The Times hit the nail on the head here.

Pataki is playing politics --- he's doing a Frist reversal --- pandering because of a presidential run.

This would have been fine if he had made it known long before passage that this was his point of view...but he wanted to make a national statement.

I wonder if he'll be invited to Justice Sunday II?

Sad state of affairs.

This is one of the best hopes we have for eliminating unwanted pregnancies. This is not abortion.

August 2, 2005
Governor Pataki's Veto -- NYT Editorial

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/02/opinion/...agewanted=print

Gov. George Pataki's decision to veto a sensible bill that would make an emergency contraceptive available without a prescription is a major disappointment. The measure, which was passed by the New York State Legislature with heartening support from the Republican leaders of the State Senate, would have allowed a trained nurse or pharmacist to dispense a higher dose of a common oral contraceptive as a way to block pregnancy within 72 hours of unprotected sex.

The governor's action was all the more disheartening since the federal Food and Drug Administration continues to delay its long-promised decision on an application to allow nonprescription access to emergency contraception. Sparing women the time and expense of doctors' visits to get the medication - a form of contraception, not abortion - would remove a big obstacle to its use, thereby cutting down on the number of unintended pregnancies and, experts project, abortions.

Mr. Pataki says that he supports the idea of easing access to the medication - the so-called morning-after pill - but that he objects to particular details of the bill, especially the absence of provisions that would prevent young women under 16 from having access to the drug. His concerns in this regard are overwrought.

Several states now permit pharmacists to dispense emergency contraceptives to people of any age, and there have been no serious medical complications. In 2003, two scientific advisory panels of the federal drug agency voted overwhelmingly to make such a drug available to all age groups without a prescription, based on the evidence of safety and efficacy.

The governor, a moderate pro-choice Republican, takes umbrage at any suggestion that his planned veto represents a politically motivated shift as he contemplates a presidential run in 2008. It is impossible to know for sure what motivated Mr. Pataki's decision. But the immediate reaction to his stance has been to provoke understandable fury on the part of the bill's supporters.

Mr. Pataki said he would urge legislative leaders to work with him to hammer out a revised bill that would meet his objections. That is an effort he should have made while the bill was still pending. For the moment at least, an admirable bipartisan attempt by the Legislature to ease access to emergency contraception is dead.

NY is lucky that George Pataki dtermined not to seek reelection. It is interesting that he is looking to run for higher office and building a resume for it. It reminds me of a Democratic colleague who did a similar thing --- John Edwards. He learned that he would have a tough reelection battle which he would likely lose so he took the easy way out and decided to run for president. He managed to use his trial skills of persuasion to get chosen as Vice President.

Well, Edwards had his election in North Carolina and George W. Bush won...and I believe should Pataki seek higher office and win the nomination the fate would be similar. Pataki would lose his home state too.

The sad thing is all the hypocrisy that is spewed out during the process...and the lives of those people affected by their political shenanigans -- IE posturing.

This is what Pataki did on this bill. He postured for the Christian right as if he ever had a chance of securing the endorsement of the religious right.

Needed: A Pill for Pandering

By Richard Cohen

Washington Post

Thursday, August 4, 2005; Page A23

When an otherwise reasonable man starts to make no sense at all, it is standard practice in emergency rooms to test for West Nile virus or encephalitis or a bad reaction to one drug or another. If, however, that man is a politician, then no test is needed. Delirium is caused by running for president as a moderate Republican. No one can do that and keep his sanity.

To back up my medical diagnosis I offer the recent statements of George Pataki, governor of New York, and Mitt Romney, governor of Massachusetts. Both men are coming to the conclusion that their country desperately needs them, and their thoughts have turned to a White House occupancy, sometime around January 2009. Pataki has announced that he will not seek a fourth term, he has recently been to Iowa, and -- after an entire career spent as a pro-choice Republican -- he has said he will veto a bill that would have made the "morning-after" pill available without a prescription. He said he does not like making the drug available to minors, who, come to think of it, are precisely the ones most likely to need it. Go figure.


Similarly, Romney, too, is finding himself in a strange mood when it comes to abortion and similar matters close to the hearts of conservative Republicans. As he mulls a presidential run, he has been mulling abortion, too. He has discovered -- maybe in Iowa, where he, too, has been -- that his position has changed. He is no longer pro-choice, as he was during his 2002 gubernatorial race, when he issued a statement commendable for its brevity and common sense: "Women should be free to choose based on their own beliefs, not mine and not the government's." That position has now been amended to something even briefer: Women should not have the right to choose. In a Boston Globe op-ed piece, Romney says his views on abortion have "evolved and deepened."

Maybe so. And it is possible that Pataki, too, is absolutely sincere in his objections to the morning-after pill. But if that's the case, he should have made his objections clear when the bill was under consideration by the legislature and still amendable. His second thoughts, in any event, are somewhat specious. It's precisely underage girls who need the pill the most, since they are the most easily addled and pressured -- or so I have read. Whatever the case, the vast preponderance of expert opinion considers the pill safe, and it is routinely prescribed in emergency rooms, I am told by a physician with whom I checked. It's apparent that the main objection to the pill is religious or moral or cultural -- call it what you want. As far as some people are concerned, the pill is an abortion agent. As far as others are concerned, it encourages premarital sex. Taken together it is clear: The pill does not work in red states.

Pataki and Romney are not the only Republicans who have slipped on a banana peel while running after the far-right vote, which is crucial in the GOP presidential primaries. Bill Frist did so when, after viewing a videotape, he pronounced Terri Schiavo to be responsive to stimuli when, as we now know, she was in even worse shape than some had imagined. For an esteemed physician to make such a fool of himself in chasing the skirt of the religious right is an indication of how far things have gone. It has become clear that a viable Republican presidential candidate must oppose abortion, stem cell research, the morning-after pill, gay marriage and, for good measure, evolution. At the very least, you have to offer a good word for "intelligent design," as the president did just the other day in the single dopiest statement of his presidency.

These are positions that defy logic -- not each and every one of them but as a totality. Taken together, they require GOP presidential candidates to take a kind of loyalty oath to ignorance, to see virtually every issue through a religious prism. That won't bother some candidates, but it will bother moderates. As Pataki and Romney have done, these Republicans might think that they can, in the heat of the moment, say whatever is necessary to gain the nomination and afterward revert to who they really are. But to both the left and the right they seem only blatantly opportunistic. It's an image that will stick. In politics, unlike sex, there is no morning-after pill.

cohenr@washpost.com

Why should there be risks?

It is not like we are changing our position....

We are not.

Choice should remain an absolute right of all women.

What we are doing is changing the message and changing the perception of the Democratic party.

For too long the Republican party has been allowed to shape the debate on abortion.

We are not going to allow that to happen any more.

Pro-choice and Pro-life are consistent themes which can reside within the Democratic party.

Published on Wednesday, February 16, 2005 by the New York Times
For Democrats, Rethinking Abortion Runs Risks
by David D. Kirkpatrick

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0216-04.htm

WASHINGTON - In their search for middle ground on the subject of abortion, Democrats are encountering a mixture of resistance and retreat from abortion rights advocates in their own party.

Since its defeats in the November elections, nothing has put the fractured soul of the Democratic Party on display more vividly than abortion. Party leaders, including Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and the new chairman, Howard Dean, have repeatedly signaled an effort to recalibrate the party's thinking about new restrictions on abortion.

Adding to that, Congressional Democrats named a professed opponent of abortion rights, Harry Reid of Nevada, as the leader in the Senate. Some Democrats supported another abortion opponent, Timothy J. Roemer, for the party's chairmanship.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has actively recruited at least two abortion opponents to run for the Senate in 2006. And perhaps most symbolically, the party is seeking to enlist Robert P. Casey Jr., Pennsylvania's treasurer, to challenge Senator Rick Santorum, a stalwart foe of abortion rights.

Mr. Casey is the son of former Gov. Bob Casey, a hero to abortion opponents inside and outside the Democratic Party. After trying unsuccessfully to have the party's 1992 platform state that Democrats did not support "abortion on demand," Governor Casey denounced the party for refusing to let him speak at its convention in New York on behalf of other Democrats who shared his views.

In contrast, the younger Mr. Casey said that Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, chairman of the party's senatorial campaign committee, had encouraged him to run as an opponent of abortion rights.

"He was very welcoming and very candid about the party's need to speak for a broad section of Americans," Mr. Casey said in an interview.

But Mr. Schumer's overture has roiled party loyalists who remain unyielding in their support for abortion rights, exposing a deepening rift in the party. Abortion rights groups that are major financial donors to Democratic campaigns say they may fight Mr. Casey in a primary with a candidate who shares their beliefs.

Karen White, political director of Emily's List, a group that raises money for female candidates who support abortion rights, said the group was "very excited" about possibly backing an abortion rights supporter, Barbara Hafer, a former Pennsylvania treasurer.

Emily's List and other groups have also sounded alarms about the direction the party leadership is taking over all. During the search for a national Democratic chairman, Ms. White posted a rallying cry on the group's Web site: "We fought like mad to beat back the Republicans. Little did we know that we would have just as much to fear from some within the Democratic Party who seem to be using choice as a scapegoat for our top-of-the-ticket losses."

Emily's List is circulating a study it commissioned by the pollster Mark Mellman stating that abortion "was not a factor in voters' decision-making" in the November elections.

Ann Stone, president of Republicans for Choice, an abortion rights group, said her organization's members had not been re-examining their positions, as their Democratic counterparts have. Ms. Stone added a cautionary note that cut across each party's support base.

"The Democrats have to be very careful about this because they could end up undercutting themselves with the donor base," Ms. Stone said. "The pro-choice donors in both parties tend to be the more wealthy."

Mr. Schumer, for his part, said abortion rights groups should worry about Republicans, not Democrats, if they want to preserve Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion. "What we find is that even the most pro-choice Republican senators just vote down the line for judges that are chomping at the bit to overturn Roe," he said.

Another large abortion rights group, Naral Pro-Choice, is reversing course, saying it will drop its opposition to the proposed Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, a bill that would require doctors to offer anesthetic for the fetuses of women seeking abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.

Nancy Keenan, president of Naral Pro-Choice, said the organization was saving its ammunition to fight judicial nominees who might overturn Roe v. Wade. "We are standing strong in the next Supreme Court battle," Ms. Keenan said.

There are "bigger issues to fight," she added, "to draw attention to the broader issue of reproductive health." For example, in this week's edition of the conservative Weekly Standard, Naral placed an advertisement asking abortion rights groups to "please, help us prevent abortions" by increasing access to birth control.

But Carol Tobias, political director for the National Right to Life Foundation, dismissed the invitation as an effort "to get the pro-life movement into a debate over birth control," on which her organization takes no position. Ms. Tobias called the Democrats' talk "pulling the wool over the eyes of voters."

