In 2004 Michelle Obama wrote a campaign letter on behalf of her husband’s campaign saying that killing a child when it was halfway out of the womb was a “legitimate medical procedure” (thus clarifying her husband’s idea of what constitutes a “surgical” attack) and that bans on it were “clearly unconstitutional and must be overturned.”
michelleobama5
Her statements speak for themselves, of course, but it’s worth considering who else they might speak for: At the time she wrote the letter, Michelle Obama was serving as executive director for community affairs at the University of Chicago Hospitals.
October 23rd, 2012 | 12:39 pm
Why the Democrats are considered the party of the “little man” is beyond me. To describe the killing of a viable fetus as a “legitimate medical procedure” is to reach new heights of Orwellian excellence.
October 23rd, 2012 | 1:10 pm
i guess it’s hurrah for “women’s health.” is there any hope of reasoning with the morally insane?
October 23rd, 2012 | 2:29 pm
How can a person advocate for such a barbaric practice? There are only 3 possibilities here: 1) She doesn’t know what the procedure is, 2) She does know what the procedure is, and she is insane, 3) She is sane, knows what the procedure is, and she advocates for it because she wants to curry political favor.
There is no possible way for her to think that it is a good thing to kill a partially born child. That is simply not possible for a person with a heart and a mind.
October 23rd, 2012 | 2:33 pm
For those who might not be familiar with this “legitimate” medical procedure, it consists of the following:
That these are very late “abortions” (is it actually infanticide?) is made clear by the fact that the child’s head is so large that they collapse the skull to facilitate its delivery.
The fact that such a procedure became “routine” horrifies many Americans, yet it is considered by other Americans to be a perfectly legitimate medical procedure the necessity of the legality of which is so obvious and so important that it is mentioned in campaign letters.
This speaks volumes about the magnitude of the polarization of our society and the fact that that polarization is due to irreconcilable differences regarding the nature and value of humanity and the very purpose of government.
October 23rd, 2012 | 3:09 pm
Keep in mind, too, that when the health/life of a mother is in danger, the quickest way to stop the pregnancy and address the mother’s medical needs is an emergency C-section, not a partial-birth abortion. But when the mother has decided that the child has no rights, and must die, medical necessity doesn’t always rule the day.
October 23rd, 2012 | 3:12 pm
The Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision upholding the ban on “partial-birth abortion” came after three federal appeals courts ruled it unconstitutional on the grounds that Michele Obama cites in the letter—no exception for the health of the mother. I would say that having three federal appeals courts and 4 out of 5 supreme court justices on your side is ample defense against being considered outrageously incorrect.
It is strange that the pro-life movement considers the Supreme Court ruling on this matter a victory, since as I understood the ruling, it said a woman was not unduly burdened by a ban on partial birth abortion because there were other abortion techniques just as safe and effective. My understanding of the pro-life position is that the wrongness of abortion is determined not by how grisly it is looks. In some ways the ban on partial birth abortion is the pro-life movement stepping on its own message.
October 23rd, 2012 | 3:52 pm
I forgot to mention that Mitt Romney was pro-choice in 2004. He is running for president. Michele Obama is not.
October 23rd, 2012 | 4:21 pm
Pro-life people do not need grisly pictures and descriptions of aborted children to know that abortion is evil. Pro-”choice” people apparently do. To paraphrase Flannery O’Connor, you have to shout at the hard of hearing, and you must draw large and startling pictures for those who have trouble seeing.
October 23rd, 2012 | 4:25 pm
“In some ways the ban on partial birth abortion is the pro-life movement stepping on its own message.”
I was waiting for Mr. Nickol to make his obligatory appearance(s) to tell us all why up is down and down is up with respect to the Obama record on abortion. (Or should I say “choice”?)
What you apparently don’t understand, Mr. Nickol, is that for most pro-lifers, at this stage of the game given the anti-democratic Roe ruling (which I’m sure you’ll defend as the essence of deliberative democracy), we’ll take whatever small victories we can get.
PS – Barack Obama was anti-gay marriage, anti-Guantanomo Bay, anti-unauthorized use of force (among other things) in 2008, so I’m not really sure what your point is with respect to Mr. Romney.
October 23rd, 2012 | 4:27 pm
When one’s goal cannot be achieved, small, incremental steps are better than nothing.
Testimony before the Court describing the partial birth abortion procedure may have convinced some that the practice not only “looked grisly” but is grisly. This could lead to a reconsideration of the entire question of abortion.
I keep on my desk a yellowed copy of a letter to the Wall Street Journal. In this letter a United States Administrative Law Judge from San Francisco writes:
“I was deeply offended and insulted several months ago when Sen. Barbara Boxer of California was quoted as saying that ‘the only ones in favor of the proposed federal ban on Partial Birth Abortions are Republican men who don’t care if women die.’”
I do not know if Senator Boxer apologized to Judge Alfred Lindeman after the Court declared this type of abortion unnecessary and after several medical doctors declared the procedure to be “bad medicine” but hope that she had the good grace to do so.
