The Nation's Pulse: All Too Human
Brown, Brian A.
NAT AI_' 5_ PULS By Brian A. Brown All Too Human 1I discuss it anymore," says a colleague in Washington policy circles, referring to abortion. Who can blame him? The likelihood of a red-faced...
...The 1995 defection of Norma McCorvey, the real-life Jane Roe of Roe v. Wade, was an important milestone in the wider abortion debate...
...He explains, "The pro-choice people are now increasingly saying: 'Okay, we give up on the idea that this is just fetal tissue...
...The rationalization that the unborn child is just a blob of protoplasm no longer convinces...
...Our studies in premature animals have clearly demonstrated that it is possible to push back viability with respect to the lungs as early as 20 weeks of human development...
...The American Spectator • July 1999 65...
...They could no longer say it was not a baby when the legs are kicking the doctor...
...In Missouri, where the Foundation has been running TV ads that raise questions rather than preach ("...when I wanted the baby, it was a baby, and when I didn't, it was something else...
...The 2000 elections promise little change...
...The fetus, in other words, grew a bit in stature during the logo's...
...Abortion is now, at the very least, recognized as killing...
...Even pro-choice activists are starting to admit that abortion is killing...
...For many pregnant women, a Foundation member wrote in First Things last year, the "choice is either `my life is over' or 'the life of this new child is over.'" Or they see themselves as choosing among three "evils": "motherhood, adoption, and abortion...
...Abortion is the World War I of policy debates, with each side hoping attrition will bring resolution...
...Roe v. Wade declared that when the fetus becomes viable in the third trimester, states could impose restrictions on abortion (unless it was deemed necessary for the mother's life or health—a qualification that effectively ruled out any restrictions...
...I don't consider a fetus a human being...
...For this reason, Weiss concedes, she is in favor of some post-viability bans...
...But the choice itself is finally crystallizing...
...But in 1997 Thomas Shaffer, a professor of physiology and pediatrics at Temple, told a BBC documentary team: "There's been a consensus that the wall for viability is associated with about 23 weeks of human development...
...By focusing on the unborn, the standard pro-life campaigns tended to aggravate the resentment of having to make that choice...
...Meanwhile, the pro-life side has changed its tack...
...If that day ever arrives, it will fundamentally alter the question of when the fetus is independent, and when its mother might have the right to abort it...
...Blaming nausea and crankiness, Wolf "snapped...
...The fetus grows in moral stature—the importance of recognizing its potential life and protecting its potential increases -- as the pregnancy advances...
...The baby's distinctly human appearance—its beating heart, its little fingers—has become clearer over the last two years thanks to the introduction of digitalization, color, and greater contrast...
...When emphasis shifts to how women can have their babies yet preserve their own lives, abortion rates decline...
...In the past few years, technological advances and developments in the abortion debate have made it harder to deny the fetus's humanity...
...At one time, pro-lifers thought they need only make clear that the fetus was a baby and abortions would decline...
...The likelihood of a red-faced exchange convincing anyone to switch sides is about nil...
...Shaffer says "we are approaching a very significant assumption because of the viability of other organs," but suggests other nuances are possible...
...Yet glacial change is occurring...
...In a 1996 article for the New Republic entitled "Our Bodies, Our Selves," Wolf described a confrontation with someone wanting to know whether four months into her pregnancy she was going to deny she was carrying a baby...
...Showing the human shape creates the emotional notion that it's alive," says James McCartney, a bioethicist and theologian at Temple University...
...Richard John Neuhaus, editor of First Things, credits much of the shift in the debate to Wolf...
...This position requires holding the fetus in a kind of metaphysical limbo, a subhuman status that permits its eradication...
...Asked when she believes life begins, Catherine Weiss, director of the ACLU's ReproducBRIAN A. BROWN lives in New York and is a 1998 Phillips Foundation Journalism Fellow...
...But the pro-lifers won an unprecedented public relations victory by publicizing the fact that such abortions kill something that is obviously alive...
...Among the philosophers, psychologists, and others advocating infanticide, the most prominent is Peter Singer, recently appointed chair of Princeton's Center for Human Values...
...abortion rates dropped 29 percent between 1988 and 1992, compared to a five percent decline nationwide...
...He argues that "killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person...
...In 1996, Shaffer co-authored a New England Journal of Medicine piece that showed when liquid ventilation was applied to ten premature babies that were given no chance, eight survived...
