When a bunch of old, wrinkly men vote to uphold rules about what my doctor and I can do with my body, it really irks me.
This is why I was so upset this past Wednesday when I found out that the Supreme Court upheld a ban on “partial birth abortion,” or intact dilation and extraction, regardless of whether the woman’s health was in danger.
Their reasoning? Because it’s really gross. Or at least that was what I gathered after reading Reagan-appointee Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion.
Which may be true, but as far as I know, this has never been a criterion for outlawing perfectly safe medical procedures.
The banned procedure, called “intact D&E,” involves dilating the cervix of the pregnant woman, removing the fetus until only its head remains within the vaginal canal, and then using a tool to puncture the back of its head and suctioning out the contents of its skull.
The procedure is generally performed when the fetus is 20 to 23 weeks old and is unable to survive outside of the mother’s womb.
However, if you’d like a non-intact D&E, which can involve injecting the fetus with a lethal substance before it is extracted, or tearing the fetus apart while it remains inside the womb and then extracting it piece by piece, Kennedy is OK with that.
Kennedy, however, did not simply describe the banned procedure. He also added the testimony of an emotional nurse, who referred to the fetus as “a baby” and said that after the procedure was done the doctor irreverently “threw” the baby in a pan.
As you see, there is an enormous difference between intact D&E and non-intact D&E ““ the first is much more unpleasant for the nurses of the world to witness.
Perhaps the most disturbing and confusing aspect of the law the case upheld is that the procedure may be performed if the woman’s life is at risk, but not if her health is at risk. What exactly is the difference between life and health, and where do you draw the line?
Complicating the law even more, intact D&E is only illegal if the doctor intends to do it, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in his opinion. So if you dilate a woman’s cervix in order to terminate the pregnancy in the womb, but it opens up more than you expect and part of the fetus’s body slips out, it’s OK. But how do you measure this intent after the fact?
This leaves our doctors in a very difficult position. Instead of being able to honestly tell their patients what they think is best, they now must limit their advice and services to what they think will not land them in jail.
Kennedy, however, has this covered. Drawing on his mind-reading abilities, he has decided that performing an intact D&E is “almost always a conscious choice rather than a happenstance.”
In response to concerns about jeopardizing a woman’s health, Kennedy concluded, based on his years of medical training (see: 0), that intact D&E is “never” necessary to preserve a woman’s health or life.
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, however, disagrees. In a statement issued to the press, they wrote that intact D&E “is safest and offers significant benefits for women suffering from certain conditions that make non-intact D&E especially dangerous.”
Dr. Frederic D. Frigoletto, vice chairman of obstetrics and gynecology at Massachusetts General and past president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologist, told The New York Times that a woman’s health could be endangered if she lived in a remote area and her only doctor was uncomfortable performing non-intact D&E but did so anyway.
Karen Tumulty, a reporter for Time Magazine who has been covering abortion since the 1980s, wrote that an intact D&E was generally easier on the woman’s body and that having one could make a “difference in her ability to bear children later in life.”
In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ““ the only woman on the court ““ wrote that this case defies precedent. When considering restrictions on abortion procedures in the past, the court always made sure to include clauses that allowed the procedures to be performed if not doing so would put the health of the woman at risk.
So although the ruling is hardly a severe blow against the abortion rights of women in the United States, it could mark the beginning of a very disturbing trend: viewing women as little more than baby-holders, whose health and well-being are secondary to the considerations of a fetus. Which, to me anyway, does not sound like a pleasant idea.
Two of the justices who dissented, Ginsburg, age 74, and Stevens, 87, are probably going to be retiring soon ““ which means whoever is elected president in the next term will replace them.
Let’s keep this in mind during the election. We need to make sure that what’s in our best interests is decided by someone with a medical degree, not political connections.
If you share Strickland’s irritation, e-mail her at kstrickland@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.