The question is not ‘Can they reason?’ nor ‘Can they talk?’ but ‘Can they suffer?’”
The Supreme Court didn’t say that the fetus feels pain when its leg is ripped off — it didn’t have to. In his New York Times column a few days after the Supreme Court’s decision, David Brooks tells us so much about the “personality” of the “creature” inside the womb that you can practically see it sitting at a lunch counter, having a Coke. But Brooks is careful not to explicitly ascribe to the fetus the capacity to feel pain; he must know that there is not the science to do so.
“We only know for sure that the fetus reacts reflexively to stimuli,” said prominent New York obstetrician-gynecologist Gideon Panter, who has been performing abortions for decades. “We have no scientific evidence or information as to whether or not the fetus actually feels pain.”
Most anti-choice advocates are either careless or misinformed on the subject. President Ronald Reagan frequently spoke of the “excruciating pain” felt by the fetus in the course of an abortion, and was called to account just as frequently — to no effect. And there was the utterly gruesome right-to-life film of the 1980s, “The Silent Scream,” portraying the agonies of the aborted fetus.
We ignored it then, and we argued — and we were right — that the images were sexed up and the science was junk. Now, not so much.
Now, we see authentic sonograms of those unborn “creatures” within, and they do look like babies. When the Supreme Court describes their legs or heads being ripped off, it is disturbing to even the staunchest pro-choice advocate. The absence of information on capacity to feel pain is not much comfort.
I personally will vote only for candidates who are thoroughly pro-choice, for it is they who will promote the health and equality of women. But I wish that the choice movement would find a way to address the empathy front. It is no longer possible just to avert our eyes.
Kathleen Peratis, a partner at the New York law firm Outten & Golden, was director of the Women’s Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1974 to 1978.
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Kathleen, You are a disgrace to humankind. You can call it a fetus all you want but you can not obscure the FACT that it is a baby. Partial birth abortion is a gruesome procedure and is nothing short of infanticide. I bet your one of those people that is for murdering an innocent baby but not an evil murderer on death row. Babies develop very quickly: Day One: All human chromosomes are present. Unique human life begins. Three Weeks: Heart begins to beat with the child’s own blood – often a different blood type than the mother. Six Weeks: Brain waves are detectable, mouth and lips are present, fingernails form. Eight Weeks: Every organ is in place, bones begin to form to replace cartilage, fingerprints begin to form. Eleven Weeks: All organ systems functioning, the baby has fingerprints, a skeletal structure, nerves and circulation. Seventeen Weeks: Baby can have dreams (REM sleep)
So far only one woman has commented. As a male I'm willing to let--or forced to accept, as you will--that decisions concerning abortion should be made by women. But some remarks about the fetus. (1) If the fetus can experience pain, it's clear that even in the best of all possible worlds some fetuses are destined to suffer a great deal more pain by being born than by being aborted--for physical reasons for some; for social reasons for others. Many religious types are not troubled by this. They are willing to wish upon and inflict great quantities of pain upon others in the name of God--or "morality." (2) If the fetus can experience pain or if it's conceivable that the fetus can experience pain, is there any reason that medical science can't address this possibility by developing methods that would ensure against pain?
I am old enough to remember when medical science decreed that small children did not feel pain. I had a playground injury which had sliced through the back of my leg. I was rather shocked about the blood and also equally afraid that I was getting into trouble so i didn't start to cry until the doctor laid me face down and started to sew me up (10 stitches). My father, who had been a medic in WWII asked if the doctero was going to give me any anethesia and was told, no , children don't feel pain at that age. I am here to tell you that I did, indeed feel pain. The real reason that no pain medication was administered was that there had not been studies on the correct amount of pain medication to give to small children. I was hospitalized at University of Chicago many times for the treatment of polio and neither I nor other children on the ward were given pain medication, even after surgery. Again, our parents weretold that we were too young to properly process pain and woulnd't really feel it. As readers of science literature may realize, it has only been recently that appropriate doseages of pain medications have been determined for the safe use by very little and preemie babies. This was considered a real breakthough and there was a determination that these littlest patients were developing more quickly and could be released sooner when their pain was managed. So let's be real. We aren't doing these unborn babies any service by killing them. If you are squeamish about eating turkey you should be equally squeamish about congratulating any pregnant mother. Until the pro-life movement becomes honest about the fact that this isn't a cancerous growth or a deflated beach ball, that movement will even lesser credibility as younger and younger babies are delivered or sugically saved for full-time gestation. the article in Mother Jones magazine on late term abortions had a good deal more empathy than was shown here
You have in front of your eyes all that you need to ascertain that a "fetus" is a living human being. The distinction between "feels pain" and "reacts to stimuli" is vacuous and without a difference. You lament because you are losing the PR campaign? You are not honest with yourself. You cannot honestly come to terms with what your heart and head are telling you -- this is human life here -- so you rationalize it away. I want you to perform an abortion. I want you to rip the limbs off a "fetus." I want you to forces scissors into the base of its skull and evacuate its brain. Once you have done that, come back and tell me where you stand. You will retort by saying "I can't do that because I am not authorized to..." or "lack the expertise..." and I will retort with an Assyrian proverb: "woe unto he who does not see with his ears and hear with his eyes, for his is truly a merciless soul." Do you get it? Do you not listen to what your eyes are telling you? Do you not see what your ears are saying? What's this got to do with the health and equality of women? There is no relationship here. You might as well talk about the health and equality of wildebeests.