Still, Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, a champion of abortion opponents and the sponsor of the fetal-pain bill, said he was watching the Democrats' steps with great interest. "Just the language that allows for the Democrats to open up and even encourage people to run for office as a pro-life candidate is an enormously positive development for me," Mr. Brownback said, adding that Naral's decision not to oppose his fetal-pain bill made him much more optimistic about its passage.

But abortion rights advocates warn of a bigger revolt within the party if its members start compromising on new abortion restrictions like parental notification laws or the fetal-pain bill. Karen Pearl, interim president of Planned Parenthood, said some of her allies were saying that "to the degree that the Democrats move away from choice, that could be the real birth of a third-party movement."

But Ms. Pearl added, "When the day is done, I don't believe they will backslide," in part because of the importance of abortion rights advocates to the party's base of activists and contributors.

In a New York Times poll last month, 36 percent of respondents said abortions should be generally available, 35 percent said the procedure should be available but under stricter limits, and 26 percent said abortions should not be permitted.

The financial balance sheet is much more one-sided. Single-issue abortion rights groups gave over $1.4 million in the 2004 elections to candidates for national office, more than twice as much as the total from groups opposed to abortion rights, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In addition, Emily's List raised $34 million for female candidates who support abortion rights, according to the center. By comparison, the National Right to Life Committee, the largest donor opposed to abortion rights, raised about $1.7 million.

Senator Reid said that he welcomed the new "emphasis on recognizing the diversity of the party." He added, "We have had a lot of pro-life Democrats, but the pro-choice folk haven't reached out to them and haven't protected them."

He acknowledged some complaints from abortion rights groups about the party's shifting rhetoric. "They have to keep their folks geared up, just like people who work for more highways," Mr. Reid said. "That is what they do, just like the pro-life groups."

HoustonChronicle.com -- http://www.HoustonChronicle.com | Section: Viewpoints, Outlook

Aug. 7, 2005, 12:43AM



FORGET 'FRAMING'
It's the message, Democrats
The party should focus on best ideas, then present them
By JIM WALLIS


SINCE the 2004 election, there has been much soul-searching and hand-wringing, especially among Democrats, about how to "frame" political messages. The loss to George W. Bush was painful enough, but the Republicans' post-election claims of mandate, and their triumphal promises to relegate the Democrats to permanent minority status, left political liberals in a state of panic.

So the minority party has been searching, some would say desperately, for the right "narrative": the best story line, metaphors, even magic words to bring back electoral success.

The operative term among Democratic politicians and strategists has become "framing." How to tell the story has become more important than the story itself. And that could be a bigger mistake for the Democrats than the ones they made during the election.

Language is clearly important in politics, but the message remains more important than the messaging. In the interests of full disclosure, let me note that I have been talking to the Democrats about both. But I believe that first, you must get your message straight.

What are your best ideas, and what are you for — as opposed to what you're against in the other party's message? Only when you answer those questions can you figure out how to present your message to the American people.

Because the Republicans, with the help of the religious right, have captured the language of values and religion (narrowly conceived as only abortion and gay marriage), the Democrats have also been asking how to "take back the faith."

But that means far more than throwing a few Bible verses into policy discussions, offering candidates some good lines from famous hymns, or teaching them how to clap at the right times in black churches. Democrats need to focus on the content of religious convictions and the values that underlie them.

The discussion that shapes our political future should be one about moral values, but the questions to ask are these: Whose values? Which values? And how broadly and deeply will our political values be defined? Democrats must offer new ideas and a fresh agenda, rather than linguistic strategies to sell an old set of ideologies and interest group demands.

To be specific, I offer five areas in which the Democrats should change their message and then their messaging.

First, somebody must lead on the issue of poverty, and right now neither party is doing so. The Democrats assume the poverty issue belongs to them, but with the exception of John Edwards in his 2004 campaign, they haven't mustered the gumption to oppose a government that habitually favors the wealthy over everyone else.

Democrats need new policies to offer the 36 million Americans, including 13 million children, who live below the poverty line, as well as the 9.8 million families one recent study identified as "working hard but falling short."

In fact, the Democrats should draw a line in the sand when it comes to wartime tax cuts for the wealthy, rising deficits, and the slashing of programs for low-income families and children. They need proposals that combine to create a "living family income" for wage-earners, as well as a platform of "fair trade," as opposed to just free trade, in the global economy.

Such proposals would cause a break with many of the Democrats' powerful corporate sponsors, but they would open the way for a truly progressive economic agenda. Many Americans, including religious voters who see poverty as a compelling issue of conscience, desire such a platform.

Similarly, a growing number of American Christians speak of the environment as a religious concern — one of stewardship of God's creation. The National Association of Evangelicals recently called global warming a faith issue. But Republicans consistently choose oil and gas interests over a cleaner world.

The Democrats need to call for the reversal of these priorities. They must insist that private interests should never obstruct our country's path to a cleaner and more efficient energy future, let alone hold our foreign policy hostage to the dictates of repressive regimes in the Middle East.

On the issues that Republicans have turned into election-winning "wedges," Democrats will win back "values voters" only with fresh ideas. Abortion is one such case. Democrats need to think past catchphrases, like "a woman's right to choose," or the alternative, "safe, legal and rare." More than 1 million abortions are performed every year in this country.

The Democrats should set forth proposals that aim to reduce that number by at least half. Such a campaign could emphasize changing adoption law, health care and child care; combating teenage pregnancy and sexual abuse; improving poor and working women's incomes; and supporting reasonable restrictions on abortion, like parental notification for minors (with necessary legal protections against parental abuse). Such a program could help create some much-needed common ground.

As for "family values," the Democrats can become the truly pro-family party by supporting parents in doing the most important and difficult job in America: raising children. They need to adopt serious pro-family policies, including some that defend children against Hollywood sleaze and Internet pornography.

That's an issue that has come to be identified with the religious right. But when I say in public lectures that being a parent is now a countercultural activity, I've found that liberal and conservative parents agree. Rather than fighting over gay marriage, the Democrats must show that it is indeed possible to be "pro-family" and in favor of gay civil rights at the same time.

Finally, on national security, Democrats should argue that the safety of the United States depends on the credibility of its international leadership. We can secure that credibility in Iraq only when we renounce any claim to oil or future military bases — something Democrats should advocate as the first step toward bringing other countries to our side.

While Republicans have argued that international institutions are too weak to be relied upon in the age of terrorism, Democrats should suggest reforming them, creating a real International Criminal Court with an enforcement body, for example, as well as an international force capable of intervening in places like Darfur. Stronger American leadership in reducing global poverty would also go a long way toward improving the country's image.

Until Democrats are willing to be honest about the need for new social policy and compelling political vision, they will never get the message right. Find the vision first, and the language will follow.

Wallis, the editor of Sojourners magazine, is the author of "God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It."

I am very interested in this issue since being a practicing Catholic who votes ro-choice I have wrestled with this issue many times before. My spouse and I are pro-life personally --- but we vehemently defend the right to choose by other persons -for a number of reasons...

first --- because the Constitution and Bill of Rights provides such a right through the right to privacy

second --- because we do not believe no matter our religious beliefs that we have the right to impose them on all persons

and third -- because despite our religious beliefs we believe that "free will" which entails with it a certain responsibility/accountability is a characteristic of every human being -- and every person must live their life and be judged on their actions -- but it is not the role of government to establish impediments to the exercise of this free will.

The article below discusses this...and I think contrary to its conclusion --- free will does grant a license to sin --- so long as one acknowledges or is prepared to acknowledge that sins carry with them consequences --- and one could be held accountable.

Does “Free Will” Grant a License to Sin?
by Wayne Jackson
Christian Courier: Questions
Tuesday, January 18, 2005

http://www.christiancourier.com/questions/licenseToSin.htm

A critic complains that if human beings have “free will, ” they ought to be allowed to do anything they wish. How does the Christian respond to this foolish charge?
A frustrated libertine writes:

“We are supposed to have free agency here on earth, but the God who is presented in the Old Testament destroyed people who did not keep his laws. How can it be said that we have ‘free agency’ when people are killed for living the way they choose to live?”

This question reflects a serious misunderstanding of what “free agency” is about. Over the centuries there has been great controversy – both in the secular world, and within the community of “Christendom” – as to whether or not human beings actually possess freedom of choice.


Atheism
The late Bertrand Russell, one of Britain’s prominent atheists (though at times he claimed mere agnosticism), theoretically contended that man is void of the power of free will. He wrote:


“When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behavior is a result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination” (Why I Am Not A Christian, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957, p. 40).
This explains why Russell could argue: “Outside human desires there is no moral standard” (p. 62).

Several years later, Russell’s daughter, Katharine Tait, wrote a book titled, My Father Bertrand Russell (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975). She had been tutored by her celebrated father, but could not stomach his teaching in her more mature years. In her book she raised this question: “Do we have free will?” Then, citing her father: “He said ‘no,’ writing philosophically; but he wrote ‘yes’ when his moral passions were engaged” (p. 184).

As an example, Russell felt that there should be no restraints on his promiscuous philandering, yet, at the same time, he argued that children should not be conceived of such unions (pp. 101-104)! If man has no free will, how is that admonition relevant? Consistency is a rare jewel indeed, and it becomes extinct altogether when error is being advanced.

Clarence Darrow, the famous defense attorney who saved teen-murderers Leopold and Loeb from the gallows, once addressed the inmates of the Cook County Jail in Chicago. He told these bank robbers, rapists, and murderers that they were not responsible for their crimes. “The people here can no more help being here than the people outside can avoid being outside.” He affirmed that the inmates were there “on account of circumstances which are entirely beyond their control and for which they are in no way responsible” (Arthur Weinberg, Attorney for the Damned, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957, pp. 3-4). Darrow employed this very line of defense on behalf of Leopold and Loeb.

After that trial, a New York judge, Alfred J. Talley, in a newspaper interview, responded to Darrow:


“It is not the criminals, actual or potential, that need a neuropathic hospital. It is the people who slobber over them in an effort to find excuses for their crimes.
“The demand of the hour in America, above all countries, is for jurors with conscience, judges with courage, and prisons which are neither country clubs nor health resorts . . . There are lots of sick people who concern themselves with crime, but the criminals are not among them” (Weinberg, p. 89).


Religious Error
Augustine, and then John Calvin after him, contended that humanity has become so enslaved by sin that we simply are unable to exert any real “freedom of choice” in exercising the quality of faith that manifests itself in obedience to Christ. Thus, allegedly, man is hopelessly in sin – unless he is divinely enabled (by a supernatural operation of the Holy Spirit) to act in submission to the will of God.

