The silliest thing of all is to say that we need abortion to preserve a woman's right to choose her reproductive status. Every woman has a multitude of choices of whether she gets pregnant or not. The choice to have sex without contraception, the choice to have sex with any one of a multitude of pregnancy prevention pills, devices, methods and procedures. What no woman, or man has the right to do is to choose to murder another human being. The question of whether a fetus is human has been decided by science- it is and cannot be anything other than homosapien, therefore it is human. From conception it has the complete DNA of a human being. Let's just say what this debate is about - the desire to not experience the natural consequences of having sex.
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'Health' of the Mother
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The Supreme Court has, though, in one instance, taken steps to limit abortion without providing a health-exception clause. In last year's Gonzalez v. Carhart the court upheld a federal ban on a specific abortion procedure--"partial-birth abortion," or intact dilation and extraction as it's known in medical terms--even if a woman can show that without it, her mental or physical health would be at risk. However, both candidates incorrectly used the terms "partial-birth abortion" and "late-term abortion" interchangeably Wednesday. Partial-birth abortion is a particular procedure that Gonzalez banned, whereas late-term abortion denotes the time when the abortion takes place. The health exemption refers to the ban on late-term abortions, not necessarily to the various methods used for abortion.
Are women stretching that physical and mental health clause "to mean almost anything," as McCain put it? Looking at the numbers, it would seem that few women--if any--are doing this. The only cases that would require a woman to get an exemption would be if she needed a late-term abortion. According to Centers for Disease Control statistics, only 1.4 percent of abortions took place after 21 weeks in 2004, the latest year for which data are available. ( Roe protects the right to abortions prior to fetal viability; a woman does not need to demonstrate a health risk if the procedure is prior to then.)
On a national level, the electorate generally supports health exceptions. Only 10 percent of Americans support a flat-out ban on abortion, without exception, according to an August poll by Time magazine; 40 percent supported making "abortion legal in specific circumstances," including "when a woman's health is endangered." Most other polls results closely mirror these findings. One recent poll asked specifically about exception for the mental health of the mother. It was conducted by Fox News last October and found that 56 percent of Americans support legal abortion if "the pregnancy puts the woman's mental health at risk."
So from a political vantage point, Obama's position on the health exception isn't particularly risky. But McCain's unfortunate air quotes may take a bite out of his support among women. "People don't believe that doctors would use 'health' as some trumped-up excuse to perform an abortion," says Celinda Lake, a pollster with Lake Research Partners, which has done polling for pro-choice groups like EMILY's List and NARAL. She says that pro-life voters "take health seriously and want to see the health of women protected."
© 2008
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