Ms. Peratis is admitting a basic truth, that abortion is destruction of human life. Sickening is an excellent choice of words. Beyond a few exceptional cases (e.g. saving a mother's life) it is clear that abortion is a highly immoral choice. Performing millions of these "sickening" procedures each year is a national tragedy. I have also voted for a pro-choice candidates, only because I don't much like the goverment making our personal/moral choices for us. However, we Jewish people have an obligation to speak out against immorality and stand for the sanctity of human life.
Unfortunately there are instances where a woman's well being is seriously compromised as a result of pregnancy and certainly during the birth process itself. Why this medical reality crosses into the halls of lawmakers is ultimate folly. The decision to abort a fetus, or continue with a problematic birth is entirely between the physician and her patient.
Well, Ms. Peratis, you call your side of this debate "the good guys," but I'm not sure I understand why. You claim that science doesn't support the notion that a fetus feels pain, but, from the scientist you quote, apparently, science doesn't support your contention that the baby in its mother's womb is impervious to pain, either. In the end, it seems that all you've got is a fundamentalist-style, reason-proof, belief that, until he or she is born (or perhaps until he or she starts voting Democratic) a fetus just isn't a person. You don't really defend your strange article of faith-- you just assume that it's shared by all the "good guys." Does this pass for a solid argument at Outten & Golden? If so, remind me to call somebody else if I ever need a lawyer in New York! How strange that a woman whose conscious could be shaken by the notion of a turkey being de-beaked is so unmoved by the notion of a child being delivered 90% of the way out of his or her mother's womb only to meet a sickening, violent end.
The issue is not suffering, per se, but whether my daughter may defend her life against a Cho Sueng-Hui if he is a VA Tech senior but not against a Cho Sueng-Hui if he is a fetus, even one that can experience pain.
Re: Andy Hughes: As I said, we don't do any baby a favor by killing it. I am appalled that i have read this comment in a Jewish publication. We Jews lost a significant proportion of our population, our culture, our heritage, and our future because we were considered "life not worthy of living". I am an advocate for disabled people and I have been at several conferences which were touted for the prescreening for certain diseases. After one,which was billed as the future of cystic fibrosis treatment and which actually extolled the virtues of testing for the purpose of aborting a "defective fetus", I was chilled and saddened to hear a young girl who said to her mother, "I like being alive." We all of us suffer, we are born to sin, as it says, "as the sparks fly upwards" ( a noble piece of literature, the Hebrew Scriptures, you might try reading it and find that God is given the feminine charachteristics of loving us as a mother loves her unborn child) I don't know why there have been no other women commentators except to say that women were, when I was in law school, and now, from what Iam told, systematically briefed in the positives of on-demand abortion and the negating of empathy or care as being unprofessional and deleterious to future career advance. Let us note that there is some evidence against the so-called painless execution methods in teh US and , yes, I am against the death penalty, glad you asked.
YOU are the good guys????? How can you say that??? WHAT!! You can't change your position in the face of incontrovertible proof that - what YOU call - the fetus - suffers throughout this procedure??? Has being 'pro-choice' become some kind of religion that Margaret Mead-forbid - you can't change your mind about??? You people on the Left are against Capital Punishment because of its implications of suffering; why can't you apply the same empathy to the unborn child?? "Right to control our own bodies" - that platitude has been used to justify cruelty to an innocent unborn child! The ONLY reson why an abortion should be permitted - according to Jewish law - is when the life of the mother is in danger! Rape - I would consider it. But 'an accident???' Absolutely not! If you knock off a dish in a shop - an accident - you have to pay for it! There are plenty of families looking to adopt! And here in Israel there is an organization - Efrat - which does everything it can to enable the mother to keep the child and raise it. I had an abortion when I was 21 and it was the biggest mistake I made in my life!!!