The necessary conclusion from this premise, of course, is that if one never believes and obeys, it must be because he was not enabled, hence logically, the responsibility would not be his, but God’s! This conclusion contradicts the scriptures in a legion of particulars (cf. John 7:17; Revelation 22:17).


Free Will Defined
Exactly what is “free will,” or “freedom of choice”? It is not the liberty to do whatever one wishes, with no accountability attached. “Free will” is simply the ability to choose between options. To make decisions between “right” and “wrong.” To choose to “do,” or “not do.” Any parent who fancies that his child has no free will, hence, opts to leave the youngster to himself, is merely providing society with one more criminal with which to deal ultimately (cf. Proverbs 29:15).

Is this the way an orderly society flourishes? How many employers operate on the basis that their employees have no ability to make decisions? Does the judicial branch of our government address the robber or the rapist with this rationale: “You are not responsible for your actions; you had no ability to choose. Go, act as you wish – with legal approbation”? Only the insane are judged in such a manner.

When God granted free will to the human family, he bestowed upon our kind something more than innate instinct (an inherited pattern of behavior); rather, he gave us a genuine gift; the power to make moral and religious choices. This is a quality no mere animal possesses.

But with “ability” comes also “responsibility.” Responsibility is what a person with choices “ought” to do, and the fact that each of us frequently does what he knows he “ought not,” or else he fails to do what he knows he “ought,” does not nullify the choosing power resident within our souls. If there is no “ability to respond,” there is no responsibility!

“Responsibility” also implies “accountability.” Will a man act responsibly if he knows there is absolutely no accountability for his actions? Ideally he should, but the reality is, he won’t – in many instances. Paul once touched upon this principle when he admonished Christians not to use their “freedom” as an occasion to indulge the flesh (Galatians 5:13; cf. 1 Peter 2:16).

Free will, then, is not a license to sin. This fact our critic has grossly misunderstood. We trust he has learned better.

Life ---

Is it hypocrisy or rightward movement?

Either way, it is an interesting dynamic to observe how the religous right has taken control of the abortion debate. This is more evidence of the need to temper their rhetoric by doing what the Democratic party does best --- offering practical solution to defeat the real problems of the day.

Doug Forrester and the pro-life purists
Tuesday, August 23, 2005

http://www.nj.com/columns/ledger/mulshine/...7420.xml&coll=1

I see that New Jersey Right to Life has refused to give Republican Doug Forrester its endorsement for governor. No wonder. Consider this position on abortion:

"The United States Supreme Court has settled the abortion issue: There will be abortions in this state and the rest of the United States. I believe the best public policy is to encourage fewer abortions through strong adoption laws and by sending a clear abstinence message to our children. I support legislation requiring parental consent before a minor can have an abortion. Parents should have a role in the decision of their minor daughters."

Pretty wimpy, right? Except that's not from Forrester's 2005 campaign for governor of New Jersey. It's from George Bush's 1994 campaign for governor of Texas. So how come Forrester's being painted as some sort of a pro- choice extremist while Bush is the darling of the anti-abortion movement?

This is part of what is becoming a tradition in New Jersey politics. Forrester runs for office. The pro- lifers fail to support him. And then Forrester loses to a Democrat who is far to his left on abortion.

That's what happened in 2002 when -- after being abandoned by the pro-life movement -- Forrester lost to Frank Lautenberg in the race for U.S. Senate. I failed to understand the pro-lifers' reasoning then and I don't understand it today. Virtually the only important vote that any U.S. senator will face on the abortion issue is on the question of appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court. Lautenberg could go either way on the John Roberts nomination. Forrester would have represented a certain vote for Roberts.

Or would he? Marie Tasy of New Jersey Right to Life told me she has no indication that Forrester is to the right of Lautenberg on abortion. Furthermore, she said, she sees no proof that Forrester's views on abortion differ from those of his Democratic opponent in the governor's race, Sen. Jon Corzine.

"Unless we see something in writing or stated, he is the same as Jon Corzine on the abortion issue," Tasy told me yesterday.

No, he's not. Forrester favors parental notification laws and also favors outlawing late-term abortions. His positions do not differ greatly from the positions that Bush staked out as Texas governor. Bush has a much better p.r. operation than Forrester, however. He has managed to convince pro- lifers that he's one of them largely by issuing vague mutterings about creating "a culture of life."

That's politics, and it certainly has worked well for Bush in the red states. But what about a poor schlub like Forrester who's stuck running in a blue state? Until the Bush presidency, a Republican candidate in a blue state could, without fear of attack, stake out a moderate position on abortion -- by which I mean the type of position Bush himself adopted in 1994.

Now apparently all GOP candidates have to be anti-abortion absolutists. I don't know what effect this has in Texas politics, but in Jersey politics it's deadly. In this, the most suburban state in the union, a Republican has to appeal to voters on such issues as property taxes and sprawl. And many voters who have Republican views on economic issues are pro-choice on abortion. The time for this fight is in the primary election, not the general election. In 2001, you may recall, the most fervent anti-abortion candidate did indeed win the GOP gubernatorial primary. Bret Schundler is not governor today, however, so one could hardly blame Republican primary voters for giving someone else a shot.

Another major group, the New Jersey Republican Pro-Life Coalition, is also declining to endorse Forrester. Dan Clark, the chairman of that group, said Forrester isn't pro-life.

"Are you saying George Bush isn't pro-life?" I asked.

He assured me that Bush is indeed pro-life. But when I asked him to point out a difference between the abortion positions of Bush as Texas governor and Forrester as wannabe New Jersey governor, Clark couldn't cite one. Neither could Tasy. That's because there are no such differences. Back in 1994, Bush used to employ that slippery rhetoric about being "personally opposed to abortion" while also saying he would not support a constitutional amendment to ban the practice.

Bush stuck with that position right up until he ran for president, at which point he adopted his current policy on abortion. I have no idea what that policy is, but it's brilliant. Polls show that only about 10 percent of Americans support laws protecting all life from the moment of conception, yet Bush has stretched the definition of "pro-life" to embrace a near-majority of voters. That may not be good religion but it sure is good politics.

We could use some of that here in Jersey. Of the three most prominent anti-abortion groups in the state, only the League of American Families adopts the pragmatic view that a Gov. Forrester would be better than a Gov. Corzine when it comes to pursuing the legislative agenda of the pro-life, pro- family groups.

"It's a matter of conversion, not condemnation," said John Tomicki of that group.

It is indeed. But at the moment, the only thing anyone is getting converted to is Democratic Party politics.



Paul Mulshine is a Star-Ledger columnist. He may be reached at pmulshine@starledger.com.

This -- as much as anything is a reson why the Democratic party needs a more pronounced and visible position on pro-choice -- pro-life issues.

If the idea is to educe abortions --- the later the term the worse --- this is a prudent way to proceed.

However, this pill needs to be part of a comprehensive plan aimed at reducing abortion in this nation...through education and empowerment...

'Morning-after' pill approval still coitus interruptus

Kara Karlson
columnist

By Kara Karlson
Arizona Daily Wildcat
August 30, 2005
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After two years of delays, and despite monumental support given by two Federal Drug Administration advisory committees and staff, the emergency contraceptive commonly known as the "morning-after pill" still has at least another 60 days to wait for a yea or nay from the FDA.

The FDA cites three excuses for this failure to approve over-the-counter status, claiming that the contraceptive is not proven safe for women under 16, doubting the ability of women 16 and under to "interpret" the directions, and worrying about age-restriction enforceability.

The only reason age entered into this debate is because the FDA commissioner, Lester Crawford, ruled against his own advisory committees' approval, and insisted Barr Pharmaceutical, the company that makes Plan B, must prove it is safe for women under 16.

Plan B was approved by the FDA, and is currently available to women of all ages, with a doctor's prescription.

If the FDA was truly concerned with women's safety, and not whatever sociopolitical motivations it is currently acting upon, Plan B should never have been given FDA approval for all age groups if it truly is unsafe.

As the Campus Health Pharmacy currently fills about 28 to 30 Plan B prescriptions per week, the Arizona Daily Wildcat would definitely have broken a story about women dying in droves and having massive complications due to this terrible pill.

Since this has not happened, prescriptions continue to be filled, and five states - including two of our neighbors, California and New Mexico - have limited over-the-counter distribution. One could venture to say that the pill is safe, even for women under the FDA's random age restriction of 17.

The second argument is that women under 17 may lack the skills to "interpret" the directions.

It's amazing what a 15-year-old can be trained to do, like drive a vehicle, an activity currently sanctioned by our government. This same being surely has the ability to read instructions, no interpreting necessary.

If scientists could teach a chimp to read, I am positive that even she could most likely open the box, read the directions and take her pills. This isn't a Supreme Court case - it's directions like those you would see on an aspirin bottle.

In fact, Plan B's Web site has two simple directions: "Take the first tablet as soon as possible within three days (72 hours) of unprotected sex," and then "Take the second tablet 12 hours after the first." Mind-boggling and complicated, indeed.

Finally, the argument that the FDA-approved pill will be sold to minors because of age-restriction enforcement problems is similarly ridiculous.

Carding is commonplace in society: alcohol, cigarettes, lottery tickets, spray paint, pornography, movie tickets - the list goes on. Plan B would just be one more item on a laundry list of "age-restricted products" that a Walgreens clerk would be trained to card for.

If Plan B were finally made available over the counter, it would make women on campus better able to respond quickly in case of an accident, such as a broken condom.

Campus Health pharmacy fills more prescriptions of Plan B after the weekends, and because the pills work better taken sooner rather than later, the accessibility it would offer with over-the-counter status would help women both on and off campus.

Donna Altschul, an on-call pharmacist with Campus Health Pharmacy, said that making Plan B over-the-counter would increase accessibility but may raise the cost.

"We sell a lot of it by prescription. In fact, I sold a lot of it today," Altschul said. These women could go to a 24-hour Osco or Wal-Mart and grab a pack instead of having to make an appointment, wait for their doctors' offices to open, obtain a prescription, and then pick up the contraceptive.

Not being forced to go to the doctor to receive rather benign and desperately important help is especially beneficial for cash-strapped college students, most of whom have to pay at the very least $10 to see the doctor, and then whatever it costs to get the actual contraceptive. At Campus Health's pharmacy, Plan B currently sells for $25.

While the FDA may be dragging its feet (though most of the agency is pushing toward approval), the UA has taken steps to help women in the event of an accident.

Female students can receive a prescription after-hours and on weekends and holidays by calling Campus Health's after-hours number.

Hopefully, Commissioner Crawford will stop playing moral watchdog over the lives of women, and let them make responsible decisions for themselves.

Essentially, while many abortion opponents are also against approving Plan B for over the counter status, the slogan "Get your laws out of my body" could not be more applicable.



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Kara Karlson is a journalism senior who thinks that options help people. She can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.

