This House would ban partial birth abortions

Partial-birth abortion is disgusting. Like all abortions, it involves the killing of an unborn child, but unlike first trimester abortions there is no doubt that the foetus can feel pain by the third trimester.[1] The procedure involves sticking a pair of scissors into a baby’s brain, enlarging the hole, sucking the brain out with a catheter and then crushing the skull. It is entirely unacceptable to do this to a living human being. Psychological damage to the mother as a result of rape or teenage pregnancy or depression is in the end less significant than the physical damage - death - caused to the child.

[1] Lee, Susan J., et al., ‘Fetal Pain, A Systematic Multidisciplinary Review of the Evidence’, Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol 294 (8), 2005,  http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/294/8/947.short

Nobody would choose to have a partial-birth abortion over a much simpler abortion in the first trimester. Partial-birth abortions are either medically or psychologically necessary. If a young mother either does not find out she is pregnant or is too scared to tell anyone, if a woman is raped and decides at any stage that she does not want the baby, if a woman is threatening suicide if she is forced to carry a baby to term, we should not make her suffer further by forbidding her from ending the pregnancy. For all sorts of reasons, many women do not seek any kind of medical help until late in their pregnancy - this should not mean they forfeit their right to an abortion. In any case, if abortion is allowed at all, and given that the foetus is not recognised in law as a human being, it should be nobody’s business but the mother’s whether and at what stage she chooses to have an abortion.

If birth is the crucial dividing-line we use to decide when legal personhood begins, then we should not be allowed to induce birth and then deliberately kill a foetus during that process - this is different from early abortion in which birth is induced and the foetus dies naturally. Partial-birth abortion is murder, even on the pro-choice understanding of personhood.

This is misleading - in partial-birth abortion, as the term suggests, the foetus is not fully born when it is killed: the purpose of collapsing the skull is to allow the foetus’ head to pass more easily through the birth canal. At no point in the process is a live foetus entirely outside the womb, so legal personhood is never an issue.

Tragically, some babies are unwanted, but this does not mean that we should kill them. There are plenty of other options, notably adoption. If anything, the case for adoption is more compelling in the third trimester, because the pregnancy is nearer to its natural end and there is less time, only about ten weeks, for the mother to have to put up with it.[1] Unwanted pregnancy and adoption may be psychologically harmful, but in many cases so is abortion, particularly at a late stage of pregnancy when the mother can see that the dead foetus is recognisably a baby - the guilt feelings associated with feeling that one is responsible for murdering a child can be unbearable.

[1] Bupa, ‘Stages of pregnancy’, April 2010, http://www.bupa.co.uk/individuals/health-information/directory/s/pregnancy-what-happens-stages#textBlock190283

Arguing that adoption is a good option shows a fundamental lack of awareness of what is involved in carrying an unwanted foetus to term. Pregnancy can be stressful at the best of times; being forced to carry an unwanted child against your will is enormously traumatic, and can cause permanent psychological harm, as can the knowledge that your own unwanted child is growing up elsewhere and may one day return to find you. If a mother chooses to carry a foetus to term and then give it up for adoption, that’s fine, but nobody should force her to do so.

here is a vast amount of support in the United States for a ban on partial-birth abortion. Opinion polls have shown a consistent increase in support for a ban: as high as 70% in favour to 25% against in January 2003.[1] Furthermore, in 1997 the House of Representatives voted 295-136, and the Senate 64-36, in favour of a ban. For President Clinton to veto it was undemocratic;[2] for President Bush not to pass it would have been to break a campaign promise.

[1] Gallup, ‘Abortion’, 30 November 2011, http://www.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

[2] Craig, Larry E., ‘Clinton Claims on Partial-Birth Abortion Still Not True -- Not Even 'Legally Accurate'’, United States Senate Republican Policy Committee, 15 September 1998, http://rpc.senate.gov/releases/1998/partial-birth.htm

These opinion polls are misleading, as they force respondents to choose between an outright ban and no control at all – it is impossible for them to register support for partial-birth abortion in cases where the mother’s physical or psychological health is in danger. A majority of Americans are still in favour of the right to abortion. More importantly, this should not be the business of the general public or of legislators. Nobody who would prefer not to have a partial-birth abortion will be made to have one. Most people who want it banned will never face a situation where it directly affects them in any case. We should leave decisions up to the people who are directly affected by them - not to outsiders, who are free to express their opinion but not to impose it on everyone else. This is a campaign promise George Bush should not keep.

Partial-birth abortion is disgusting. Like all abortions, it involves the killing of an unborn child, but unlike first trimester abortions there is no doubt that the foetus can feel pain by the third trimester.[1] The procedure involves sticking a pair of scissors into a baby’s brain, enlarging the hole, sucking the brain out with a catheter and then crushing the skull. It is entirely unacceptable to do this to a living human being. Psychological damage to the mother as a result of rape or teenage pregnancy or depression is in the end less significant than the physical damage - death - caused to the child.

[1] Lee, Susan J., et al., ‘Fetal Pain, A Systematic Multidisciplinary Review of the Evidence’, Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol 294 (8), 2005,  http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/294/8/947.short

Nobody would choose to have a partial-birth abortion over a much simpler abortion in the first trimester. Partial-birth abortions are either medically or psychologically necessary. If a young mother either does not find out she is pregnant or is too scared to tell anyone, if a woman is raped and decides at any stage that she does not want the baby, if a woman is threatening suicide if she is forced to carry a baby to term, we should not make her suffer further by forbidding her from ending the pregnancy. For all sorts of reasons, many women do not seek any kind of medical help until late in their pregnancy - this should not mean they forfeit their right to an abortion. In any case, if abortion is allowed at all, and given that the foetus is not recognised in law as a human being, it should be nobody’s business but the mother’s whether and at what stage she chooses to have an abortion.

