While the terms may change, I'm partial to the math. So straight to the heart of the matter I see in today's Supreme Court Decision, Wikipedia gives this as the most succinct characterization of Partial Birth Abortion.
IDX, along with dilation and evacuation (D&E), early induction of labor, and rare procedures such as saline abortions, are only used in the late stages of pregnancy. Late-term abortions (abortions at 21 weeks or later) account for 1.4% of all abortions in the USA.[16] Intact D&X procedures are used in approximately 15% of late-term abortion cases. This calculates to between 2,500 and 3,000 per year, using data from the Alan Guttmacher Institute for the year 2000. They are typically performed between the twentieth and twenty-fourth week of gestation.[17]
The CDC estimates about 850K abortions in the US in
2003. That rate and ratio has been pretty much flat since 1994. (I have
no idea what happened in '94). I find it difficult to believe that the
incremental step the Supreme Court has taken significantly reduces the
freedom of women to have abortions. By the numbers it makes for a very
marginal difference, about 2/10ths of 1%.
As I read the description of the admittedly gory language of
advocates, I'm persuaded that this is a good thing. Only when
confronting liberal hyperbole about the chilling effect this is
supposed to have do I have any reason to get arrogant about it. If they
were to learn that 3,000 prisoners on death row were to have their
lives spared, I'd imagine that anti-death penalty advocates would be as
happy as social conservatives are about this.
And yet I am very sympathetic, especially in light of reading Crichton's book Next, about the implications of property law on human cells. The long term implications of this mean that I could find agreement with the premise of the film Island. Shouldn't I be able to make a clone of myself and hold those cells in escrow in order to reserve my own donor organs? Why shouldn't I have the right to have a baby for that specific purpose?
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