Back to Plan B
August 31, 2005
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial..._plan_b?mode=PF
THOUSANDS OF unplanned pregnancies, many of which would result in abortions, could be prevented if the Food and Drug Administration would follow the advice of its own advisory panel and approve over-the-counter sales of Plan B, the morning-after contraceptive. Yet last Friday the FDA bowed once again to political pressures and put off a decision on the birth control method, which is already available by prescription nationally and over the counter in seven states.

More than 18 months after the FDA's experts advised overwhelmingly in favor of making emergency contraception available without a prescription, the agency itself refuses to make a decision. The latest maneuver is ostensibly to allow 60 days of public comment on the manufacturer's plan, presented over a year ago, to offer over-the-counter sales only to women 17 or older. The FDA had balked at an earlier plan without age restrictions.

The new delay breaks a promise by Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt for a decision by Sept. 1. He made that pledge after Senators Patty Murray of Washington state and Hillary Clinton of New York said they would otherwise block confirmation of Lester Crawford as FDA head to protest the FDA's stalling.

Plan B, a series of high-dose birth-control pills, prevents 89 percent of pregnancies within 72 hours of intercourse by interfering with ovulation or fertilization. In some cases, it might act by keeping a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus.

Plan B is criticized by opponents of both birth control and abortion and by those who believe that its ready availability could encourage promiscuity. Plan B advocates include the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other physicians' organizations, which recognize that the method does not protect against sexually transmitted diseases, as condoms do, but still favor over-the-counter sales.

In Massachusetts, the Legislature has passed a bill that would legalize sales without prescription or age restrictions by pharmacists who have received special training from the state Department of Public Health and have established a relationship with a physician who could supervise its use. The bill would also require hospital emergency rooms to have Plan B on hand for rape victims. Governor Romney vetoed the bill in June, despite having told Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts as a candidate for governor in 2002 that he supported ''efforts to increase access to emergency contraception." The Legislature should override that veto and not be swayed by the FDA's inaction.

But the best way to make Plan B more available to reduce abortions in this country would be for the FDA to approve over-the-counter sales without age restrictions.

Politics and Plan B
Friday, September 02, 2005

http://www.nj.com/opinion/ledger/editorial...8410.xml&coll=1

The credibility of the Food and Drug Administration has been put to the test recently, and the agency hasn't always fared so well. But rarely has the FDA failed as badly as it did late last week when it delayed, this time indefinitely, a decision on whether a controversial birth control pill could be purchased without a prescription.

The agency failed to act for one reason: politics.

Susan Wood, assistant FDA commissioner for women's health and director of the Office of Women's Health, resigned Wednesday for what she saw as unwarranted interference in the agency's mission.

Foes of the super-strength contraceptive pill, sometimes called Plan B or the "morning-after pill," are closely aligned with the Bush administration and the right wing of the Republican Party. They flooded the White House and congressional offices with letters urging that the request be denied because, in their view, the pill would encourage teenage promiscuity and is a form of abortion.

The FDA didn't see it as a form of abortion at all in 1999. Regulators said the pill was nothing more than a high-dose contraceptive when they approved it for sale as a prescription drug. The morning-after pill can prevent a pregnancy up to 72 hours after unprotected sex.

And studies by the pill's manufacturer, Barr Laboratories, and family planning clinics nationwide found that having a Plan B available does nothing to change teenagers' sex habits.

In 2003, the agency's drug review staff voted 23-4 to recommend allowing the pill to be sold without a prescription. The panel said the contraceptive would reduce nearly 3 million unwanted pregnancies and 1.3 million abortions yearly.

That should have appeased the anti-abortion groups and sent the proposal to FDA Commissioner Lester Crawford for approval. But the application sat in limbo for 28 months.

Now the FDA says there are no definitive studies on the pill's effects on women 16 and younger. That's true and may raise legitimate concerns. But Barr Laboratories, at the FDA's suggestion, hadn't asked that it be sold to them. It requested that the pill be made available to women 17 and older.

Crawford found an escape hatch, though, saying that setting different standards for minors and adults posed thorny regulatory concerns.

That excuse doesn't stand up based on other FDA rulings. Nicotine patches, for example, are for adult use only.

Since the FDA is ruled by undue influences instead of science, states should exercise their right to take the issue out of the agency's hands. Seven states (and 32 other nations) allow the pill to be dispensed without a prescription. New Jersey should consider doing so as well.

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Help women find better options than abortion


By Amy Campbell

http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/p...12/1039/OPINION

(September 12, 2005) — Recently there has been much talk of the consensus view that no one is "for" abortion, which should be rare. This talk has been primarily among Democrats seeking to more fully flesh out a "values" platform. In an age where divisiveness defines policy debate, and where abortion is chief among "hot button" issues, it is unfortunate that the search for common ground is rare.

Thankfully, certain Democrats, including New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, are beginning to question the logic in endorsing polar extremes when polls show that a great majority of Americans fall, as is often the case, in the middle.

A Harris Interactive Poll conducted in March showed that between overturning Roe v. Wade (52 against vs. 47 percent supporting Roe) and abortion without restriction (23 percent favoring no restrictions vs. 76 percent favoring some/all restrictions), there is much room for agreement.

The reality behind the 1.29 million abortions per year that were reported in 2002: 60 percent of women who had abortions in 2000 had incomes less than twice the poverty level — the same women who have less access to health care and family planning services. Sadly, these women often feel compelled to "choose" abortion for socioeconomic reasons.

Only 5 to 7 percent of these women seek an abortion due to rape, incest or for their own life. Thus, up to 95 percent choose abortion for reasons other than those commonly cited as valid reasons for abortion.

Thankfully, on Sept. 13, Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, will introduce the "95-10 Empower Act" on Capitol Hill — a series of measures that would seek to reduce the number of abortions by 95 percent in 10 years. The initiative is not singularly "pro-life" or "pro-choice," rather it seeks to do what most Americans — D or R, "blue" or "red" state — want: fewer abortions. And it will do so by embracing "values-based" legislative measures that all in society can stand behind. Examples of such measures include:


Increasing funding for abortion counseling and day care on college campuses.


Making adoption tax credits permanent.


Banning pregnancy as a "pre-existing condition" in health care insurance.

Requiring contraception equity in insurance.


Requiring State Children's Health Insurance Program coverage of pregnant women.


Supporting a "woman's right to know" (full, informed consent including factual information on how the abortion procedure is performed, possible risks and complications, and alternatives to abortion).

Increasing funding for domestic violence programs.


Requiring full funding of the federal WIC program.


Supporting parental notification measures.

Providing grants for school districts to administer effective pregnancy-prevention education.


Supporting state efforts to help promote and implement safe haven laws.
The "95-10 Empower Act" is not pro-life or pro-choice; these issues are too important to hide behind labels. It is dedicated to reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions in America so that "making it rare" can now become reality and not just an idea or sound bite.

New York has a proud history of supporting "common ground" approaches in the abortion debate, with effective pro-life Democratic leadership at the federal (former Rep. John LaFalce) and state (nine winning candidates in 2004) levels.

Locally, during my own campaign for office, I came across many who agreed that abortion should not be all or nothing. It is time to move beyond divisive rhetoric and dramatically lower the number of abortions by addressing the reasons a great many women seek abortions — poverty, lack of options, misinformation, and a lack of access to pregnancy, postnatal and health care services. Working together, we can make a difference one day at a time — starting today. For more information on the 95-10 Initiative, see www.democratsforlife.org.

Campbell, of Rochester, is a board member of the state chapter of Democrats for Life of America. She ran for the County Legislature in 2004 as a pro-life Democrat.

“Abortion: Is it Possible to be both “Pro-life” and “Pro-Choice”?”

or

“The Question of Abortion: A Search for Answers”
by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

http://www.2think.org/abortion.shtml

For the complete text, including illustrations, introductory quote, footnotes, and commentary on the reaction to the originally published article see Billions and Billions. http://www.2think.org/bab.shtml

The issue had been decided years ago. The court had chosen the middle ground. You'd think the fight was over. Instead, there are mass rallies, bombings and intimidation, murders of workers at abortion clinics, arrests, intense lobbying, legislative drama, Congressional hearings, Supreme Court decisions, major political parties almost defining themselves on the issue, and clerics threatening politicians with perdition. Partisans fling accusations of hypocrisy and murder. The intent of the Constitution and the will of God are equally invoked. Doubtful arguments are trotted out as certitudes. The contending factions call on science to bolster their positions. Families are divided, husbands and wives agree not to discuss it, old friends are no longer speaking. Politicians check the latest polls to discover the dictates of their consciences. Amid all the shouting, it is hard for the adversaries to hear one another. Opinions are polarized. Minds are closed.

Is it wrong to abort a pregnancy? Always? Sometimes? Never? How do we decide? We wrote this article to understand better what the contending views are and to see if we ourselves could find a position that would satisfy us both. Is there no middle ground? We had to weigh the arguments of both sides for consistency and to pose test cases, some of which are purely hypothetical. If in some of these tests we seem to go too far, we ask the reader to be patient with us--we're trying to stress the various positions to the breaking point to see their weaknesses and where they fail.

In contemplative moments, nearly everyone recognizes that the issue is not wholly one-sided. Many partisans of differing views, we find, feel some disquiet, some unease when confronting what's behind the opposing arguments. (This is partly why such confrontations are avoided.) And the issue surely touches on deep questions: What are our responses to one another? Should we permit the state to intrude into the most intimate and personal aspects of our lives? Where are the boundaries of freedom? What does it mean to be human?

Of the many actual points of view, it is widely held--especially in the media, which rarely have the time or the inclination to make fine distinctions--that there are only two: "pro-choice" and "pro-life." This is what the two principal warring camps like to call themselves, and that's what we'll call them here. In the simplest characterization, a pro-choicer would hold that the decision to abort a pregnancy is to be made only by the woman; the state has no right to interfere. And a pro-lifer would hold that, from the moment of conception, the embryo or fetus is alive; that this life imposes on us a moral obligation to preserve it; and that abortion is tantamount to murder. Both names--pro-choice and pro-life--were picked with an eye toward influencing those whose minds are not yet made up: Few people wish to be counted either as being against freedom of choice or as opposed to life. Indeed, freedom and life are two of our most cherished values, and here they seem to be in fundamental conflict.

Let's consider these two absolutist positions in turn. A newborn baby is surely the same being it was just before birth. There 's good evidence that a late-term fetus responds to sound--including music, but especially its mother's voice. It can suck its thumb or do a somersault. Occasionally, it generates adult brain-wave patterns. Some people claim to remember being born, or even the uterine environment. Perhaps there is thought in the womb. It's hard to maintain that a transformation to full personhood happens abruptly at the moment of birth. Why, then, should it be murder to kill an infant the day after it was born but not the day before?