The problem with this debate, and many other "hot button issues," is the use of the terms "good guys" and "bad guys." Once we decided that only people that agree with our position could possibly be acting in good faith, it is my opinion that we lost our collective soul. Honest intellectual banter has been replaced by combative, destuctive, and personal name-calling. Ms. Peratis points, many of which I am sure are valid, are completely overshadowed by her conviction that those that oppose her views are evil and un-enlightened. No thanks.
The Forward’s editors have wisely chosen to print this article to allow evil to expose itself. Otherwise, it is simply appalling! The elitist liberalism of this writer, Kathleen Peratis, defies intellectual integrity, analysis, reason and logic. Only a schizophrenic mentality could read, much less research and write what is in the article and then still stand in myopic defense of the most barbaric practice in modern society. It is only equaled by the horrific and discounting treatment which more and more of society now affords the aged. “Wantedness” reigns the supreme plumb line in the most selfish of humanity. While suggesting that it is political to say "baby,"the writer ignores centures of women being pregnant "with child" or "a baby" not a "fetus." Who heard the "fetus" strategy before the late '60's? Our Creator was almost heartless to leave us with sufficient sovereignty to allow such cruelty. That the educated among his chosen would convict themselves of their own evil social mentality is a gravely broad indictment. How can one claim to be “civilized” and yet defend one motive in defense of such a horrific practice and still claim any degree of sensitivity or caring for all humanity. Abortion on demand for selfish convenience has never been and never will be justifiable as “good” in any morality, certainly not in true Torah based Judaism. It is as political and secular as was Caiaphas under Herod. Not Kosher. Not Kohen. Not of G-d. Caiaphas’ hypocritical followers also disrespected Torah regarding the aged, widows and orphans. Later were eaten by their own children in 70 CE. The Creator requires justice, mercy, and goodness in order to bless a generation. Man playing God has always been judged. Kathleen Peratis gives willful support to such a selfish and ung-dly exercise of man’s sovereignty and pagan practices which have always been followed by Divine judgment. Perhaps this court’s decision will warrant a small reprieve. Ari Yosef shofars@yahoo.com
If it looks like a person, acts like a person, feels like a person and suffers like a person. It IS a person. Calling it anything else is to ignore reality. Neither the Torah or the Bible condone killing of our children. If your friend called her child, Thing, does she have the right to kill it?
Mr. Saulson, You are a disgrace to your profession, your title, and your religion. The ban is only for the gruesome procedure where the unborn baby is brought halfway out of the birth canal, then has scissors rammed into its skull, its brains sucked out, and it's skull crushed with forceps for easier passage. Sometimes the baby is also dismembered. Here is testimony from a nurse who witnessed one such procedure, ""The baby's little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked out ... The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high powered suction tube into the opening, and sucked the baby's brains out ... Now the baby went completely limp. He threw the baby in a pan, along with the placenta, and the instruments he had just used." Don't worry, your daughter can still murder her baby, but she and her abortionist just need to find a nicer way to do it. This ban doesn't apply when a mother's life is in danger anyway.
I don't believe that it's true that the pro-choice movement hasn't used empathy. I've seen pictures of a woman naked and dead in a pool of her own blood on the floor of a hotel room where she tried to preform an abortion on herself in the days before Roe V. Wade. I certainly felt empathy for that poor girl that it was so important to her to not have the baby that she had to die for it. I think that the anti-choice groups milk people for all the empathy they can get, since reason isn't on their side.
So lets get this straight. You acknowledge the fetus suffers in a partial birth abortion. And yet you feel it should be available on demand. You sound like a very empathatic woman.
The choice movement should know that part of "choice" in some countries is to choose to abort females fetuses, leading to a significant disproportion of males over females. Was the health and equality of these now dead female fetuses "promoted" by society's facilitation of "choice". Also, it is curious that the writer really seems to attach more credibility to the pain of turkeys than to that of humans. Surely neither is in dispute. Such unbending intellectualization in an attempt to subordinate compassion to ideology evokes sadness, both for the impaired humanity of article's writer and for the lives of the fetuses killed by the hardness of her heart.
Andy, a few remarks about your asinine remarks about the fetus. Yes, pretty much ALL fetuses will experience more pain if they go on to live full lives. Surely, had I been aborted, my suffering would have been over in 15 minutes. Instead, here I am at 40, with occasional ailments, injuries, sadnesses, etc. Should Mom have spared me all that? And, for the record, does that mean that you'd ban the abortion of a healthy fetus, and that you're only in favor of killing the sickly ones? What if we only find out after the baby is born? OK to whack him then? Wouldn't want him to suffer too much, would we? As to your second point (anesthesia for the fetus you're about to kill); it would neve happen. It would cause too many people to recognize abortion for what it is.
