Abortion: What does 'Webster' mean?:
Balch, Richard A McCormick, Mary Ann Glendon, Fred Siegel, Sidney Callahan, Mary C Segers, E J Dionn
ABORTION WHAT DOES 'WEBSTER' MEAN? RICHARD A. McCORMICK MARY ANN GLENDON FRED SIEGEL SIDNEY CALLAHAN MARY C. SEGERS E.J. DIONNE DANIEL CALLAHAN" JULILOESCH WILEY ANNIE LALLY MILHAVEN BURKE"...
...I have always proclaimed a belief in the eventual triumph of a liberal feminist consistent ethic of life position in our society, but my timetable called for a hundred or more years of toil...
...Each restriction of abortive killing should be accompanied by support for childbirth, childbearing, and family needs...
...In inviting state legislatures to enact additional restrictions on abortion, the Court's majority contends that, in a nation where more than half the population is female, justice will be done...
...To some as yet unknown degree, it suggests that Roe was bad medicine, bad constitutional law, bad morality...
...Unlike Europe, where the legislative process reached fruition, the U.S...
...The sit-in people-rescuers-have long argued that peacefully blocking the doors of an abortion site is not, in the strictest sense, civil disobedience because it is not disobedient...
...That is, civil law itself holds statutes such as "trespass" unenforceable in life-or-death situations...
...The bishops' recent statements on economic justice and women's concerns...
...The 1974 Vatican declaration on abortion states that we must work to eliminate the root causes of abortion...
...Now is the time to display a genuine respect-for-life posture: to lobby against the death penalty in state legislatures...
...Further it indicates that the Court will take a somewhat more benign view ol postviability regulations, already permitted by Roe but routinely struck down by the Court in the past...
...Sometimes the police themselves decline to make arrests...
...This means promoting Fred Slegel he Court's decision is a wild card for both political parties...
...The moral goal to be pursued in abortion and other peace and justice issues is the recognition that every member of the human community is equal in intrinsic moral worth, whatever their other merits or powers, or lack of them...
...JuliLoesch Wiley, a member of Feminists for Life, served as Communications Coordinator for Operation Rescue in 1988...
...That just does not happen...
...It is attempting to discuss "middle-ground" points so often neglected...
...But Webster-and the reaction to Webster-has changed all this...
...On the other hand, should the anti-abortion side show greater recognition of the need to honor a woman's autonomy, they could reap substantial benefits...
...Fred Siegel, who covered the 1988 presidential election for Commonweal, will be spending the 1989-90 academic year at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton University...
...It partially unshackles the public and legislators elected to represent us from the iron and unmitigated requirement in Roe v. Wade of abortion on demand throughout the full nine months of pregnancy...
...Now that the findings of state legislatures are more likely to parallel the realities of embryology, the rescuers have a priceless opportunity...
...and to support policies to combat poverty, sexism, racism, and home-lessness...
...In June 1989, she received her MTSfrom the Harvard Divinity School...
...DIONNE DANIEL CALLAHAN" JULILOESCH WILEY ANNIE LALLY MILHAVEN BURKE" J.BALCH In upholding the Missouri law that permitted testing for fetal viability at twenty weeks of pregnancy and prohibited any use of public facilities or public employees for abortion, the Supreme Court seemed on the verge of overturning Roe v. Wade...
...It does let us know that the expansive force of Roe v. Wade, and the cases that drew oul its implications, has probably come to an end...
...Women and children first, or our great ship goes down...
...It was one-eyed legislation...
...Should the pro-abortion side show willingness to acknowledge the misuse of abortion as a means of birth control, for example, they would enhance their position markedly...
...The Court ignores the fact that women comprise only 16.9 percent of state legislators and hold only 5 percent of congressional seats...
...And we can now say with confidence that it will not go away as long as children die...
...How can one comprehend the magnitude...
...Burke J. Balch he Webster decision is important to the prolife movement for two reasons...
...Each restriction of abortive killing should be accompanied by support for childbirth, childbearing, and family needs...
...As the debate shifts from the federal courts to state legislatures, Catholics should keep in mind three points: First, the basic question still remains: Who should decide such a personal, private matter as whether to bear a child...
...Over the years, I continued to question mass abortion for contraceptive purposes...
...The Court ignores the fact that women comprise only 16.9 percent of state legislators and hold only 5 percent of congressional seats...
