Partial birth abortions, where the baby is killed while partly outside the woman’s body (see illustration on left) have been illegal for close to a decade. It’s easy to forget the battle that was waged between pro-life and pro-abortion forces. Pro-lifers depicted a method of abortion so horrible it made the average person shudder – the vast majority of Americans were against partial-birth abortion. So pro-choicers had to come up with their own strategy – they claimed that the wording of the bill describing partial-birth abortions was so vague that it would ban all abortions in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters. Some even claimed it would ban abortions in the 1st trimester. This way, they could put forward the argument that the partial-birth abortion ban would actually unlimited abortion in the United States – for their gullible followers, this was a way to defend something that no one in their right mind could defend. Here is a quote from Gloria Feldt:
“The language in the abortion ban statutes is sweeping and, as the Supreme Court recognized in Sternberg, could be used to prosecute doctors for providing a wide range of common and safe pre-viability procedures… If the federal law is eventually upheld by a changed Supreme Court – as is their plan – an ideologically committed Justice Department will be armed with a broadly worded statute that can be used to prosecute doctors for a dangerously wide range of pre-viability abortions, whether or not Roe is overturned.”
Well, eventually after many false starts, the bill passed, it was found constitutional, and, believe it or not, abortion continues. Abortions are still done in the 2nd and 3rd trimesters by other methods. Of course they aren’t illegal. And pro-choice activists knew all the time that they wouldn’t be. They simply lied, using whatever argument was most likely to sway their gullible followers.
Gloria Feldt the war on choice: The Right-Wing Attack on Women’s Rights and How to Fight Back (New York: Bantam Dell, 2004) 132 – 133
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