While "partial-birth abortion" - wow! I'd like to meet the political-branding savant who came up with that - is clearly an unpalatable medical procedure, I have to believe that it is a medical procedure and little else. It's not a moral or ethical or societal bellwether; and it's not a crime against god or humanity.

But, let's assume for a momen that a fetus is "human life," and is granted the same moral equivalent as say, me, or some random person on the street, or your mother, or one of the victims of Monday's Virginia Tech tragedy... or, better yet (!), someone in a vegetative state with no hope of recovery. Is pulling the plug on someone's respirator - Terry Schiavo's, for example - morally equivalent to a "partial-birth abortion"?

Okay, here's my humble opinion.

It is partial birth abortion because that is how it's done. The gory details don't need to be on here.

If a woman gives birth to a premature baby at 24 weeks gestation, would you call "it" a human from that day forward or would you wait 16 weeks later when the 40 weeks would've been up?

Besides, the number of women who really require an abortion for her health really is quite rare. I would bet that many people who are pro-choice in its most liberal definition are using "mother's health" as as a proxy for keeping the limits of abortion as lax as possible.

I agree that "mother's health" shouldn't be a proxy for keeping abortion limits lax. In fact, I agree with the underlying premise of the decision that there ought to be a strong reason (like endangering the life of the mother) to justify these morally questionable procedures.

I do not agree with the Supreme Court, however, that Congress should be able to decide that this procedure never endangers the health of the mother. This is the absurdity of today's decision. The argument is partial-birth abortions categorically do not endanger the mothers health. They either endanger her life (in which case they are legal), or they are fine for her.

As consolation, the Court actually does not rule out that the mother's health could be endangered. She just has to go to court to get a judge to say that it does (I think getting a doctor to say so would be more cost-efficient and accurate)

Intact dilation and extraction abortion is a procedure, that although unapalatable, is a late term abortion method some medical professionals argue is the safest and easiest option. There is little, if any, evidence that it is any better or worse than Dilation and Evacutation. However, doctors performing these procedures are more informed and experienced with the procedures to determine which will be best for the woman's health.

If we are then discussing this in terms of women's health, and Intact Dilation and Extraction abortion does not pose additional threats to women's health, then political opposition is clearly an argument for fetal rights. It is not a big leap to show that the "Partial Birth Abortion Ban" is a significant threat to abortion rights.

True, it is not ideal that some elective procedures are being delayed this far into a pregnancy. However, it is often a reality caused by flaws in access to abortion. Whether the late term abortion is an issue of "women's health" or simply choice, once the decision is made to terminate the pregnancy, the medical procedure needs to be made by doctors rather than politicians.

I find the political environment around this decision most troubling. That is to say, this is a law advocated for expressly as a starting point from which the pro-life movement can chip away at a woman's right to abortion in the future.

I usually find myself disgusted by both sides. I wish we could have, as a country, an honest discussion about the ramifications of abortion socially, psychologically, and physically. It is an awful, morally questionable procedure. I made a promise to myself when I became sexually active that if I were to impregnate a partner, I would advocate for her to have the baby, and I would take responsibility for the baby's life. (Insert joke here about me making that decision last month). Still, I respect that while I can have my own opinion, it is a woman's constitutional right to choose what she does with her body.

The disturbing thing is that neither side of this debate is really seeing the whole picture. Pro-lifers claim to be against abortion, but they are also usually the same idiots advocating "abstinence only" education because the word "vagina" makes baby Jesus cry. On the other hand, you have rabid, uncompromising pro-choicers who would rather argue that abortion is great and should be treated like walking in to get cold medicine than concede that it is a morbid and painful tragedy and have to argue from a weaker position.

With all the talk of gun control lately, why can't we treat abortions like guns? Recognize the legal right but regulate the more heinous iterations of the right. At the same time, give out free condoms whenever possible, educate kids about birth control, and show them what happens during an abortion in sex-ed. If this is going to be a permanent, legal right in our country, we shouldn't be able to shield ourselves from the reality of what we are doing.

