After-Birth Abortion

The pro-choice case for infanticide

 

By William Saletan

 Just when you thought the religious right couldn’t get any crazier, with its personhood amendments and its attacks on contraception, here comes the academic left with an even crazier idea: after-birth abortion.

No, I didn’t make this up. “Partial-birth abortion” is a term invented by pro-lifers. But “after-birth abortion” is a term invented by two philosophers, Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva. In the Journal of Medical Ethics, they propose:

[W]hen circumstances occur after birth such that they would have justified abortion, what we call after-birth abortion should be permissible. … [W]e propose to call this practice ‘after-birth abortion’, rather than ‘infanticide,’ to emphasize that the moral status of the individual killed is comparable with that of a fetus … rather than to that of a child. Therefore, we claim that killing a newborn could be ethically permissible in all the circumstances where abortion would be. Such circumstances include cases where the newborn has the potential to have an (at least) acceptable life, but the well-being of the family is at risk.

Predictably, the article has sparked outrage. Last week, Reps. Joe Pitts, R-Penn., and Chris Smith, R-N.J., denounced it on the House floor. But it isn’t pro-lifers who should worry about the Giubilini-Minerva proposal. It’s pro-choicers. The case for “after-birth abortion” draws a logical path from common pro-choice assumptions to infanticide. It challenges us, implicitly and explicitly, to explain why, if abortion is permissible, infanticide isn’t.

Let’s look at some of those assumptions.

continue reading at http://www.slate.com/articles

Will Saletan writes about politics, science, technology, and other stuff for Slate. He’s the author of Bearing Right. Follow him on Twitter.
 

 

Plan B age restrictions: Obama administration will fight a court order to lift all age restrictions on sales of the emergency contraceptive.

 

A package of Plan B contraceptive is displayed at Jack's Pharmacy on April 5, 2013 in San Anselmo, California  

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Happy Anniversary Roe v. Wade! Here Are the States Competing To Ban Legal Abortion First.

 

Police escort a pro-life demonstrator after arguments escalated with pro-choice demonstrators as Operation Save America announced its mission to close Mississippi's only abortion clinic.

Today marks the 40^th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and thus 40 years of an angry, hyper-religious, sex-phobic movement that has sought every avenue it can to turn back the clock, and return abortion to the black market. Anti-choice efforts have been successful in reducing access to safe, legal abortion, but for the past 40 years, pro-choice forces have maintained at least one clinic in every state in the country.

That might not last. Now various red states compete to see which can be the first to end legal abortion within their borders. As we take stock of where things stand in 2013, here are the three states likeliest to reach that goal in the near future.

Alabama. Alabama already has some of the most restrictive abortion rights in the country, which have been used to hound one of the last remaining clinics (the site of Eric Rudolph’s bombing in 1998) out of business, leaving the city of Birmingham with one clinic. To make things worse, the Alabama Supreme Court recently declared fetuses to be “children” under state law, giving those who believe embryonic personhood is the key to ending legal abortion a foothold. The decision explicitly made an exception for abortion, but anti-choicers hope that by routinely prosecuting pregnant women for “child abuse” or possibly even holding women criminally responsible for miscarriages, the groundwork can be laid for a legal decision banning abortion completely.

South Dakota. Voters in South Dakota have rejected bans on abortion twice in recent years, but conservative legislators will not be swayed by the public will as they try to chase off the last remaining clinic in the state. A law requiring abortion patients to wait 72 hours and endure a lecture at an anti-choice “crisis pregnancy center” before getting an abortion has been tied up in court, but in December, Planned Parenthood dropped its challenge to the 72-hour waiting period. (They are still contesting the mandatory shaming session that the law requires.) Getting full-time doctors to provide abortions under these circumstances is nearly impossible; the doctor who currently performs abortions at the state's sole facility, in Sioux Falls, travels in from elsewhere to do so. If that doctor stops being able to travel so much, legal abortion may end in South Dakota.

Mississippi. In 2011, Mississippi voters rejected a ballot initiative aimed at banning abortion by giving fertilized eggs “personhood”—as in, the same rights as a living person. As with South Dakota, legislators have blown past the public’s expressed will to concoct a scheme to close Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the last remaining clinic in the state. They passed a law requiring abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a local hospital, even though there is no medically necessary reason for such a restriction. To no one’s great surprise, the clinic’s doctors were unable to get these privileges, due in no small part to the area hospitals’ reluctance to draw negative attention from anti-choice militants. A judge placed an injunction on the law, but it was lifted this month, and state inspectors have already visited the clinic, which expects to receive a letter ordering it to shut down, which will no doubt kick off another round of legal actions. Options are running out for Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and for the people of Mississippi.

It’s difficult to predict what will happen to the women served by these threatened clinics if they disappear. For people with the means to travel—such as the legislators who pass these laws and their family members—it’s can be just a matter of going to a state with easier access and more liberal abortion laws to get the procedure. For women living in poverty, however, the options are often either illegal, unsafe abortions (often procured through the Internet) or being forced to give birth against their will. And despite anti-choice reassurances that it will all work out in the end, the research shows that women who want abortions and can’t get them often find that their worst fears come true.

By Amanda Marcotte