As a practical matter, this isn't very important: Less than 1 percent of all tabulated abortions in the United States are listed in the last three months of pregnancy (and, on closer investigation, most such reports turn out to be due to miscarriage or miscalculation). But third-trimester abortions provide a test of the limits of the pro-choice point of view. Does a woman's "innate right to control her own body" encompass the right to kill a near-term fetus who is, for all intents and purposes, identical to a newborn child?

We believe that many supporters of reproductive freedom are troubled at least occasionally by this question. But they are reluctant to raise it because it is the beginning of a slippery slope. If it is impermissible to abort a pregnancy in the ninth month, what about the eighth, seventh, sixth ... ? Once we acknowledge that the state can interfere at any time in the pregnancy, doesn't it follow that the state can interfere at all times?

This conjures up the specter of predominantly male, predominantly affluent legislators telling poor women they must bear and raise alone children they cannot afford to bring up; forcing teenagers to bear children they are not emotionally prepared to deal with; saying to women who wish for a career that they must give up their dreams, stay home, and bring up babies; and, worst of all, condemning victims of rape and incest to carry and nurture the offspring of their assailants. Legislative prohibitions on abortion arouse the suspicion that their real intent is to control the independence and sexuality of women…

And yet, by consensus, all of us think it proper that there be prohibitions against, and penalties exacted for, murder. It would be a flimsy defense if the murderer pleads that this is just between him and his victim and none of the government's business. If killing a fetus is truly killing a human being, is it not the duty of the state to prevent it? Indeed, one of the chief functions of government is to protect the weak from the strong.

If we do not oppose abortion at some stage of pregnancy, is there not a danger of dismissing an entire category of human beings as unworthy of our protection and respect? And isn't that dismissal the hallmark of sexism, racism, nationalism, and religious fanaticism? Shouldn't those dedicated to fighting such injustices be scrupulously careful not to embrace another?

There is no right to life in any society on Earth today, nor has there been at any former time… : We raise farm animals for slaughter; destroy forests; pollute rivers and lakes until no fish can live there; kill deer and elk for sport, leopards for the pelts, and whales for fertilizer; entrap dolphins, gasping and writhing, in great tuna nets; club seal pups to death; and render a species extinct every day. All these beasts and vegetables are as alive as we. What is (allegedly) protected is not life, but human life.

And even with that protection, casual murder is an urban commonplace, and we wage “conventional” wars with tolls so terrible that we are, most of us, afraid to consider them very deeply… That protection, that right to life, eludes the 40,000 children under five who die on our planet each day from preventable starvation, dehydration, disease, and neglect.

Those who assert a "right to life" are for (at most) not just any kind of life, but for--particularly and uniquely—human life. So they too, like pro-choicers, must decide what distinguishes a human being from other animals and when, during gestation, the uniquely human qualities--whatever they are--emerge.

Despite many claims to the contrary, life does not begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain that stretches back nearly to the origin of the Earth, 4.6 billion years ago. Nor does human life begin at conception: It is an unbroken chain dating back to the origin of our species, hundreds of thousands of years ago. Every human sperm and egg is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, alive. They are not human beings, of course. However, it could be argued that neither is a fertilized egg.

In some animals, an egg develops into a healthy adult without benefit of a sperm cell. But not, so far as we know, among humans. A sperm and an unfertilized egg jointly comprise the full genetic blueprint for a human being. Under certain circumstances, after fertilization, they can develop into a baby. But most fertilized eggs are spontaneously miscarried. Development into a baby is by no means guaranteed. Neither a sperm and egg separately, nor a fertilized egg, is more than a potential baby or a potential adult. So if a sperm and egg are as human as the fertilized egg produced by their union, and if it is murder to destroy a fertilized egg--despite the fact that it's only potentially a baby--why isn't it murder to destroy a sperm or an egg?

Hundreds of millions of sperm cells (top speed with tails lashing: five inches per hour) are produced in an average human ejaculation. A healthy young man can produce in a week or two enough spermatozoa to double the human population of the Earth. So is masturbation mass murder? How about nocturnal emissions or just plain sex? When the unfertilized egg is expelled each month, has someone died? Should we mourn all those spontaneous miscarriages? Many lower animals can be grown in a laboratory from a single body cell. Human cells can be cloned… In light of such cloning technology, would we be committing mass murder by destroying any potentially clonable cells? By shedding a drop of blood?

All human sperm and eggs are genetic halves of "potential" human beings. Should heroic efforts be made to save and preserve all of them, everywhere, because of this "potential"? Is failure to do so immoral or criminal? Of course, there's a difference between taking a life and failing to save it. And there's a big difference between the probability of survival of a sperm cell and that of a fertilized egg. But the absurdity of a corps of high-minded semen-preservers moves us to wonder whether a fertilized egg's mere "potential" to become a baby really does make destroying it murder.

Opponents of abortion worry that, once abortion is permissible immediately after conception, no argument will restrict it at any later time in the pregnancy. Then, they fear, one day it will be permissible to murder a fetus that is unambiguously a human being. Both pro-choicers and pro-lifers (at least some of them) are pushed toward absolutist positions by parallel fears of the slippery slope.

Another slippery slope is reached by those pro-lifers who are willing to make an exception in the agonizing case of a pregnancy resulting from rape or incest. But why should the right to live depend on the circumstances of conception? If the same child were to result, can the state ordain life for the offspring of a lawful union but death for one conceived by force or coercion? How can this be just? And if exceptions are extended to such a fetus, why should they be withheld from any other fetus? This is part of the reason some pro-lifers adopt what many others consider the outrageous posture of opposing abortions under any and all circumstances--only excepting, perhaps, when the life of the mother is in danger.

By far the most common reason for abortion worldwide is birth control. So shouldn't opponents of abortion be handing out contraceptives and teaching school children how to use them? That would be an effective way to reduce the number of abortions. Instead, the United States is far behind other nations in the development of safe and effective methods of birth control--and, in many cases, opposition to such research (and to sex education) has come from the same people who oppose abortions.

The attempt to find an ethically sound and unambiguous judgment on when, if ever, abortion is permissible has deep historical roots. Often, especially in Christian tradition, such attempts were connected with the question of when the soul enters the body--a matter not readily amenable to scientific investigation and an issue of controversy even among learned theologians. Ensoulment has been asserted to occur in the sperm before conception, at conception, at the time of "quickening" (when the mother is first able to feel the fetus stirring within her), and at birth. Or even later.

Different religions have different teachings. Among hunter-gatherers, there are usually no prohibitions against abortion, and it was common in ancient Greece and Rome. In contrast, the more severe Assyrians impaled women on stakes for attempting abortion. The Jewish Talmud teaches that the fetus is not a person and has no rights. The Old and New Testaments--rich in astonishingly detailed prohibitions on dress, diet, and permissible words--contain not a word specifically prohibiting abortion. The only passage that's remotely relevant (Exodus 21:22) decrees that if there's a fight and a woman bystander should accidentally be injured and made to miscarry, the assailant must pay a fine.

Neither St. Augustine nor St. Thomas Aquinas considered early-term abortion to be homicide (the latter on the grounds that the embryo doesn't look human). This view was embraced by the Church in the Council of Vienne in 1312, and has never been repudiated. The Catholic Church's first and long-standing collection of canon law (according to the leading historian of the Church's teaching on abortion, John Connery, S.J.) held that abortion was homicide only after the fetus was already "formed"--roughly, the end of the first trimester.

But when sperm cells were examined in the seventeenth century by the first microscopes, they were thought to show a fully formed human being. An old idea of the homunculus was resuscitated--in which within each sperm cell was a fully formed tiny human, within whose testes were innumerable other homunculi, etc., ad infinitum. In part through this misinterpretation of scientific data, in 1869 abortion at any time for any reason became grounds for excommunication. It is surprising to most Catholics and others to discover that the date was not much earlier.

From colonial times to the nineteenth century, the choice in the United States was the woman's until "quickening." An abortion in the first or even second trimester was at worst a misdemeanor. Convictions were rarely sought and almost impossible to obtain, because they depended entirely on the woman's own testimony of whether she had felt quickening, and because of the jury's distaste for prosecuting a woman for exercising her right to choose. In 1800 there was not, so far as is known, a single statute in the United States concerning abortion. Advertisements for drugs to induce abortion could be found in virtually every newspaper and even in many church publications--although the language used was suitably euphemistic, if widely understood.

But by 1900, abortion had been banned at any time in pregnancy by every state in the Union, except when necessary to save the woman's life. What happened to bring about so striking a reversal? Religion had little to do with it. Drastic economic and social conversions were turning this country from an agrarian to an urban-industrial society. America was in the process of changing from having one of the highest birthrates in the world to one of the lowest. Abortion certainly played a role and stimulated forces to suppress it.

One of the most significant of these forces was the medical profession. Up to the mid-nineteenth century, medicine was an uncertified, unsupervised business. Anyone could hang up a shingle and call himself (or herself) a doctor. With the rise of a new, university-educated medical elite, anxious to enhance the status and influence of physicians, the American Medical Association was formed. In its first decade, the AMA began lobbying against abortions performed by anyone except licensed physicians. New knowledge of embryology, the physicians said, had shown the fetus to be human even before quickening.

Their assault on abortion was motivated not by concern for the health of the woman but, they claimed, for the welfare of the fetus. You had to be a physician to know when abortion was morally justified, because the question depended on scientific and medical facts understood only by physicians. At the same time, women were effectively excluded from the medical schools, where such arcane knowledge could be acquired. So, as things worked out, women had almost nothing to say about terminating their own pregnancies. It was also up to the physician to decide if the pregnancy posed a threat to the woman, and it was entirely at his discretion to determine what was and was not a threat. For the rich woman, the threat might be a threat to her emotional tranquillity or even to her lifestyle. The poor woman was often forced to resort to the back alley or the coat hanger.

This was the law until the 1960s, when a coalition of individuals and organizations, the AMA now among them, sought to overturn it and to reinstate the more traditional values that were to be embodied in Roe v. Wade.

If you deliberately kill a human being, it's called murder. If you deliberately kill a chimpanzee--biologically, our closest relative, sharing 99.6 percent of our active genes--whatever else it is, it's not murder. To date, murder uniquely applies to killing human beings. Therefore, the question of when personhood (or, if we like, ensoulment) arises is key to the abortion debate. When does the fetus become human? When do distinct and characteristic human qualities emerge?

We recognize that specifying a precise moment will overlook individual differences. Therefore, if we must draw a line, it ought to be drawn conservatively--that is, on the early side. There are people who object to having to set some numerical limit, and we share their disquiet; but if there is to be a law on this matter, and it is to effect some useful compromise between the two absolutist positions, it must specify, at least roughly, a time of transition to personhood.