...Once a district attorney (Denis Dillon of Long Island) refused to prosecute...
...What this entire episode suggests is that our politics has become overly dependent on court-based policymaking, policymaking that does not admit of compromise...
...The prolife movement must now struggle to get women what they really need for full and equal participation in our society...
...Sidney Callahcui I am surprised and encouraged by Webster...
...The reaction was universal...
...Second, remember the consistent life ethic...
...Pleased, because I regard 1.5 million legal abortions as a national scandal, and this decision moves in the direction of acknowledging this scandal and reducing its dimensions...
...Like the slavery question, which also was thought to have been swept under the rug by a Supreme Court decision, it will not allow of being sidestepped by any thinker or any voter for years to come...
...My own concern is not primarily the moral problem...
...Specifically, the primacy of the woman's concern and voice in decisions about pregnancy, the sanctity of intrauterine life as a qualification of this primacy...
...Pregnant women who possess unique lifegiving powers are obligated not to kill their offspring, unless there is some grave medical threat to their own lives...
...More specifically the problem is getting the public to engage in a civil, constructive conversation about policy amidst differing moral judgments...
...The prolife movement must now struggle to get women what they really need for full and equal participation in our society...
...If certain inalienable rights are intrinsic to human life, those rights cannot be rescinded through private acts of will or intention...
...The second reason is related to the first...
...One had four children, the other, only eighteen years old, had none...
...Richard A. McCormick I am both pleased and frustrated by the Webster decision...
...Individual women who know the complexities of the situation...
...A friend who now teaches law in the Midwest was a student at Yale Law School when Roe v. Wade was decided...
...The 1974 Vatican declaration on abortion states that we must work to eliminate the root causes of abortion...
...I am frustrated because the decision moved against Roe in a technical, chip-away manner that promises to leave us preoccupied in the months ahead with single-issue politics, scare tactics, worn-out rhetoric, and a disastrous neglect of other social and even prolife concerns...
...This means promoting action to protect those "protectable" interests...
...Among Democrats, who have already been hurt by the abortion issue, the decision will push the party further in a culturally elitist direction, further alienating part of its once formidable blue-collar base...
...Thus we are unlikel) to see any drastic retrenchment from Roe unless and until the Court must deal with a statute that is in direct conflict with it such as, for example, a state attempt to regulate abortion in the interest of protecting the fetus before viability...
...If we truly believe human lives are morally equal then we must meet the unequal needs of the vulnerable for protection The strong and able, those who are fully functioning persons capable of moral agency, have an obligation to succorthose who are needy and dependent...
...Sidney Callahan is associate professor of psychology at Mercy College, Dobbs Ferry, and the author of With All My Heart and Mind (Crossroad, 1988...
...In my view, the evidence is overwhelming that most abortions are morally wrong...
...Women and children first, or our great ship goes down...
...Mary C. Segers s a Catholic feminist, I am shocked at the lack of attention to women's rights in the majority opinion in Webster...
...A fetus, like an infant, or a mentally impaired or retarded individual, counts as a human being...
...As the debate shifts from the federal courts to state legislatures, Catholics should keep in mind three points: First, the basic question still remains: Who should decide such a personal, private matter as whether to bear a child...
...Can prochoice and prolife advocates work together to reduce the incidence of abortion without coercing women...
...In some states, this is spelled out as "legal justification...
...It is difficult to think that justice will result when the system of representation is so grossly distorted as to be glaringly undemocratic...
...The bishops' recent statements on economic justice and women's concerns...
...If we truly believe human lives are morally equal then we must meet the unequal needs of the vulnerable for protection The strong and able, those who are fully functioning persons capable of moral agency, have an obligation to succorthose who are needy and dependent...
...In inviting state legislatures to enact additional restrictions on abortion, the Court's majority contends that, in a nation where more than half the population is female, justice will be done...
...A precious few times-in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and in Northern, Virginia- a judge or jury has acquitted the rescuers, on the grounds that life-saving interventions are not properly subject to criminal prosecution...
...In Webster, however, she was extremely cautious about addressing any issues not directly before the Court...
...Third, Catholic reliance upon a natural law heritage of right-reasoning in politics suggests that the highest priority should be given to rational discussion and reasonable compromise...
...Burke J. Balch is state legislative coordinator of the National Right to Life Committee...
...Mary Ann Glendon is professor of law at Harvard Universit and author of Abortion and Divorce in Western Law...