“The issue is not suffering, per se, but whether my daughter may defend her life against a Cho Sueng-Hui if he is a VA Tech senior but not against a Cho Sueng-Hui if he is a fetus, even one that can experience pain.” Rabbi (and I use the term guardedly), that is by far the most ridiculous argument (and I use that term guardedly, too) I have ever seen. You compare an innocent child to a lunatic murderer? Even Cho (had he been caught as securely as a fetus in a womb) would have been entitled to a trial for his deeds before being arbitrarily dispatched.
David, I know it seemed surprising that a so called Rabbi would make such a disgusting statement regarding nascent human life. He is one of the many Jews that don't really believe in the Torah and have adopted liberalism and moral relativism as their religion. To them the Torah is only a quaint story. He is a board member of the ACLU of Georgia (that alone should say it all). He supports gay marriage and abortion on demand. He also opposed Georgia's bill that would require students be told the truth that Darwinian evolution is a theory and not a fact. Our schools do our children a disservice by presenting this disproven theory as fact. The reason that after 150 years and an extensive fossil record it is still called a theory and not a law is because it does not describe the origin of life. In fact the sudden appearance of new species in the fossil record is so common that the scientific journal Science featured an article, “Did Darwin get it right?” And they answered that question no. Some other process produced these sudden changes. Would it be so bad if it turned out to be G-d? This joker doesn't seem to get anything right. It's a shame that non-Jews perceive him to be representative of Jewish values.
The dearth of comments by women is still notable as are the personal insults of some among the anti-choice commenters. Commenter Belle has introduced the Holocaust to counter my comment, and commenter David finds that he's glad he's alive despite whatever suffering he's experienced. To Belle: First, you should not trivialize the Holocaust so glibly by equating it with whatever does not meet your approval. But of course a black-and-white understanding of morality leads in that direction. Indeed, in a world of black and white it becomes increasingly difficult to find any white, doesn't it? You are making the same type of argument (abortion=Holocaust) when you counter my remarks about suffering by using the example of cystic fibrosis. But a "sufferer" of cystic fibrosis has very little congruence with a "sufferer" of, say, anencephaly. (You may argue that the anencephalic newborn doesn't suffer, but you could hardly argue the same for the parents.) For absolutists the mother must bring the anencephalic fetus to term, endure the risks of the ongoing pregnancy and childbirth and then suffer the inevitable loss of the newborn. Personally I would never support such a "morality." To David: Your argument is that some pain is involved in living, period. But again, there is a continuum. Indeed there are people who, having attained adulthood, decide that the "pleasures" of living in no way compensate for the pain of their existence, which of course brings us into the realm of assisted suicide. May I presume that you would find assisted suicide as morally repellent as abortion? You write: "As to your second point (anesthesia for the fetus you're about to kill); it would neve happen. It would cause too many people to recognize abortion for what it is.” What abortion "is" depends on the stage of fetal development. There surely can be no argument that the fetus can feel pain before the development of a nervous system. But coming from quite a different direction I agree with your point: Such absolutist rhetoric is likely to make it more difficult for pro-choice advocates and doctors to acknowledge the possibility of fetal pain and to take such steps as may be necessary to alleviate it.
Those who favor Pro-life do not appreciate the depth of destruction to the psyche of a child who has been given up by his/her biological parent. And the lifetime repercussions to the young woman who has given up her child to strangers, who may or may not be caring for her child as they should.
I am utterly disgusted that this practice is legal. It is inhumane, and insanely injust. I find it deplorable that a doctor can preform this abomination after having taken the hippocratic oath. I too plan to vote for the stuanchest pro-life canidate, which is Mitt Romney. I have noticed that so very many may be against abortion for themselves yet still feel that women have the right to choose. To choose what exactly? The gruesome death of an unborn child? Rudey Guilani proposes it would be a good idea for a woman to see a sonogram before being able to have an abortion. I up the ante and say they should have to view the remnants of what would have been a child if given the chance.
God isn't pro choice.
I wonder which of us, if we were to go back in time when our mother was considering an abortion of the fetus that would become us, would consent to the abortion?
"If a tree falls in the woods with no one around to hear it, does it make a sound?" "I am sure that same tree started as a seed" "Do unto others..."
ABORTION IS MURDER! all the men on here dont no what it is like i am a teenager and i do not no what it is like but i think if you do not want a kid then you should either not have sex or use protection and that does not even work some times! and if you are not ready to get pregnant then dont have sex. and if anything then there is a thing called ADOPTION!!!!! at least the baby will have a life!