Every one of us began from a dot. A fertilized egg is roughly the size of the period at the end of this sentence. The momentous meeting of sperm and egg generally occurs in one of the two fallopian tubes. One cell becomes two, two become four, and so on—an exponentiation of base-2 arithmetic. By the tenth day the fertilized egg has become a kind of hollow sphere wandering off to another realm: the womb. It destroys tissue in its path. It sucks blood from capillaries. It bathes itself in maternal blood, from which it extracts oxygen and nutrients. It establishes itself as a kind of parasite on the walls of the uterus.


By the third week, around the time of the first missed menstrual period, the forming embryo is about 2 millimeters long and is developing various body parts. Only at this stage does it begin to be dependent on a rudimentary placenta. It looks a little like a segmented worm.

By the end of the fourth week, it's about 5 millimeters (about 1/5 inch) long. It's recognizable now as a vertebrate, its tube-shaped heart is beginning to beat, something like the gill arches of a fish or an amphibian become conspicuous, and there is a pronounced tail. It looks rather like a newt or a tadpole. This is the end of the first month after conception.

By the fifth week, the gross divisions of the brain can be distinguished. What will later develop into eyes are apparent, and little buds appear—on their way to becoming arms and legs.

By the sixth week, the embryo is 13 millimeteres (about ½ inch) long. The eyes are still on the side of the head, as in most animals, and the reptilian face has connected slits where the mouth and nose eventually will be.

By the end of the seventh week, the tail is almost gone, and sexual characteristics can be discerned (although both sexes look female). The face is mammalian but somewhat piglike.

By the end of the eighth week, the face resembles that of a primate but is still not quite human. Most of the human body parts are present in their essentials. Some lower brain anatomy is well-developed. The fetus shows some reflex response to delicate stimulation.

By the tenth week, the face has an unmistakably human cast. It is beginning to be possible to distinguish males from females. Nails and major bone structures are not apparent until the third month.

By the fourth month, you can tell the face of one fetus from that of another. Quickening is most commonly felt in the fifth month. The bronchioles of the lungs do not begin developing until approximately the sixth month, the alveoli still later.
So, if only a person can be murdered, when does the fetus attain personhood? When its face becomes distinctly human, near the end of the first trimester? When the fetus becomes responsive to stimuli--again, at the end of the first trimester? When it becomes active enough to be felt as quickening, typically in the middle of the second trimester? When the lungs have reached a stage of development sufficient that the fetus might, just conceivably, be able to breathe on its own in the outside air?

The trouble with these particular developmental milestones is not just that they're arbitrary. More troubling is the fact that none of them involves uniquely human characteristics--apart from the superficial matter of facial appearance. All animals respond to stimuli and move of their own volition. Large numbers are able to breathe. But that doesn't stop us from slaughtering them by the billions. Reflexes and motion are not what make us human.

Other animals have advantages over us--in speed, strength, endurance, climbing or burrowing skills, camouflage, sight or smell or hearing, mastery of the air or water. Our one great advantage, the secret of our success, is thought--characteristically human thought. We are able to think things through, imagine events yet to occur, figure things out. That's how we invented agriculture and civilization. Thought is our blessing and our curse, and it makes us who we are.

Thinking occurs, of course, in the brain--principally in the top layers of the convoluted "gray matter" called the cerebral cortex. The roughly 100 billion neurons in the brain constitute the material basis of thought. The neurons are connected to each other, and their linkups play a major role in what we experience as thinking. But large-scale linking up of neurons doesn't begin until the 24th to 27th week of pregnancy--the sixth month.

By placing harmless electrodes on a subject's head, scientists can measure the electrical activity produced by the network of neurons inside the skull. Different kinds of mental activity show different kinds of brain waves. But brain waves with regular patterns typical of adult human brains do not appear in the fetus until about the 30th week of pregnancy--near the beginning of the third trimester. Fetuses younger than this--however alive and active they may be--lack the necessary brain architecture. They cannot yet think.

Acquiescing in the killing of any living creature, especially one that might later become a baby, is troublesome and painful. But we've rejected the extremes of "always" and "never," and this puts us--like it or not--on the slippery slope. If we are forced to choose a developmental criterion, then this is where we draw the line: when the beginning of characteristically human thinking becomes barely possible.

It is, in fact, a very conservative definition: Regular brain waves are rarely found in fetuses. More research would help… If we wanted to make the criterion still more stringent, to allow for occasional precocious fetal brain development, we might draw the line at six months. This, it so happens, is where the Supreme Court drew it in 1973--although for completely different reasons.

Its decision in the case of Roe v. Wade changed American law on abortion. It permits abortion at the request of the woman without restriction in the first trimester and, with some restrictions intended to protect her health, in the second trimester. It allows states to forbid abortion in the third trimester, except when there's a serious threat to the life or health of the woman. In the 1989 Webster decision, the Supreme Court declined explicitly to overturn Roe v. Wade but in effect invited the 50 state legislatures to decide for themselves.

What was the reasoning in Roe v. Wade? There was no legal weight given to what happens to the children once they are born, or to the family. Instead, a woman's right to reproductive freedom is protected, the court ruled, by constitutional guarantees of privacy. But that right is not unqualified. The woman's guarantee of privacy and the fetus's right to life must be weighed--and when the court did the weighing' priority was given to privacy in the first trimester and to life in the third. The transition was decided not from any of the considerations we have been dealing with so far…--not when "ensoulment" occurs, not when the fetus takes on sufficient human characteristics to be protected by laws against murder. Instead, the criterion adopted was whether the fetus could live outside the mother. This is called "viability" and depends in part on the ability to breathe. The lungs are simply not developed, and the fetus cannot breathe--no matter how advanced an artificial lung it might be placed in—until about the 24th week, near the start of the sixth month. This is why Roe v. Wade permits the states to prohibit abortions in the last trimester. It's a very pragmatic criterion.

If the fetus at a certain stage of gestation would be viable outside the womb, the argument goes, then the right of the fetus to life overrides the right of the woman to privacy. But just what does "viable" mean? Even a full-term newborn is not viable without a great deal of care and love. There was a time before incubators, only a few decades ago, when babies in their seventh month were unlikely to be viable. Would aborting in the seventh month have been permissible then? After the invention of incubators, did aborting pregnancies in the seventh month suddenly become immoral? What happens if, in the future, a new technology develops so that an artificial womb can sustain a fetus even before the sixth month by delivering oxygen and nutrients through the blood--as the mother does through the placenta and into the fetal blood system? We grant that this technology is unlikely to be developed soon or become available to many. But if it were available, does it then become immoral to abort earlier than the sixth month, when previously it was moral? A morality that depends on, and changes with, technology is a fragile morality; for some, it is also an unacceptable morality.

And why, exactly, should breathing (or kidney function, or the ability to resist disease) justify legal protection? If a fetus can be shown to think and feel but not be able to breathe, would it be all right to kill it? Do we value breathing more than thinking and feeling? Viability arguments cannot, it seems to us, coherently determine when abortions are permissible. Some other criterion is needed. Again, we offer for consideration the earliest onset of human thinking as that criterion.

Since, on average, fetal thinking occurs even later than fetal lung development, we find Roe v. Wade to be a good and prudent decision addressing a complex and difficult issue. With prohibitions on abortion in the last trimester--except in cases of grave medical necessity--it strikes a fair balance between the conflicting claims of freedom and life.

Abortion Rights are Pro-Life
by Leonard Peikoff (January 23, 2003)

Summary: Roe V. Wade Anniversary Still Finds Defense of the Right to Abortion Compromised.

http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2404

[www.CapMag.com] Thirty years after Roe V. Wade, no one defends the right to abortion in fundamental, moral terms, which is why the pro-abortion rights forces are on the defensive.

Abortion-rights advocates should not cede the terms "pro-life" and "right to life" to the anti-abortionists. It is a woman's right to her life that gives her the right to terminate her pregnancy.

Nor should abortion-rights advocates keep hiding behind the phrase "a woman's right to choose." Does she have the right to choose murder? That's what abortion would be, if the fetus were a person.

The status of the embryo in the first trimester is the basic issue that cannot be sidestepped. The embryo is clearly pre-human; only the mystical notions of religious dogma treat this clump of cells as constituting a person.

We must not confuse potentiality with actuality. An embryo is a potential human being. It can, granted the woman's choice, develop into an infant. But what it actually is during the first trimester is a mass of relatively undifferentiated cells that exist as a part of a woman's body. If we consider what it is rather than what it might become, we must acknowledge that the embryo under three months is something far more primitive than a frog or a fish. To compare it to an infant is ludicrous.

If we are to accept the equation of the potential with the actual and call the embryo an "unborn child," we could, with equal logic, call any adult an "undead corpse" and bury him alive or vivisect him for the instruction of medical students.

That tiny growth, that mass of protoplasm, exists as a part of a woman's body. It is not an independently existing, biologically formed organism, let alone a person. That which lives within the body of another can claim no right against its host. Rights belong only to individuals, not to collectives or to parts of an individual.

("Independent" does not mean self-supporting--a child who depends on its parents for food, shelter, and clothing, has rights because it is an actual, separate human being.)

"Rights," in Ayn Rand's words, "do not pertain to a potential, only to an actual being. A child cannot acquire any rights until it is born."

It is only on this base that we can support the woman's political right to do what she chooses in this issue. No other person--not even her husband--has the right to dictate what she may do with her own body. That is a fundamental principle of freedom.

There are many legitimate reasons why a rational woman might have an abortion--accidental pregnancy, rape, birth defects, danger to her health. The issue here is the proper role for government. If a pregnant woman acts wantonly or capriciously, then she should be condemned morally--but not treated as a murderer.

If someone capriciously puts to death his cat or dog, that can well be reprehensible, even immoral, but it is not the province of the state to interfere. The same is true of an abortion which puts to death a far less-developed growth in a woman's body.

If anti-abortionists object that an embryo has the genetic equipment of a human being, remember: so does every cell in the human body.

Abortions are private affairs and often involve painfully difficult decisions with life-long consequences. But, tragically, the lives of the parents are completely ignored by the anti-abortionists. Yet that is the essential issue. In any conflict it's the actual, living persons who count, not the mere potential of the embryo.

Being a parent is a profound responsibility--financial, psychological, moral--across decades. Raising a child demands time, effort, thought and money. It's a full-time job for the first three years, consuming thousands of hours after that--as caretaker, supervisor, educator and mentor. To a woman who does not want it, this is a death sentence.

The anti-abortionists' attitude, however, is: "The actual life of the parents be damned! Give up your life, liberty, property and the pursuit of your own happiness."

Sentencing a woman to sacrifice her life to an embryo is not upholding the "right-to-life."

The anti-abortionists' claim to being "pro-life" is a classic Big Lie. You cannot be in favor of life and yet demand the sacrifice of an actual, living individual to a clump of tissue.