...Third, Catholic reliance upon a natural law heritage of right-reasoning in politics suggests that the highest priority should be given to rational discussion and reasonable compromise...
...Although not in the foreground, an important aspect of the decision is its affirmation of a basic civil liberty: the right ol Americans to have important issues decided by majoritariar political processes except when these have clearly been removed from the legislative purview by constitutional text oi tradition...
...In charge of the Lying-in Hospital at the New York Cornell Medical Center, I saw two women arrive in as many weeks with Lysol-induced abortions...
...Because five Supreme Court votes can now be counted for the position that there is a compelling state interest in unborn life throughout pregnancy (four votes in this case, and Justice O' Connor's from her dissent in the 1983 Akron case), it is now possible to discuss some laws that contain meaningful protections for unborn children without invariably being met with the dismissive rejoinder that they would be "unconstitutional...
...He began to wonder about his own sanity...
...Pregnant women who possess unique lifegiving powers are obligated not to kill their offspring, unless there is some grave medical threat to their own lives...
...The moral goal to be pursued in abortion and other peace and justice issues is the recognition that every member of the human community is equal in intrinsic moral worth, whatever their other merits or powers, or lack of them...
...in other states, it's simply the common-law doctrine of "necessity...
...There are deeply felt claims on both sides of this issue...
...Lolly Milhaven he decision of the Supreme Court saddens me...
...Law and truth may begin to coincide: and what God has joined together, let no one put asunder...
...Mary C. Segers s a Catholic feminist, I am shocked at the lack of attention to women's rights in the majority opinion in Webster...
...National fatigue is close to national apathy...
...For the Republicans who haven't yet had to pay a substantial price on the abortion issue, the bill is soon to come due, because insofar as militants force the party to take an absolutist stand against abortion, the Republicans stand to lose an important part of their upper-middle-class, suburban-based, core constitutency...
...Yet, I concluded that the frenzy around abortion seems to be less concerned with life and fetuses, and more charged up over the control of women...
...Justice Sandra Da> O'Connor emerges as the decisive voter on the Court...
...I began to change...
...Both women died...
...To us, the dismissive reaction of so many intelligent, decent, and caring people who look on those haunted by this toll as fanatical eccentrics has made this truly seem a world turned upside down...
...There was not a single person he encountered-on the faculty, among the students, or passersby-who did not consider him not only wrong but also eccentrically weird in his notion that there might be something wrong with abortion, or something significant about unborn children...
...I proposed such points for discussion in a recent issue of Second Opinion (March 1989...
...Now a dent may be made in our lifetimes...
...It may lead directly to concrete if initially limited laws that may save at least a few lives...
...Among Democrats, who have already been hurt by the abortion issue, the decision will push the party further in a culturally elitist direction, further alienating part of its once formidable blue-collar base...
...Fred Siegel, who covered the 1988 presidential election for Commonweal, will be spending the 1989-90 academic year at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton University...
...The laws of society can only morally justify overriding a fundamental human right to life for equally fundamental moral reasons and in those rare cases when the cause of greater justice for all is at stake...
...In the last decade, out of hundreds of prolife sit-ins and perhaps 35,000 men and women arrested, the "necessity" argument has enjoyed its rare successes...
...Now is the time to display a genuine respect-for-life posture: to lobby against the death penalty in state legislatures...
...That is not to miniaturize the issue, not at all...
...We did not know, but soon learned, that absorbed Lysol causes bleeding from every bodily orifice...
...A fetus, like an infant, or a mentally impaired or retarded individual, counts as a human being...
...What does it mean to say that 1.6 million unborn children die each year, that 23 million have perished since abortion was legalized...
...Still, only the woman with a developing life within her can best decide-in light of all the implications for that life, herself, and those others for whom she is responsible-what choice to make...
...Mary Ann Giendon he Court's decision in Webster is neither the victory some prolife forces claim, nor the crushing blow that many prochoice supporters describe it as being...
...Individual women who know the complexities of the situation...
...Can prochoice and prolife advocates work together to reduce the incidence of abortion without coercing women...
...Those of us in the prolife movement live day in and day out with the consciousness of death...
...Sidney Callahcui I am surprised and encouraged by Webster...
...If certain inalienable rights are intrinsic to human life, those rights cannot be rescinded through private acts of will or intention...
...I have always proclaimed a belief in the eventual triumph of a liberal feminist consistent ethic of life position in our society, but my timetable called for a hundred or more years of toil...