If birth is the crucial dividing-line we use to decide when legal personhood begins, then we should not be allowed to induce birth and then deliberately kill a foetus during that process - this is different from early abortion in which birth is induced and the foetus dies naturally. Partial-birth abortion is murder, even on the pro-choice understanding of personhood.

This is misleading - in partial-birth abortion, as the term suggests, the foetus is not fully born when it is killed: the purpose of collapsing the skull is to allow the foetus’ head to pass more easily through the birth canal. At no point in the process is a live foetus entirely outside the womb, so legal personhood is never an issue.

Tragically, some babies are unwanted, but this does not mean that we should kill them. There are plenty of other options, notably adoption. If anything, the case for adoption is more compelling in the third trimester, because the pregnancy is nearer to its natural end and there is less time, only about ten weeks, for the mother to have to put up with it.[1] Unwanted pregnancy and adoption may be psychologically harmful, but in many cases so is abortion, particularly at a late stage of pregnancy when the mother can see that the dead foetus is recognisably a baby - the guilt feelings associated with feeling that one is responsible for murdering a child can be unbearable.

[1] Bupa, ‘Stages of pregnancy’, April 2010, http://www.bupa.co.uk/individuals/health-information/directory/s/pregnancy-what-happens-stages#textBlock190283

Arguing that adoption is a good option shows a fundamental lack of awareness of what is involved in carrying an unwanted foetus to term. Pregnancy can be stressful at the best of times; being forced to carry an unwanted child against your will is enormously traumatic, and can cause permanent psychological harm, as can the knowledge that your own unwanted child is growing up elsewhere and may one day return to find you. If a mother chooses to carry a foetus to term and then give it up for adoption, that’s fine, but nobody should force her to do so.

here is a vast amount of support in the United States for a ban on partial-birth abortion. Opinion polls have shown a consistent increase in support for a ban: as high as 70% in favour to 25% against in January 2003.[1] Furthermore, in 1997 the House of Representatives voted 295-136, and the Senate 64-36, in favour of a ban. For President Clinton to veto it was undemocratic;[2] for President Bush not to pass it would have been to break a campaign promise.

[1] Gallup, ‘Abortion’, 30 November 2011, http://www.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx

[2] Craig, Larry E., ‘Clinton Claims on Partial-Birth Abortion Still Not True -- Not Even 'Legally Accurate'’, United States Senate Republican Policy Committee, 15 September 1998, http://rpc.senate.gov/releases/1998/partial-birth.htm

These opinion polls are misleading, as they force respondents to choose between an outright ban and no control at all – it is impossible for them to register support for partial-birth abortion in cases where the mother’s physical or psychological health is in danger. A majority of Americans are still in favour of the right to abortion. More importantly, this should not be the business of the general public or of legislators. Nobody who would prefer not to have a partial-birth abortion will be made to have one. Most people who want it banned will never face a situation where it directly affects them in any case. We should leave decisions up to the people who are directly affected by them - not to outsiders, who are free to express their opinion but not to impose it on everyone else. This is a campaign promise George Bush should not keep.

The culture of foetal rights reflects a dangerous litigious trend in American society, and implies a view of pregnant women as being nothing more than baby-carrying machines whose independence and autonomy should be restricted and whose motivations should be questioned at every turn. If this has implications for the abortion debate, then those implications are profoundly damaging to women in general. In any case, the mother of a wanted baby has entirely different responsibilities toward the unborn foetus from the mother of an unwanted baby - that’s why our society allows both abortions and antenatal classes.

Allowing partial-birth abortion is utterly inconsistent with the growing, and legally recognised, respect for foetal rights in the United States. If a man can sue the mother of his child for taking drugs during pregnancy which discolour their child’s teeth, if pregnant women can be banned from the smoking sections of restaurants, what sense does it make to allow exactly the same foetuses to have their skulls deliberately crushed?

Partial-birth abortions form a tiny proportion of all abortions, but from a medical and psychological point of view they ought to be the least controversial. The reason for this focus is that late-term abortions are the most obviously distasteful, because late-term foetuses look more like babies than embryos or foetuses at an earlier developmental stage. Late-term abortions therefore make for the best pro-life campaigning material. By attempting to focus the debate here, campaigners are aiming to conflate all abortions with late-term abortions, and to increase opposition to all abortion on that basis.

Although many people who are against partial-birth abortion are against abortion in general, there is no necessary link, as partial-birth abortion is a particularly horrifying form of abortion. This is for the reasons already explained: it involves a deliberate, murderous physical assault on a half-born baby, whom we know for certain will feel pain and suffer as a result. We accept that there is some legitimate medical debate about whether embryos and earlier foetuses feel pain; there is no such debate in this case, and this is why partial-birth abortion is uniquely horrific, and uniquely unjustifiable.

The D&X abortion procedure generates the minimum of risk for the mother.  Banning it means that the only alternatives are premature labour induction for which mortality rates are 2.5 times higher and is emotionally very difficult due to the length of time it takes[1] (it is also likely to be unacceptable to the proposition) and hysterotomy (which results in removal of the womb). Finally as those who are having late partial birth abortions are likely to be suicidal, or at least will be very determined to get rid of their child they are the most likely to resort to back-street methods that cause damage to themselves.

[1] The Harriet and Robert Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health, ‘Abortion’, http://www.columbia.edu/itc/hs/pubhealth/modules/reproductiveHealth/abortion.html

There is no medical consensus on this issue.  Where Dilation and Extraction is performed without inducing partial birth then it has the potential to be just as safe for the mother.