The Stupak-Pitts Amendment, or WTF Wednesday Came Early This Year

Falling asleep while listening to NPR leads to some rather strange dreams. Last night I recall huddling in my bathtub wrapped in a towel while hiding from some creepy window-peeper who eventually broke into the house, all while serenading me with "Fly Me To The Moon" and a variety of other crooning songs. I didn't really understand why that was happening until I woke up in the middle of an interview with Michael Feinstein.


...And now for something completely different.

IT'S!

Abortion and the health care bill!

I became aware of the debate surrounding HR 3962 and abortion funding via a community entitled "Feminist Rage." From this context, it's probably not hard to discern my feelings on the matter. Quite frankly, the whole abortion debate exhausts and infuriates me, right down to the rhetoric each side uses. (To borrow a term from lifenews.com: "Abortion advocates," my ass. They're hardly giving them out at BOGO sales or having Abortion Fairs, are they?) I, personally, believe that it is vital to women's health and safety to have regulated, professional abortion facilities available to everyone. I also believe that I have no business telling you what you should consider moral, just as you have no business telling me.


I will, however, tell you what is legal. Roe v. Wade provides that

"This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment's concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment's reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy" and that "..for the stage prior to approximately the end of the first trimester, the abortion decision and its effectuation must be left to the medical judgment of the pregnant woman's attending physician." Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973)

The fetus is not afforded any "right to life" under the 14th amendment, which does not include protection of the unborn. (Says the court, "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer.")


My library time is about to expire, so I'll finish this tonight.