Anti-abortionists are not lovers of life--lovers of tissue, maybe. But their stand marks them as haters of real human beings.

Made available through the Ayn Rand Institute.

I do not think you can escape the fact that human life begins at conception.

So, interfering with it before birth, or after birth, is much the same thing IMO.

I know that this is a minority opinion on these boards.

More Jews die from not being given a chance to be born (abortion) than from Palestinean, or other, terrorism.

The biggest fear of some fundamentalist Jews and fundy Christians is that Muslims are going to take over the world. With their anti-abortion policy, they probably will.

How can we call terrorists wrong for indiscriminate attacks on the innocent, if we deliberately abort the most helpless of our own population?

lb --

I appreciate your comments.

Frankly, I disagree that "human life" begins at conception. Life --- cellular life which is the precursor to human life does indeed begin at conception -- but the nature of what is the essence of being human I believe happens a later date IMHO.

I also appreciate your reference to the Muslim world and their beliefs.

Doesn't God in most religions primarily condemn individual actions and not collective, government or societal actons?

Does eliminating the free will of an individual to engage in certain conduct impair the God-given right of free will?

However, in a secular society do you believe it is proper for a government to impose a religious P.O. V. on its citizens?

Can this truly happen in a free society?

Isn't a free society based on the individual making the right choices?

Isn't it governments job to assist the individual in making the right choices?

Sometimes this can be done by empowerment and removing barriers to making certain choices...

Why do people have abortions in our free society?

Sometimes it is because of inconvenience...

Sometimes it is because of health reasons...

Sometimes it is because of rape and incest...

Sometimes it is because of the stigma attached to the person being pregnant either because of their age or marital status...by those institutions in society which condemn the very act of abortion...

Wouldn't it be a better approach to advance an agenda which eliminated these barriers --- to bringing a child to term to be raised by the mother or to be placed up for adoption...

I agree.

I don't think we, or anyone else, will find a truly feasible workaround for abortion. The most that people could probably agree on is that the state shouldn't fund it. Any solution which allows a compromise, other than in self-defense, depersonifies a child and allows the state to side against an innocent person who is separate from the person making the decision to kill it. There will always be those who will disagree even though the facts prove that abortion is a wrong -- not a right.

See for yourself: http://www.l4l.org/

But this whole thread is about finding accepting ways to reduce the number of abortions occuring in this nation without eliminating the right of a woman to choose to have one...

In addition, it suggests that we point out that the Republican party has sold a bogus abortion reduction plan to the religious right. That plan supposes that by reducing money given to entities in the U.S. and out that provide abortions, promoting abstinence only sex ed, and we need justices who will eliminate the right to abortion...which does little to reduce the number of abortions nationwide or world wide...

You disagree with this effort?

You do not believe that this is a strategy the democratic party should embrace?

I appreciate your participation on this thread --- but I am just trying to get a read on your position on this...

Thanks.

This is where the Democratic party can make some headway on abortion --- by casting it as not a legal issue --- but one in which society has an obligation to empower the individual --- and also an issue of international concern --- and issue which requires putting ones money where ones mouth is --- rather than waiting for a political solution.

How can we profess to be the leader of the free world when our leadership on funding issues like this is pathetic...

No wonder terrorists recruit people easily --- this does not justify the actions of terrorists --- but merely explains why we are such an easy target...itsour hypocrisy


October 23, 2005
Mr. Bush, This Is Pro-Life?
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
ZINDER, Niger

http://select.nytimes.com/2005/10/23/opini...agewanted=print

When I walked into the maternity hospital here, I wished that President Bush were with me.

A 37-year-old woman was lying on a stretcher, groaning from labor pains and wracked by convulsions. She was losing her eyesight and seemed about to slip into a coma from eclampsia, a complication of pregnancy that kills 50,000 women a year in the developing world. Beneath her, cockroaches skittered across the floor.

"We're just calling for her husband," said Dr. Obende Kayode, an obstetrician. "When he provides the drugs and surgical materials, we can do the operation," a Caesarean section.

Dr. Kayode explained that before any surgery can begin, the patient or family members must pay $42 for a surgical kit with bandages, surgical thread and antibiotics.

In this case, the woman - a mother of six named Ramatou Issoufou - was lucky. Her husband was able to round up the sum quickly, without having to sell any goats. Moreover, this maternity hospital had been equipped by the U.N. Population Fund - and that's why I wished Mr. Bush were with me. Last month, Mr. Bush again withheld all U.S. funds from the U.N. Population Fund.

The Population Fund promotes modern contraception, which is practiced by only 4 percent of women in Niger, and safe childbirth. But it has the money to assist only a few areas of Niger, and Mrs. Issoufou was blessed to live in one of them.

Nurses wheeled her into the operating theater, scrubbed her belly and administered a spinal anesthetic. Then Dr. Kayode cut open her abdomen and reached inside to pull out a healthy 6-pound, 6-ounce boy. (A video of the delivery.)

After removing the placenta, Dr. Kayode stitched up Mrs. Issoufou. Her convulsions passed, and it was clear that she and the baby would survive. For all the criticism heaped on the U.N., these were two more lives saved by the U.N. Population Fund - no thanks to the Bush administration.

Even when they don't die, mothers often suffer horrific childbirth injuries. In the town of Gouré, a 20-year-old woman named Fathi Ali was lying listlessly on a cot, leaking urine. After she was in labor for three days, her mother and her aunt had put her on a camel and led her 40 miles across the desert to a clinic - but midway in the journey the baby was stillborn and she suffered a fistula, an internal injury that leaves her incontinent.

Village women are the least powerful people on earth. That's why more than 500,000 women die every year worldwide in pregnancy - and why we in the West should focus more aid on preventing such deaths in poor countries.

Mr. Bush and other conservatives have blocked funds for the U.N. Population Fund because they're concerned about its involvement in China. They're right to be appalled by forced sterilizations and abortions in China, and they have the best of intentions. But they're wrong to blame the Population Fund, which has been pushing China to ease the coercion - and in any case the solution isn't to let African women die. (Two American women have started a wonderful grass-roots organization that seeks to make up for the Bush cuts with private donations; its website is www.34millionfriends.org.)

After watching Dr. Kayode save the life of Mrs. Issoufou and her baby, I was ready to drop out of journalism and sign up for medical school. But places like Niger need not just doctors, but resources.

Pregnant women die constantly here because they can't afford treatment costing just a few dollars. Sometimes the doctors and nurses reach into their own pockets to help a patient, but they can't do so every time.

"It depends on the mood," Dr. Kayode said. "If the [staff] feel they can't pay out again, then you just wait and watch. And sometimes she dies."

A few days earlier, a pregnant woman had arrived with a dangerously high blood pressure of 250 over 130; it was her 12th pregnancy. Dr. Kayode prescribed a medicine called Clonidine for the hypertension, but she did not have the $13 to buy it. Nor could she afford $42 for a Caesarean that she needed.

During childbirth, right here in this hospital, she hemorrhaged and bled to death.

Somewhere in the world, a pregnant woman dies like that about once a minute, often leaving a handful of orphans behind. Call me naïve, but I think that if Mr. Bush came here and saw women dying as a consequence of his confused policy, he would relent. This can't be what he wants - or what America stands for.

The FDA's declining health
Monday, November 21, 2005

http://www.nj.com/printer/printer.ssf?/bas...3170.xml&coll=1

A report issued last week by the Government Accountability Office adds another coat to the tarnish on the Food and Drug Administration's reputation and makes it clear the FDA must be reformed from the top.

According to the report, it seems that FDA officials let anti-abortion politics govern what should have been a scientific evaluation of a proposal to convert Plan B -- the so-called morning-after pill -- from a prescription medication to an over-the-counter drug.

Taken soon after unprotected sex, Plan B can prevent pregnancy. It is particularly effective within 72 hours of intercourse, so eliminating the requirement to see a doctor and get a prescription would make it easier for women to take the drug during that time period.

FDA officials made what the report described as an "unusual" intrusion into the review process and rejected the application, although two FDA staff offices and a joint panel of two FDA expert advisory groups recommended approval. Early on, FDA staff were told the decision would be made at the top -- and it was made before the scientific review was completed, the report noted.

The reason for rejection was that there were questions about whether teens under 16 could safely use the drug without a physician's guidance.

At the agency's invitation, Plan B's manufacturer, Barr Laboratories, submitted a proposal seeking OTC status for women over 16 and a prescription requirement for younger teens. The agency raised a new set of questions about its power to approve that arrangement and put the Plan B application on hold.

That was the final straw for Susan Wood, who resigned last summer as director of women's health at the FDA, angry that the agency's credibility as a science-based institution was being eroded by politics.

The GAO report also noted data gaps that make it hard to trace what role Mark McClellan, FDA commissioner during Plan B's first round with the agency, played in the rejection. E-mail was deleted and correspondence and documents were thrown out -- in what may be a violation of federal records law. Eighteen Democratic members of Congress have asked Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt to help them determine whether McClellan -- now heading the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services -- crossed any ethical or legal lines.

The politics of Plan B, however, are only part of the FDA's problem. In crises like vaccine shortages, in addressing safety concerns for medicines like Vioxx and antidepressants and more, the FDA has been clumsy, impotent, too cozy with the drug industry and far from the trustworthy apolitical voice of science it must be if it is to protect the public.

Congress should press the White House on why it has allowed a regulatory agency that had been a regarded as a gold standard around the world to crumble into partisan mediocrity.