October 23rd, 2012 | 4:27 pm
PSS – When a political wife engages in campaigning and fundraising on behalf of her husband, I’d say her expressed views (particularly written) are fair game.
October 23rd, 2012 | 4:41 pm
Keep in mind, too, that when the health/life of a mother is in danger, the quickest way to stop the pregnancy and address the mother’s medical needs is an emergency C-section, not a partial-birth abortion.
Brian,
Here’s an excerpt from a fairly evenhanded article on partial birth abortion:
A c-section is major surgery. An abortion is not. When a woman’s life or health is in danger, and when the unborn child has no chance of survival, surely an abortion would be preferable to a c-section.
But when the mother has decided that the child has no rights, and must die, medical necessity doesn’t always rule the day.
For a therapeutic abortion, the mother has not decided the child must die, and when a therapeutic abortion is performed before viability, there is no question about the life of the child (unless intervention can wait until after viability).
For an elective abortion, with a healthy mother and a healthy and viable baby, there is no justification for an abortion of any kind.
October 23rd, 2012 | 5:41 pm
What you apparently don’t understand, Mr. Nickol, is that for most pro-lifers, at this stage of the game given the anti-democratic Roe ruling (which I’m sure you’ll defend as the essence of deliberative democracy), we’ll take whatever small victories we can get.
Josh DeCuir,
I think if Mitt Romney is elected, appoints a few justices to the Court, and somewhere down the road it rules that abortion is prohibited because the Fourteenth Amendment’s references to “person” and “persons” include the unborn, there would be no complaint from pro-lifers that the Court had short-circuited the democratic process.
I do think, in general, that a Supreme Court decision is just as legitimate a part of American democracy as an election. The Founding Fathers didn’t create three co-equal branches of government so that everything could be decided by direct votes of the people. Far from it.
Having said that, I do think Roe v Wade was probably wrongly decided. However, after 40 years, I think it would probably be a mistake for it to be reversed, and I don’t expect it will be. I think it might be substantially modified if the Court is ever conservative enough. But I don’t expect it would ever be reversed (that is, abortion turned completely back to the states) or that abortion would ever be ruled constitutionally impermissible (under the Fourteenth Amendment).
I really don’t see that the partial-birth abortion ban was a victory for the pro-life movement. A significant number among the pro-life movement did not see it as a victory, either. I don’t think their viewpoint is that difficult to understand.
October 23rd, 2012 | 6:54 pm
As lifelong Catholic Democrats… this is the reason that my entire family has shifted to Independent status. We will never vote for a candidate who rationalizes & supports the termination/killing of innocent victims.
October 23rd, 2012 | 8:15 pm
Mr. Nichol, Why shouldn’t Roe V Wade be overturned? We would still have slavery had the congress lacked the guts to change the law. As you said, Roe is bad law and behind closed doors everyone knows it. But the majority of congress is gutless. All life is sacred. It belongs to God. Until we wholeheartedly believe that and live that way we are on an accelerated path to annihilation. When the searing of our consciences is made manifest, it will be too late.
October 23rd, 2012 | 10:00 pm
Pro-infanticide supporters can always be counted on to resort to legalistic arguments coupled with semantic sleight of hand … This allows them to divorce themselves from the ugly realities of partial birth abortion.
October 24th, 2012 | 7:32 am
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October 24th, 2012 | 8:18 am
Yes, a c-section is major surgery. But when time is of the essence, it is a faster way to remove a child (and whatever danger its presence poses to the life of the mother) than taking the time to kill the child first.
October 24th, 2012 | 10:02 am
Yes, a c-section is major surgery. But when time is of the essence, it is a faster way to remove a child (and whatever danger its presence poses to the life of the mother) than taking the time to kill the child first.
Brian,
First, a c-section to remove a pre-viable unborn child is still an abortion. So in the vast majority of cases where partial-birth abortion might have been performed, resorting to a c-section instead is just finding a more “esthetic” way of killing the unborn child.
Second, take the famous Phoenix abortion case. The mother was so near death that they did not even risk transporting her to the operating room.
October 24th, 2012 | 10:34 am
“I really don’t see that the partial-birth abortion ban was a victory for the pro-life movement.”
Mr. Nickol – your “critique” of the “pro-life movement” seems premised on the same flawed “all of nothing” misconception that the linked website reflects. Fortunately, I don’t think the “pro-life movement” is either as rigid or as homogenous as you are assuming it is. It is a question of tactics. Taking half a loaf is (in my own pro-life opinion) better than refusing it for the whole.
October 24th, 2012 | 10:57 am
Taking half a loaf is (in my own pro-life opinion) better than refusing it for the whole.
Josh DeCuir,
That is certainly a reasonable position to take, and in fact it is basically endorsed by Pope John Paul II in Section 73 of Evangelium Vitae. Clearly the pro-life movement takes an incremental approach. But my point is that a ban on partial birth abortions does not seem to me to be a pro-life victory in that it does not save or protect any lives. If you are convinced that it is somehow a step toward ending all abortions, then you would see it as a pro-life victory. But if the message people got from it is that there are good ways and bad ways to perform abortions, and once the bad ways are banned, everything will be fine, then it is not a pro-life victory. You haven’t convinced people abortion itself is wrong. You’ve convinced them that abortions that are not pretty to look at are wrong.