A big tragedy of the abortion discussion is that it's another example of Americans being completely unable to talk to each other like human beings or come to a consensus. There is also a whole other dimension...namely the blatant left-wing bias of this school and the fact that I've never been invited to a pro-life rally at Berkeley (not that many people would have the stones to send THAT to the gspp email list). So props to all the pro-lifers that are willing to express their opinions. I may not agree, but I can respect...and I can only imagine going to Berkeley for you is akin to me rolling up at Washington and Lee with my union button and John Edwards flag.

Just as a point of information, although you may not have been invited to a pro-life demonstration at Berkeley, they nevertheless take place regularly. The demonstrations happen 4 or 5 times each semester, with gruesome billboard size photos of 8-month abortions. It is my opinion that this type of demonstration goes beyond the pale of decency that I would like to be able to expect on my walk to class. I am happy to say that I have never been confronted by billboard size photos of the worst of what has happened to the women. I know that the quality of debate is no measure of the opinions themselves, but I get a bit tired of people lamenting the echo chamber. I don't want to experience the kind of debate that means I see bloody photos on the way to class.

“Recognize the legal right but regulate the more heinous iterations of the right.”

I am not exactly sure the sentence above, posted in a previous comment, means. Who is to decide what makes an abortion heinous? Is it how the medical procedure is framed? Is it whether the procedure takes place in or outside of the uterus? Is it what personally strikes you as unacceptable based on your history and the set of unique experiences that has shaped your moral belief systems? Is there any way to regulate abortion the way we hope to regulate fire arms, in a systematic objective manner? Should we have background checks where women with loose morals or a history of promiscuity are to be denied access to abortions?

I am always struck by the way ideas of life and morality are conflated and muddled in the debate over abortion. Many anti-choicers are okay with abortion in the case of rape and incest and I wonder why? Is the future of a fetus less valuable if it was conceived out of violence than say out of pure bad judgment or a simple condom malfunction? And if the answer is no, then why should we make exceptions? Unless the real question is, why do we as a culture get to preside over women’s medical decision from some moral high ground? Why are we in the position of saying an unborn fetus, completely dependant on its mother (or medical apparatus) for survival, is more deserving of positive health outcomes than the mother herself? The lack of an exception for the mother’s health in the decision suggests to me that the majority believes just this; Namely, that women who need to have abortions are somehow morally deficient and therefore less deserving of care and less deserving of the right to make personal and medical decisions. Women should not be forced to be incubators for boiler plate formulas of right and wrong. Situations are, unfortunately, rarely that black and white.

Many anti-choicers are okay with abortion in the case of rape and incest and I wonder why?

I suspect it's because most Americans express fairly nuanced opinions on abortion, in the sense that what they advocate as a public policy may not necessarily be what they would choose personally, and so contrary to the idea that abortion is this permanently intractable cleavage within our society, most people's political views show some willingness to compromise. Many pro-lifers, for example, do believe in exceptions in the case of rape or incest, even though I can only assume that they personally would still not choose abortion if those circumstances befell them (though of course we can never know). Parallel to this is the fact that many people who consider themselves pro-choice support the PBABA, or perhaps accept its underlying rationale even if they ultimately reject it for lacking a health exception. I think this shows that the abortion debate has overstayed its "welcome" (if you could call it that) to many Americans, and they respond by individually compromising the two extreme positions.

I appreciate and understand the explanation above. I think Ernie is probably correct that exception for incest and rape are some sort of compromise. But this explanation does not resolve the question I raise or really address it directly.

My point is more that rather than compromises, these exceptions represent a sort of cognitive dissonance. Kennedy’s decision suggests that this is a moral issue. Exceptions for incest and rape suggest a moral order, as well. But the morality is applied to the pregnant woman not the fetus whose life anti-choice advocates are interested in protecting. By focusing on the woman and how she became pregnant, anti-choice advocates can avoid the messy fact that if an unborn fetus is a life with rights, then those rights shouldn’t be compromised based on how conception occurred. Similarly, a pro-choice stance is predicated on the belief that a woman inherently has a right to make medical decisions about her own body unfettered by government regulations. Pro-choicers who feel a discomfort with PBA are creating exceptions in order to avoid the tension between their discomfort with the procedure and their belief in pro-choice values. Unfortunately, these exceptions break down upon closer scrutiny, as well. As I said before, these things are rarely black and white and attempts to codify them in law with such precision will result in these muddled and disjointed arguments.