Abortion in the United States\

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0904509.html

Incidence of Abortion
49% of pregnancies among American women are unintended; almost half of these are terminated by abortion.
In 2000, 1.31 million abortions took place, down from an estimated 1.36 million in 1996. From 1973 through 2000, more than 39 million legal abortions occurred.
Each year, 2 out of every 100 women aged 15–44 have an abortion; 48% of them have had at least one previous abortion and 61% have had a previous birth.
An estimated 43% of women will have at least one abortion by the time they are 45 years old.
Each year, an estimated 46 million abortions occur worldwide. Of these, 20 million procedures are obtained illegally.
Who Has Abortions
52% of U.S. women obtaining abortions are younger than 25: Women aged 20–24 obtain 33% of all abortions, and teenagers obtain 19%.
Black women are more than three times as likely as white women to have an abortion, and Hispanic women are two-and-a-half times as likely.
43% of women obtaining abortions identify themselves as Protestant, and 27% identify themselves as Catholic.
Two-thirds of all abortions are among never-married women.
More than 60% of abortions are among women who have had one or more children.
On average, women give at least three reasons for choosing abortion: three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school, or other responsibilities; about two-thirds say they cannot afford a child; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.
About 13,000 women have abortions each year following rape or incest.
Contraceptive Use
54% of women having abortions used a contraceptive method during the month they became pregnant.
8% of women having abortions have never used a method of birth control; nonuse is greatest among those who are young, unmarried, poor, black, Hispanic, or poorly educated.
Nine in ten women at risk of unintended pregnancy are using a contraceptive method.
49% of the 6.3 million pregnancies that occur each year are unplanned.
As much as 43% of the decline in abortion between 1994 and 2000 can be attributed to the use of emergency contraception.
Providers and Services
In September 2000, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the abortion drug mifepristone to be marketed in the U.S. as an alternative to surgical abortion.
The number of abortion providers declined by 11% between 1996 and 2000 (from 2,042 to 1,819). 87% of all U.S. counties lacked an abortion provider in 2000. These counties were home to 34% of all 15–44-year-old women.
97% of abortion facilities provide abortion at eight weeks, and 86% provide services at 12 weeks, but provision drops off steeply after that, with only 13% of providers offering services at 24 weeks.
A growing proportion of providers offers very early abortion (at four weeks gestation), an increase from 7% in 1993 to 37% in 2000.
In 2000, the cost of a nonhospital abortion with local anesthesia at ten weeks of gestation ranged from $150 to $4,000, and the average amount paid was $372.
Approximately 600 providers offered medical abortion in the first half of 2001.
About 37,000 medical abortions were performed in the first half of 2001; these procedures involved the use of mifepristone and methotrexate.
In nonhospital facilities offering mifepristone for use in medical abortion in 2000, the average cost of medical abortion was $490.
Safety of Abortion
The risk of abortion complications is minimal; less than one percent of all abortion patients experience a major complication, such as serious pelvic infection, hemorrhage requiring a blood transfusion or unintended major surgery.
There is no evidence of childbearing problems among women who have had a vacuum aspiration abortion, the most common procedure, within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
The risk of death associated with abortion increases with the length of pregnancy, from one death for every 500,000 abortions at 8 or fewer weeks to one per 27,000 at 16–20 weeks and 1 per 8,000 at 21 or more weeks.
The risk of death associated with childbirth is about ten times as high as that associated with abortion.
Almost half of the women having abortions beyond 15 weeks of gestation say they were delayed because of problems in affording, finding or getting to abortion services.
Teens are more likely than older women to delay having an abortion until after 15 weeks of pregnancy, when medical risks associated with abortion increase significantly.
Law and Policy
In the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the Supreme Court ruled that women, in consultation with their physician, have a constitutionally protected right to have an abortion in the early stages of pregnancy—that is, before viability—free from government interference.
In 1992, the Court upheld the right to abortion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. However, the ruling significantly weakened the legal protections previously afforded women and physicians by giving states the right to enact restrictions that do not create an “undue burden” for women seeking abortion.
The most common restrictions in effect are parental involvement requirements, mandatory counseling and waiting periods, and limitations on public funding.
32 states currently enforce parental consent or notification laws for minors seeking an abortion: Ala., Ark., Del., Ga., Iowa, Idaho, Ind., Kan., Ky., La., Mass., Md., Mich., Minn., Mo., Miss., N.C., N.D., Neb., Ohio, Okla., Pa., R.I., S.C., S.D., Tenn., Texas, Utah, Va., Wis., W.Va., and Wyo. The Supreme Court ruled that minors must have the alternative of seeking a court order authorizing the procedure.
45% of minors who have abortions tell their parents, and 61% undergo the procedure with at least one parent's knowledge. The great majority of parents support their daughter's decision.
In Steinberg v. Carhart in 2000, the Court declared Nebraska's law criminalizing so-called partial birth abortion unconstitutional because it lacked an exception to protect the woman's health. The court also found that the law imposed an undue burden on women because it was written so broadly as to ban not only dilation and extraction (D & X) procedures, but also dilation and evacuation (D & E) procedures.
In 2000, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the abortion drug mifepristone to be marketed in the United States as an alternative to surgical abortion.
Public Funding
The U.S. Congress has barred the use of federal Medicaid funds to pay for abortions, except when the woman's life would be endangered by a full-term pregnancy or in cases of rape or incest.
About 14% of all abortions in the United States are paid for with public funds, virtually all of which are state funds. 17 states (Ala., Ariz., Calif., Conn., Hawaii, Ill., Mass., Md., Minn., Mont., N.J., N.M., N.Y., Ore., Vt., Wash., W.Va.) pay for abortions for some poor women.
Without publicly funded family planning services, an estimated 1.3 million additional unplanned pregnancies would occur annually; about 632,300 would end in abortion.
Source: Alan Guttmacher Institute, Induced Abortion, Facts in Brief, 2002.

Now -- we have numbers in 2003 for abortions in 2000 -- so it may take indeed 3 years for the information to be collected...

But then in 2004 --- we should have gotten the numbers for 2001 and in 2005 we should get the numbers for 2002 ---

It does not make sense that they have note reported any abortion statistics since 2003.

Is the Bush Administration trying to hide something or is it normal that the agency collects the information sporadically?

I know they collected it for 1999 ---- and 2000 --- so why not for 2001 and 2002?

Does anyone know?

November 28, 2003 / 52(SS12);1-32

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5212a1.htm

Abortion Surveillance --- United States, 2000

Laurie D. Elam-Evans, Ph.D.
Lilo T. Strauss, M.A.
Joy Herndon, M.S.
Wilda Y. Parker
Sonya V. Bowens, M.S.
Suzanne Zane, D.V.M.
Cynthia J. Berg, M.D.
Division of Reproductive Health
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion

Abstract

Problem/Condition: CDC began abortion surveillance in 1969 to document the number and characteristics of women obtaining legal induced abortions.

Reporting Period Covered: This report summarizes and describes data reported to CDC regarding legal induced abortions obtained in the United States in 2000.

Description of System: For each year since 1969, CDC has compiled abortion data by state or area of occurrence. During 1973--1997, data were received from or estimated for 52 reporting areas in the United States: 50 states, the District of Columbia, and New York City. In 1998 and 1999, CDC compiled abortion data from 48 reporting areas. Alaska, California, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma did not report, and data for these areas were not estimated. In 2000, Oklahoma again reported these data, increasing the number of reporting areas to 49.

Results: A total of 857,475 legal induced abortions were reported to CDC for 2000 from 49 reporting areas, representing a 0.5% decrease from the 861,789 legal induced abortions reported by 48 reporting areas for 1999 and a 1.3% decrease for the same 48 reporting areas that reported in 1999. The abortion ratio, defined as the number of abortions per 1,000 live births, was 246 in 2000 (for the same 48 reporting areas as 1999), compared with 256 reported for 1999. This represents a 3.8% decline in the abortion ratio. The abortion rate (for the same 48 reporting areas as 1999) was 16 per 1,000 women aged 15--44 years for 2000. This was also a 3.8% decrease from the rate reported for procedures performed during 1997--1999 for the same 48 reporting areas.

The highest percentages of reported abortions were for women aged <25 years (52%), women who were white (57%), and unmarried women (81%). Fifty-eight percent of all abortions for which gestational age was reported were performed at <8 weeks of gestation, and 88% were performed before 13 weeks. From 1992 (when detailed data regarding early abortions were first collected) through 2000, steady increases have occurred in the percentage of abortions performed at <6 weeks of gestation. Few abortions were performed after 15 weeks of gestation; 4.3% were obtained at 16--20 weeks and 1.4% were obtained at >21 weeks. A total of 31 reporting areas submitted data stating that they performed medical (nonsurgical) procedures, making up 1.0% of all reported procedures from the 42 areas with adequate reporting on type of procedure.

In 1998 and 1999 (the most recent years for which data are available), 14 women died as a result of complications from known legal induced abortion. Ten of these deaths occurred in 1998 and four occurred in 1999; no deaths were associated with known illegal abortion.

Interpretation: From 1990 through 1997, the number of legal induced abortions gradually declined. In 1998 and 1999, the number of abortions continued to decrease when comparing the same 48 reporting areas. In 2000, even with one additional reporting state, the number of abortions declined slightly. In 1998 and 1999, as in previous years, deaths related to legal induced abortions occurred rarely (<1 death per 100,000 abortions).

Public Health Action: Abortion surveillance in the United States continues to provide data necessary for examining trends in numbers and characteristics of women who obtain legal induced abortions and for increasing understanding of one additional aspect of the spectrum of pregnancy outcomes. Policy makers and program planners need these data to improve the health and well-being of women and infants.

Introduction

CDC began conducting abortion surveillance in 1969 to document the number and characteristics of women obtaining legal induced abortions and to monitor one outcome of unintended pregnancies. This report is based on abortion data for 2000 provided to CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (NCCDPHP), Division of Reproductive Health.

Methods

For 2000, CDC compiled data that were voluntarily provided from 49 reporting areas in the United States: 47 states (excluding Alaska, California, and New Hampshire), the District of Columbia, and New York City. Legal induced abortion was defined as a procedure, performed by a licensed physician or someone acting under the supervision of a licensed physician, that was intended to terminate a suspected or known intrauterine pregnancy and to produce a nonviable fetus at any gestational age (1,2). The total number of legal induced abortions was available from all reporting areas; however, not all of these areas collected data regarding some or all of the characteristics of women who obtained abortions. Thus, the availability of data on characteristics of women obtaining an abortion varied by reporting area in 2000.

Most reporting areas (46 states, the District of Columbia, and New York City) collected and reported adequate data (i.e., data categorized in accordance with surveillance variables and with <15% unknown values) by age of the woman, whereas only 29 states, the District of Columbia, and New York City collected and reported adequate data by Hispanic ethnicity. Therefore, the findings in this report reflect characteristics of women only from reporting areas that submitted adequate data for the characteristics being examined. For the majority of state tables, the percentage data include a category for unknown values. However, for trend data, out-of-area residents, adolescent ages, and two-characteristics tables, percentages presented are based on known values only.

For the 49 reporting areas, data concerning the number of women obtaining legal induced abortions were provided by the central health agency.* These agencies provided data on numbers of abortions and characteristics of women obtaining abortions by the state in which the abortions were performed (i.e., state of occurrence). For most states, abortion totals were also available by the woman's state of residence. However, three states (Delaware, Maryland, and Wisconsin) reported characteristics only for women who were residents and who obtained abortions in the state, but not for women from out of state; and one state (Iowa) provided numbers and characteristics only for state residents. Two states (Florida and Louisiana) did not report abortion totals by resident status, and two states (Arizona and Massachusetts) provided only the total number of abortions for out-of-state residents without specifying individual states or areas of residence.

This report provides overall and state-specific abortion statistics. For all characteristics for which birth or population data were available, abortion ratios (number of abortions per 1,000 live births) or abortion rates (number of abortions per 1,000 women in a given age group) are provided. Starting with 1996, abortion ratios were calculated by using the number