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Thursday, April 19, 2007
Abortion rights ‘losing ground’?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Here’s the day’s homework assignment for social conservatives: Read or listen to as many accounts as you can of Wednesday’s 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on partial birth abortion.
If you can tell off the bat that the reporter or newscaster regards this as a very bad thing the high court has done, it could be bias “rearing is ugly head.” This is the first paragraph in one of the day’s Associated Press account: “The Supreme Court’s endorsement of the first federal curbs on an abortion procedure in a generation suggests that even with Democrats in control of Congress, efforts to preserve abortion rights may be losing ground.”
My inclination would not be to conclude that “efforts to preserve abortion rights may be losing ground.” If I thought it necessary to observe in the context of yesterday’s ruling that this was happening “even with Democrats in control of Congress,” it would only be as a call to arms, since the Libertarians could have been in control and it would not have been relevant to the court decision.
I’ll grant that there was one small victory for abortion opponents in Wednesday’s 5-4 decision. The court upheld a statute that excluded “health of the mother” as grounds for performing a partial birth abortion. Life of the mother, yes. Health, no. That is a major divide between the two camps. “Health of the mother ” is the exception that neutralizes all abortion restrictions. It’s a loophole big enough to slip the World Congress Center through. It’s self diagnosis and the equivalent of what you can expect when liberals are forced by law to teach abstinance to teens: “I’m obligated to tell you abstinace is best, but we all know….” “Health of the mother” is the wink-and-nod that clears the deck for any and all abortions.
But neither side should draw too many profound conclusions from an opinion that has Justice Anthony Kennedy as the deciding vote.
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