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.

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.

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.

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.

“For a therapeutic abortion, the mother has not decided the child must die.”

I’m mystified at how you reach this conclusion.

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.

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.

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.