Fucking Kennedy

I’m sure by now that even those of you who live in a cave have heard about the SCOTUS decision on so-called “partial birth abortion” that was handed down yesterday. I have not had the same experience as another blogger, but her opinion about the value of this procedure is the same as mine. It’s important.

I am employed by a medical school, and I've had the opportunity to discuss the medical side of this procedure with the chief of OBGYN here while in a forum with medical students. That physician also testified for the plaintiff in the NY case, so he's very knowledgeable about the medical and legal implications of a potential ban.

He fully supports this procedure, and so do I. It's used because it's safer than the alternative procedure for later term abortions. With intact D&E, a woman's risk of infection and uterine injury are significantly lower. The alternative procedure involves several passes into and out of the uterus, but intact D&E involves usually only one or two. The planned outcome in both procedures is the same: termination of fetal life.

His other concern, and one I support, is that the legislature should not be making restrictions on which medical procedures are morally acceptable when the one they're banning is actually safer than the alternative and has the same planned outcome. I, too, fear that my physician may be obliged to treat me based on legislation rather than evidence-based practice.

The alternative procedure involves at least as much pain for the fetus, although if memory serves, it's not clear that the fetus can feel pain before viability. Intact D&E involves inducing labor and pulling the fetus out before killing it in one swift motion. D&E involves cutting the fetus apart in utero and removing those pieces bit by bit. Every time an instrument passes through the cervix, the risk of morbidity increases for the woman.

Intact D&E is scary to us because it's much easier to think of it as infanticide than abortion when the fetus comes out intact. We have a visceral response to the idea of killing a baby, but performing this procedure over a regular D&E is no better or worse for the fetus and much safer for the woman.

According to Wikipedia, regular D&E is not covered under this ban, only intact D&E. Fetuses will still be terminated at this point in gestation. It will simply increase the risks for women.

Suppose you're ready for your 20 week ultrasound, but you have the flu and it gets rescheduled to 22-ish weeks and that's a Friday. Suppose the radiology tech does your ultrasound and you go home. When the attending looks at your images, they need you to come back. So now it's 23 weeks and you find out that your baby will live for no longer than a month after delivery. Oh, and it's a Thursday. You're not ready to decide to terminate on Friday. So you go home and take the weekend to mull over what you should do. You're encroaching on viability, only your baby is only marginally viable. Your baby will not survive, unless your baby survives against all odds. It's happened before, but 99% of babies with this condition die in the first month.

Maybe you plan to schedule the safest and quickest procedure possible to terminate this pregnancy, but now you can't because the SCOTUS decided that the safest and quickest procedure is fit to be banned. So you end up with a more complicated and dangerous procedure, and within your grief for the child you wanted, you have to pray that you don't suffer a uterine perforation or infection.

And that doesn’t even begin to touch the health vs. life stipulation. I maintain that this ban is terrible and would be terrible even if it included a clause allowing it for the health of the woman. This is a huge setback for women. The US federal legislature needs to overturn it. Consider the options suggested here.

Remind me to tell you about Sanna’s first rally.