Editorials Weeping women
Steinfels, Margaret O'Brien
Weeping women As expected, President Bill Clinton vetoed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (see, "Clinton's Choice," Commonweal, April 19). He did so surrounded by women who had undergone the...
...But as hard pressed as such women may feel, it does not follow that the law should sanction either infanticide or third-trimester abortions...
...One woman tearfully described having her abortion (of a fetus with a chromosomal disorder) on Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement...
...But it was Mr...
...It happens every day...
...In praising the president, Kate Michelman of the National Abortion Rights Action League took the high ground: "The president has chosen compassion and concern for families facing medical tragedies over the cynical, election-year ploy of the politicians advancing this legislation...
...residents...
...Clinton has become an adept at comforting the sorrowing and the afflicted...
...It is also, frankly, possible to imagine women so utterly distraught that they suffocate their newborns at birth...
...In fact, the lugubrious performance of the president, moving from the funeral of Secretary Brown to a ceremonial veto of the partial-birth abortion ban, surrounded by weeping women, was inappropriate and manipulative...
...Clinton was in his stirring-tribute mode and couldn't stop...
...Quite the contrary-for where else would pro-abortion voters go...
...Among women voters, he is twenty points ahead of Republican candidate Robert Dole...
...Abortion-rights groups pressed the president to veto the ban and flew the weeping women to Washington to witness it...
...Nor should the president of the United States bless such things...
...It is possible to imagine women so utterly devastated that they would resort to an abortion procedure that involves half-delivering a fetus of twenty or more weeks' gestation, suctioning out its brain, and delivering a dead baby-that is, would resort to a procedure that verges on infanticide...
...He vetoed the bill late on Wednesday, April 10, just after the funeral of Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown, who had received genuinely heart-stirring tributes from thousands of friends, co-workers, and Washington, D.C...
...To whom was this defense of the veto a greater affront, God or women...
...Clinton could not contain his well-honed compassion: "We need more parents in America like these folks....And just because they happen to be in a tiny minority to bear a unique burden that God imposes on just a few people every year, we can't forget our obligation to protect their lives, their children, and the families' future...
...Perhaps Mr...
...The New York Times reported that the woman "struggled to control her emotions as Mr...
...Clinton put his hand on her shoulder" (April 11,1996...
...The fact of the matter is, late abortions should be countenanced only to save the life of the mother...
...Clinton who went about as far as you can go and invited the women to tell their partial-birth abortion stories publicly as he vetoed the ban...
...The headline of a Times news analysis on April 12, "A Calculation in Tears," captured the whiff of campaign politics implicit in Clinton's veto...
...He did so surrounded by women who had undergone the procedure-all of them, it was said, for serious medical reasons...
...The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act had strong support among both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the president would have been at no partisan disadvantage in approving the ban...
...Maternal health or "future fertility"-the reasons given by Clinton for vetoing the bill-are notoriously slippery justifications that in practice amount to little more than abortion-on-demand...
...So not only was this veto meant to signal his sympathy toward women, it was also calculated to reenforce his lead in the gender gap...
...Women-and men-have many reasons to weep about the current practice of abortion in the United States, and the continued resort to partial-birth abortion procedures is one of them...
Vol. 123 • May 1996 • No. 9
