Abortion, as always, will be one of the most contentious issues in the upcoming confirmation hearings over President Obama’s nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan for a position on the US Supreme Court.
The hearings come just weeks after the Nebraska legislature passed the strictest abortion laws in the country when it prohibited abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. This new law will probably be challenged in court, and proponents of the measure hope that the Supreme Court will eventually agree to take the case and use the opportunity to redefine life.
However, instead of simply redefining life once again, the court should consider what happened with segregation as a model for acting on the abortion debate.
In Roe v. Wade (1973), the Supreme Court ruled that states could ban some abortions because they “have an important and legitimate interest in preserving and protecting the health of the pregnant woman [and] still another important and legitimate interest in protecting the potentiality of human life.”
Thanks for posting this very thoughtful piece. I could only add that in there might be an additional approach that could be serviceable at both ends of the “life” debate.
The end of human life is defined medically and quite often legally by the absence of certain brain waves. The beginning of human life should be defined by their first [i]presence[/i]. Having at least that one consistent standard for “life” issues would be a really good start, and one grounded in science.
The abortion issue would thence become one of [i]potential[/i]. In a foetus (simply Latin for “baby”) the entire biological imperative and development anticipates the impending presence of those brain waves. The momentum is forward towards “life.” That should require somewhat separate treatment in both law and medicine.
At the other end we can, in effect, celebrate and remember the presence of those brain waves, but the potential for restoration in this world is irretrievably gone.
#1, I understand what you are saying, but there are still some of us old fashioned enough to believe that life begins at conception. That is what Bishop Rhett Stuart, Diocesan of GA until early 70s told me at Sunday dinner in the late 60s, and he said that is what the church believed (at that time). I don’t know what has changed since then, other than secular matters that make that belief inconvenient.
I agree that life DOES begin at the moment of conception, and the very idea that it begins with the actuation of brain waves is ridiculous.
#2, #3 … that’s the issue of potential. I’m with you completely on the conception thing — to the point of having gone through embryo adoption with 29 little babies — though I believe that on a legal and political level we must begin with what ought to be obvious (brain waves) and subsequently address the eight or nine weeks between conception and patently human brain waves.
It was 35 years between [i]Dred Scott[/i] and [i]Plessis[/i], followed by another 64 years until [i]Brown[/i]. If you think it will be any different with abortion, you’re fooling yourselves. The issue is one of trajectory, not absolutism.
I appreciate Bart’s putting forth an earnest argument. When abortion was first made part of the Constitutionally implied right of privacy by SCOTUS it was supposed to be only for the first trimester. Presumably there would be brain waves by that time, by Bart’s reckoning, and I think most people would imagine that to be a likelihood. But politics (and court decisions) have rapidly moved to the point where late term abortions are much more common and putting any kind of political brake on the abortion process at any time is decried as being akin to violating a woman’s “sacred” right to control her own body. In short, once the abortion genie was let loose by the courts it became next to impossible for legislators to put it back in the bottle. Still I agree with Bart that outlawing abortion entirely is probably politically impossible. I think what the Supreme Court did was take away from states the right to regulate it, and that has led to the horrors that are euphemistically dismissed today by so many by defining the issue out of existence. (“It’s not a life, it’s a choice.”) I am looking for some sort of political compromise where the legislatures have more say.
R v.W MUST be reviewed, for at no point in the decision are the rights of the father mentioned at all. The conclusion can only be that the father has no rights, even though he is 1/2 the child and will be by law responsible to the mother for the child’s support. If he has no rights or responsibilities in the matter of the child’s life or death in utero, then why has he responsibilities after the child is born? The ruling is patently unjust and inequitable, simply one more piece of of agenda-driven court rulings. Larry