dorks, not nerds: News of note

Justices uphold ban on abortion procedure

Not good news. I've been against this ban for a long, long time, but yesterday I formed a more solid basis for my opinion. Abortions are legal during the time frame in which intact D&Xs are performed; that has not changed. But this law, and now the court, are telling physicians which specific procedures they can and cannot do. On Talk of the Nation Wednesday, Neal Conan talked to David Savage, Supreme Court correspondent for the Los Angeles Times about this issue:

Savage, at one point, paraphrases Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent: “[Ginsburg said] medical experts said in the trial in this case that for some women, this will force them to undergo riskier surgery and the government should not be able to do that. These are legal abortions, she stressed – prior to the end of the sixth month, they’re legal abortions – why shouldn’t doctors be able to do the abortions in the way the doctors believe is safer?

Neal Conan points to the majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, and reads: “Physicians are not entitled to ignore regulations that direct them to use reasonable alternative procedures."

Savage: “Yes, Kennedy was quite blunt. Even though he acknowledged that a fair number of medical experts say that there could be significant health risks here, nonetheless, since there is another way to do the abortion, you must use that other way.

“Which reminded me [of a scenario], if men were told, ‘By the way, you might have prostate cancer, and doctors could either do the surgery to remove your prostate or do radiation, and we’ve decided radiation is what we prefer, so you can’t do the surgery.’ A lot of men would say, ‘Well wait a minute, I heard that surgery is the better procedure.’ This decision basically says, ‘Yes but there’s another good procedure and you should use the other good procedure, not this surgery.’”

I think that's a good analogy. It's still an abortion, no matter which way you look at it. The outcome is the same, and the process is not any different, no matter what you try to say. I know some would use that last sentence as reason to outlaw all abortions, but I use it to support the use of all legitimate medical abortions, regardless of the procedure.