...It is getting the public to talk about women's concerns vis-a-vis concerns for germinating life in a pluralistic society...
...Now a dent may be made in our lifetimes...
...Sidney Callahan is associate professor of psychology at Mercy College, Dobbs Ferry, and the author of With All My Heart and Mind (Crossroad, 1988...
...I was attacked with equal vigor by a prolife and a prochoice commentator, a symbol to me that the Supreme Court has precipitated a regional debate in fifty states which will only repeat such dreary refrains and continue to pollute public conversation for some time to come...
...I believe that the nation is sick and tired not of the issue, but of the way it has been rhetoricized and politicized by both sides, and of the way it saps the nation's social and political energies...
...Fred Slegel he Court's decision is a wild card for both political parties...
...Abortion is preeminently a moral problem and an extremely serious one...
...and to support policies to combat poverty, sexism, racism, and home-lessness...
...She and her husband expect to deliver their first child "into the air-breathing world" in November...
...is now caught in an impossible dilemma because an insistence on "rights" on matters best left to the legislature is inherently destructive of both social comity and respect for law...
...Maybe that is the way it has to be in human affairs...
...On the other hand, should the anti-abortion side show greater recognition of the need to honor a woman's autonomy, they could reap substantial benefits...
...Among prolife and prochoice organizations, the side that shows the most tactical flexibility in reaching out to the great mass of the public that supports neither of their positions-the side most willing to acknowledge the competing moral demands posed by the issue-has the best chance of winning politically...
...It saddens me because it portends the dismantling of Roe v. Wade, and as a Catholic nurse I know what pregnant women's lives were like before 1973...
...Annie Lally Milhaven, a former professor of nursing, is currently director of Preparation for the Second Half (a preretirement firm...
...He said he felt like a person who went into a crowded room with a great oaken table as its centerpiece and, when he remarked on the table, was met with puzzled expressions and concerned assurances that he was imagining things...
...The abortion question that so many thought settled in 1973 is now again before the American people...
...I reflected that whatever was wrong with abortion (and I believe there are moral issues involved), there was something more wrong with the brutal deaths of these young women...
...Richard A. McCormick, S.J., is John A. O'Brien professor oj Christian ethics at the University of Notre Dame...
...The key problem is one of public policy, when many Americans do not agree (and many do not) with the moral judgment I have expressed...
...In other words, I believe the claims of nascent life deserve preference over most of the claims women assert under title of "control of our bodies...
...Among prolife and prochoice organizations, the side that shows the most tactical flexibility in reaching out to the great mass of the public that supports neither of their positions-the side most willing to acknowledge the competing moral demands posed by the issue-has the best chance of winning politically...
...is now caught in an impossible dilemma because an insistence on "rights" on matters best left to the legislature is inherently destructive of both social comity and respect for law...
...It is difficult to think that justice will result when the system of representation is so grossly distorted as to be glaringly undemocratic...
...They can argue that civil law allows what divine law demands: that we "rescue those unjustly sentenced to death" (Proverbs 24:11...
...He used to set up a table there at which he tried to distribute prolife literature...
...Should the pro-abortion side show willingness to acknowledge the misuse of abortion as a means of birth control, for example, they would enhance their position markedly...
...Unlike Europe, where the legislative process reached fruition, the U.S...
...After the legalization of abortion by New York State, I opened a twenty-eight bed unit for abortion patients...
...For the Republicans who haven't yet had to pay a substantial price on the abortion issue, the bill is soon to come due, because insofar as militants force the party to take an absolutist stand against abortion, the Republicans stand to lose an important part of their upper-middle-class, suburban-based, core constitutency...
...Or state legislators who are knowledgeable about insurance, taxes, and highways, but know little of women's lives...
...What this entire episode suggests is that our politics has become overly dependent on court-based policymaking, policymaking that does not admit of compromise...
...Commonweal asked ten knowledgeable observers to comment briefly on the July 3, 1989 decision, Webster v. Reproductive Health Services...
...Second, remember the consistent life ethic...
...Or state legislators who are knowledgeable about insurance, taxes, and highways, but know little of women's lives...
...Shouting does...
...The decision reopens the argument...
...The laws of society can only morally justify overriding a fundamental human right to life for equally fundamental moral reasons and in those rare cases when the cause of greater justice for all is at stake...
Vol. 116 • August 1989 • No. 14
