Evidence That The Federal Partial Birth Abortion Ban Was A Very Small Victory.

Sad but not unexpected news out of Cincinnati as the Sixth US Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down a Michigan partial-birth abortion ban. The case was brought to test the idea of broadening the definition of partial-birth abortion to include a common procedure used in the second trimester called Dilation and Evacuation (D & E) as opposed to the recently upheld federal ban on Dilation and Extraction (D&X).

For anyone not familiar with the technical definitions of these two procedures, here is a clinical definition taken from a document published by the Attorney General of Michigan regarding the Legal Birth Definition Act.

Dilation and Evacuation (D & E) Procedure:

As performed late in the second trimester, the abortion procedure commonly referred to as dilation and evacuation, or "D & E, " begins with dilation of a woman's cervix. Once sufficient dilation is achieved, the physician reaches into the woman's uterus with an instrument, grasps as extremity of the fetus, and pulls. when the fetus lodges in the cervix, the traction between the grasping instrument and the cervix causes dismemberment and eventual death, although death may occur prior to dismemberment. The process continues until the entire dead fetus has been removed, piece-by-piece, from the woman's uterus.

Dilation and Extraction (D&X) Procedure:

The physician initiates the D & X or partial birth abortion procedure by dilating a woman's cervix, but to a greater degree than in the traditional D & E procedure. Once the physician achieves sufficient dilation, the manner in which the abortion proceeds depends upon the presentation of the fetus. . . . In a breech extraction, the physician partially delivers the fetus through the mother's cervix up to a point that allows the physician to access the fetus's head, which is inside the mother, while stabilizing the fetus's body, which is outside the mother. Then, in order to collapse the fetus's skull, the physician forces a pair of scissors into the base of the skull, enlarges the opening and evacuates the contents with a suction catheter. the abortion concludes with the removal, in a single pass, of the fetus's intact, dead body. if the fetus presents head first, the doctor first collapses the fetus' exposed skull by breaching and compressing the head with the forceps' jaws, inserting a finger. . . ., or piercing the head with a sharp instrument, such as a tenaculum or a large-bore needle. The doctor then suctions out the fetus's skull contents, if necessary, and completes the delivery of the fetus from the mother's body, whole and intact, in a single pass.

I went to the trouble of posting these very detailed definitions to point out the absurdity of what we are arguing over in court. As you can plainly see by reading the definition, the major point of difference between the two is not how many weeks old the pregnancy is, but how the fetus is removed. In the D & E procedure it is stressed that the fetus is removed piece-by-piece, while in the D & X procedure great pains are taken to stress that the fetus is removed intact. I guess that don't count vacuuming the brain out as dismemberment.

Incrementalism is excruciating. Why are we drawing the line here? Our government is telling us one of these procedures is legal, and the other is not. Have they read these definitions? As a society we delude ourselves with the arcana of medical terminology to hide the fact that we are arguing over two ways to kill a baby. How can a thinking person not realize the clean and morally correct line is to define life as beginning at conception? Conceived persons would then have all the rights granted to people who are already born.

Of course, drawing the line at conception causes inconveniences for regular folk, as it is becoming common knowledge that the pill can act as an abortifacient. Can we not see how accepting contraception has led to this? It is indeed a slippery slope. The right thing to do is rarely the convenient thing.