So, the Supreme Court upheld a ban on Intact Dilation and Extraction (Intact D & E, or IDE), known among the pro-life community by the very bad, very false neologism "partial birth abortion". What medical procedures are next? Vasectomies? Blood transfusions? Open-heart surgeries? Organ transplants?
My view on this issue is really quite simple. This is a medical procedure, performed under the care of a physician, and it is dangerous business when the state determines what is a legitimate medical procedure and what is not. This has ramifications that have little to do with the question of abortion. We can extend the logic here to start banning pretty much any medical procedure that violates some group's beliefs. Let's just consider the question of childbirth itself; even though anesthesia was available for years, it was denied women because of the scriptural injunction that women were to give birth in pain as part of the punishment for original sin.
Let's not even go down the list and talk about conception control.
Rather than simply throw the whole issue of abortion back on the state legislatures where it belongs, and where we could actually have a debate on the issue of abortion, we now have a situation where the Supreme Court has done a mirror-image of the Roe decision, imposed its will upon the public, initially within a highly narrow category of prospective cases, but with ramifications across a broad spectrum of social and medical practices. This is a very dangerous precedent.
Virtual Tin Cup