...tive Freedom Project, says, "The fetus is alive from when the sperm meets the egg...
...Everyone is dug in...
...The Rev...
...T echnology is pushing back the date of viability and, consequently, the point at which a fetus may deserve protection under the law...
...Polls consistently show Americans firmly committed to "choice," even if it means a guilty conscience...
...Drawing on American distrust of government, this contradiction rests on the notion that while abortion may be bad, limiting female (and male) liberty is a greater evil...
...Some are following this thinking to its logical end: If killing inside the womb is allowed, then why not outside...
...I consider it a part of life to be respected...
...McCorvey had become horrified by late-term abortions...
...Whether this newly found clarity leads to greater restrictions on abortion or more liberal attitudes about infanticide is another question...
...Almost two-thirds of state courts now permit parents to file wrongful death suits when a viable fetus is killed...
...The court called the loss "egregious regardless of the state of fetal development...
...Of course it's a baby," she said...
...The second thoughts of people such as McCorvey and Wolf are complemented by technological developments...
...Her public opposition was immediately dismissedby pro-choicers, some of whom questioned her emotional stability, but her new position suggested that many other women might have second thoughts as well...
...The second notable defection of sorts was feminist Naomi Wolf...
...Malcolm Levene, professor of pediatrics and child health at the University of Leeds in England, recently told the New York Times that while significant obstacles remain for the human equivalent, "I see them as being soluble in the next 5 to 10 years...
...Most likely no...
...The West Virginia Supreme Court allowed a suit in the car collision death of an 18- to 22-week old fetus...
...Ultrasound only became routine in the mid8o's and now upwards of go percent of American women have them in their first or second trimester...
...In 1963 doctors failed to save John F. Kennedy's nearly full-term child, while today saving 5oo-gram 24-week crack babies has become routine...
...Until recently, one of the greatest problems with saving younger fetuses was their lungs...
...64 July 1999 • The American Spectator contraception...
...Very often it is not wrong at all...
...After the "relief" of a "long delayed honesty," she went on to conclude that abortion was just a "necessary evil...
...Until that moment," she candidly wrote, "I had never thought of abortion as anything other than a last-ditch form of Some pro-choicers are having second thoughts...
...In 1996, the South Carolina Supreme Court allowed the prosecution of a woman for child abuse after she had ingested crack in her third trimester, holding that a third-trimester fetus was a person under the child-abuse law...
...Even Leonora Lloyd, a former coordinator of the British National Abortion Campaign, found her n-week scan "shocking...
...The undisguisable gruesomeness of the procedure—the physician partially extracts the fetus feet first, pierces the skull, and sucks out the brain—prompted many state legislatures to pass laws essentially banning it...
...Yet she still defends the legality of abortion...
...There are just some unfortunate circumstances in which you have to kill babies...
...So is this the beginning of the end of abortion...
...But studies by the Caring Foundation demonstrate that stressing the importance of the fetus does not address women's fears of unplanned pregnancies as a "death of self...
...Bill Clinton, however, twice vetoed a federal ban, and state courts blocked the laws en masse because their vague wording could be used to ban other abortions...
...Okay, it is a baby...
...I have respect for unborn life," claims Janet Benshoof, president of the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy and a major abortion rights litigant...
...Some courts now consider the fetus a "person" under existing homicide laws, and legislatures are increasingly passing laws against killing a fetus...
...The viability issue may soon be transformed thanks to some brave new world technology: Japanese doctors are making progress in creating an artificial womb for goats...
...The justices noted that viability usually occurred at about 28 weeks, but that line has shifted dramatically...
...The further this process goes, the harder it becomes to accept what we have today: not merely abortion, but abortion on demand...
...As the choice grows starker, the euphemisms, fake science, bad law, and moral simplifications grow harder to sustain...
...A few states in the past three years have allowed claims Viability may soon be transformed thanks to some Brave New World technology...
...The arguments are known...
...Presidential hopefuls from both parties are releasing well-worn pronouncements reflecting the fact that a large majority of Americans favor the legal right to abortion, even though a large majority think it morally wrong...
...Partial-birth abortions forced the pro-choice crowd out into the open," says Princeton University Professor Robert George...
...on behalf of nonviable fetuses...
...No single development in the past few years has done more to force clarification of the fetus's status than the partial-birth abortion debate...
Vol. 32 • July 1999 • No. 7