I hear what you're saying, Shira, and it very well could be cognitive dissonance, but it also could be perfectly consistent, if you take support for a rape/incest exception as prima facie evidence that many pro-lifers do place some value on a woman's freedom, specifically the freedom to avoid the costs of parenthood, and likewise don't assign the moral standing equivalent to a fully-developed adult to a 21-week old fetus. It's just that in most cases, the redacted rights of the fetus still trump the mother's rights. But perhaps in the case of rape/incest, where obviously the mother had no choice to get pregnant and presumably otherwise wouldn't have, the social need to compensate for an infringement of freedom now outweighs the redacted rights of the fetus, precisely because the burdens of pregnancy and (likely single) motherhood were not brought about by choice.

I'm not saying that this hierarchy would hold up under close logical scrutiny. It very well may not. But I do think that it makes sense in the minds of those who oppose abortion but support a rape exception, even if their language doesn't allude to the same moral weights their personal beliefs do.

In response to Suling's comments, I would say I would define life as being separate as soon as the ambilical cord is cut. It is my crude definition, but it has served me well.

But I would also like to point out that while this is a moral question, it is also an "academic" question for me - and about a 1/3 of our class. As a man, I will never have to face this issue. Whether it is right or wrong, I can have an opinion, but it will not be my decision. Parental rights (especially the rights of the father) and abortion are a very tricky issue. And whether it is right or not, the right of the father is less than the right of the mother/child. And as it probably should be. So at the end of the day, it is hard for me to take too strong of a stand.

Just got this off of the SF Chronicle:

"Kennedy also gave new stature to abortion opponents' assertions that women
commonly suffer remorse and guilt after terminating their pregnancies.
Such feelings will only deepen, he said, if a woman learns that she has
allowed a doctor to pierce a fetus' skull. He called that possibility a
justification for a congressional ban, because such a prohibition might
encourage those women to give birth."

I LOVE it when the Supreme Court uses my potential mental state to make moral and medical decisions. It makes everything so much easier when old male lawyers make decisions on my behalf, without any medical expertise.
(http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/04/19/MNGO2PBES71.DTL)

One unmentioned point: the continued federal aggrandizement of power here. I have read the U.S. Constitution many times and don't see any place where power is granted to Congress to criminalize medical procedures. Do fetus/unborns affect interstate commerce?

The federal power pull has continued unabated for over seventy years - personal liberty has almost always been its primary victim. I submit that criminalizing doctor conduct is wholly the province of state law.

Federal power, it appears, has bitten the hand that predominately feeds it.

Everyone has a right to life.

That's in the Federal Constitution.

The whole debate is over who counts as everyone.

The Supreme Court believe intrastate commerce counts as interstate commerce, last time I checked. So if you pay a doctor for her services, why wouldn't that allow the Federal Government to regulate.

So, rumor has it, the Vatican has just "abolished" the concept of "limbo"... meaning that babies now go to "heaven" instead of "limbo" if they die before being baptized.

Does this change the Catholic perspective on abortion? One would think so. If all babies dead before they're awash in the waters of the River Jordan are now saved - mark your calendars, centuries of unbaptized babies were heathens until April 20, 2007 - then what's the catholic argument for the sanctity of newborn life? Keep in mind, newborn and unborn are effectively moral equivalents in church dogma.

Matt, I think you've answered your own question about the Catholic perspective. It has nothing to do with being baptised or not; if it did, then it would seem to follow that the Church would have no qualms with the murder of non-Catholics.

Instead, their perspective is much more straightforward. The Catechism paints life as an "inalienable" human right. Since you're right that the Church doesn't distinguish between adults, children, newborns, and the unborn when it comes to human life, and since human life is their paramount value here, anything that infringes on human life is morally illicit.

Limbo made for some good drama in Dante, but it was an antiquated piece of theology that hasn't been widely taught for years. It's not like this announcement represents an overnight change in the Church's effective teachings, it just formally codifies what's been the de facto practice now for some time. The point being that limbo hasn't played a major role in the arguments -- theological or otherwise -- that the Chruch has made against abortion in modern times.