October 24th, 2012 | 11:24 am
What no one seems willing to mention is that all of this is in accord with the Talmud
October 24th, 2012 | 12:59 pm
David Nickol,
It appears that we do agree that when a mother and baby are healthy, “there is no justification for an abortion of any kind.” Good. Motivation (which, it would appear, would determine the difference between a therapeutic and elective abortion) matters.
The point I was intending to make with my initial comment in this thread is that when a mother has a condition whereby the continuation of the pregnancy genuinely endangers her life, and where speed is important, a partial-birth abortion is not the best (that is, fastest) way for a doctor to end the pregnancy and thus save the mother. I never said that undertaking this procedure on a pre-viable baby would not result in the unintended death of the child. I believe you and I have debated this point before; I fail to see how it is logically inconsistent or philosophically unsound for a pro-life person to advocate a set of principles that, in a situation as I’ve just outlined, would result in one living patient instead of none. If it was not the intention of the mother or medical staff that the child would die, then what we have is a tragedy, not a murder.
As for whether this law is a step in the right direction, anything that gets more people to acknowledge the reality of the procedure is an improvement over the sanitized misunderstanding that a surprising number of pro-choice people have about the nature of the unborn child. When I read the actual thinking of those who would declare themselves pro-choice, but who haven’t really looked into the reality or thought through the ramifications, I’m still surprised at how many of their understandings are rooted in ignorance. Like other politicians whose power relies on this ignorance continuing (so their base will not desert them), the President and his wife will resist anything that genuinely educates the public on this issue.
October 24th, 2012 | 2:46 pm
Hello David,
“For a therapeutic abortion, the mother has not decided the child must die.”
I’m mystified at how you reach this conclusion.
October 24th, 2012 | 4:05 pm
I’m mystified at how you reach this conclusion.
Richard M,
I am assuming that the reason the woman has a therapeutic abortion is that she wishes to preserve her own life (or possibly health). I am assuming that if she could achieve that end without the baby dying, she would. Consequently, she does not will the death of the baby. This was the case in the Phoenix abortion. The woman very much wanted the baby and had to be convinced she would die without the abortion (and of course, the baby would die, too).
People claim that often what women want as the result of an abortion is a dead baby. But a woman who has an abortion to save her own life does not want a dead baby. She would be thrilled if somehow the baby could be saved.
I am aware that this is not the official Catholic teaching. But I see it being similar to the principle of double effect. A woman who has a lifesaving abortion is not choosing to kill her baby. She is choosing to save her own life. That the baby will die is a foreseen but unwanted consequence.
I think that there are some highly respectable Catholic moral theologians who might hold a similar view, but I don’t have time to research it right now. If you object to what I have said as morally reprehensible, I will try to find something authoritative to support it. I think it would be difficult to convince most people that it would not be permissible to save the mother by abortion if it were the case that without the abortion, the mother and the unborn child would die.
October 24th, 2012 | 4:46 pm
Richard M,
One more thought. If you are familiar with the Catholic rationale for a salpingectomy (removal of part of all of a fallopian tube) in the case of ectopic pregnancy, you might look at that alongside what I have said. It is absolutely certain that the unborn infant will die in the case of a salpingectomy, but it would be bizarre, in my opinion, to conclude that a woman who had a salpingectomy decided the baby must die.
October 24th, 2012 | 4:50 pm
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October 24th, 2012 | 5:59 pm
Remember that we are dealing here with demonic blindness. I don’t hesitate to call it that.
How is it that the Aztecs used to sacrifice thousands of people alive and think they were worshipping God? How is it that people today think that there can be any reason that makes it ok to rip a pre-born human being to pieces? (That is the truth of it – if it bothers you to hear it, why doesn’t it bother you that it actually happens to innocent and defenseless human beings?)
This kind of blindness comes from the abyss…. “This kind can only be cast out by prayer and fasting.” We all need to pray that the eyes of our fellow citizens will continue to be open to the barbarity of abortion. So many otherwise “good” people have no compassion for the preborn. They won’t let themselves see the truth, because it means admitting that we have been doing terrible things. It means that we have to make sacrifices, that others might live.
But parents should sacrifice themselves to save their children, not sacrifice their children to–supposedly–help themselves.
October 25th, 2012 | 3:44 pm
“But my point is that a ban on partial birth abortions does not seem to me to be a pro-life victory in that it does not save or protect any lives. ” –David Nickol
The illogic is baffling. If so much as one life has been saved then it is a victory. Case closed.
Have you ever shown video or photos of the partial birth procedure to a pregnant mother that was “on the fence”? Have you described this procedure to high schoolers?
If you did either, David, there would be zero doubt in your mind that the ban saves lives, and the grotesqueness of the procedure served to turn people from abortion.
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