Now this just pisses us off. We know, we know — a lot of things piss us off, but this really pisses us off. From an AP article:

The Bush administration has asked the Supreme Court to reinstate a ban on a procedure that critics call "partial birth" abortions, setting up a showdown that could be decided by the president's new choice for the court.

The appeal, which had been expected, follows a two-year, cross-country legal fight over the federal law.

An appeals court in St. Louis said this summer that the ban on late term abortion is unconstitutional because it makes no exception for the health of the woman.

The Supreme Court has already scheduled arguments in November in another abortion case, involving New Hampshire's parental notification statute. That case also asks whether the state law is unconstitutional because it lacks an exception allowing a minor to have an abortion to protect her health in the event of a medical emergency.

The court should review both cases, Solicitor General Paul Clement said in the appeal, which was filed Friday and released on Monday.

In order to be clear about why we're as pissed off as we are, we should distill the issue. So, let's set aside the knee-jerk politicized term "partial birth abortion," and let's forget that this whole thing is political angling to kiss the asses of the insane religious right. Let's also forget the whole brouhaha around Bush's Supreme Court nominations, and how this is exactly what we've been afraid of since this idiot took office.

What really pisses us off about this is the fact that these abortion laws were struck down explicitly because they didn't allow the procedures even if the health or life of the mother was at risk. Who the hell do they think they are to decide that the life of an actual person should take a back seat to a fetus? Even if they personally don't particularly care for abortions, making a legislative decree that will not allow for the protection and preservation of a living, breathing woman is absolutely unacceptable. Sure, an individual parent is welcome to make the decision for themselves, sacrificing their own life for the life of their unborn child. But that should be their decision to make; the government has no fucking business intruding into such personal affairs.

Oh, but we forgot:

[Solicitor General Paul Clement] said that Congress determined that late-term abortions are not needed to preserve a woman's health.

Oh! Well, as long as Congress says there's never — absolutely never — a need for late-term abortions, we'll trust their expert medical opinion. After all, whenever we get sick, or break a limb, or need major surgery, we always find ourselves in that old familiar dilemma: head to the doctor? Or head on up to Capitol Hill?

Ah, you say, but some of those Capitol Hillians are, in fact, doctors — like good old Dr. Bill Frist. Right. Frist. The guy who refused to acknowledge on national television that the HIV virus cannot be transmitted through tears. Yes, what a bastion of medical integrity that Bill Frist is.

When all is said and done, does this little tidbit of news surprise us? Nope, we knew it was coming. As always, it just...fucking...pisses us off.

How could jabbing scissors into the back of the head of a baby about to be born...scrambling its brains and sucking them out have anything to do with saving the life of the mother? The point of partial birth abortion is to kill a baby, The mother's health would not be affected if her child were born alive.

I just happened to stumble onto this site.

Why are you so angry...about EVERYTHING?

.....SS

In order to point out the flaws in your logic, we need to start at the beginning. The term "partial birth abortion" is nothing more than an ugly name for a medical procedure called Intact Dilation and Extraction (IDX). The distasteful moniker was thought up by anti-abortion activists in order to make people think that it was an evil act. Boy, Sharon, you seem to have fallen for that one hook, line and sinker.

First, let's look at the wording of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act so we can see what is banned. That act bans an abortion in which:

(A) the person performing the abortion deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus; and

(B) performs the overt act, other than completion of delivery, that kills the partially delivered living fetus

Wow, they make it sound like this baby could have just popped out and lived on its own, if not for that jab to the back of the skull. However, that is not the case. This type of abortion is typically performed any time after the 20th week of pregnancy. By today's medical standards, a fetus is not viable outside the womb until week 24 at the earliest, and even then, it's pretty dicey. Frankly, even if the fetus is viable, we believe that the choice should be up to the mother — but we'll stay focused on explaining why your assertions are wrong, Sharon.

So, what happens when the mother's health is at risk if she continues to carry the fetus, and it's only week 20? Perhaps she needs emergency surgery to save her life, but the procedure entails terminating the pregnancy. Should she wait four weeks, at risk to her own life and health, in order to deliver a severely premature baby who would have a high probability of extensive medical problems, if it even survived? Don't forget — if the mother dies while waiting, so does the fetus. What should be done? The answer, Sharon, is that it should be up to that woman to make the decision, advised by her doctors — not a government with a blatant and self-serving agenda.

In addition, IDX procedures are performed only when the fetus' head is large enough to cause problems if it was made to pass through the vaginal canal intact. In a normal pregnancy, the head typically reaches this size around week 20, which is why IDX procedures are unnecessary earlier in a pregnancy. The situation can be further exacerbated if the fetus develops hydrocephalus, in which the radius of the head can swell up to 250% larger than a typical newborn's head. Hydrocephalus is an untreatable condition which can be fatal (and is almost always at least severely debilitating) and which is often not discovered until late in the second trimester of pregnancy.

So let's go extreme here, and take a case of a fetus with hydrocephalus at week 20 of a pregnancy. Not only is the fetus not viable outside the womb, but it is also facing the prospect of a debilitating and possibly fatal defect. Complications have arisen in the pregnancy — pick a complication, any complication, for there are any number of potential suspects (why not consult an obstetrician, Sharon?) — and the mother can no longer carry the fetus without risk to her own life or health. In addition, the mother's condition doesn't allow for a surgical procedure such as a C-section to remove the baby. Now what? If the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act was allowed to stand as law, this woman would be out of options. The government would have effectively mandated that both she and her fetus must die. Let's say that again for the cheap seats — the government would be signing a death warrant for both mother and fetus. And you wonder why we're so angry? The real question here is: why are you so calm?

Does this scenario seem far-fetched to you? Are you saying to yourself that there is no reason why this procedure is ever medically necessary? If so, you've fallen prey to more mindless rhetoric. According to U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf of Nebraska in Carhart v. Ashcroft:

"...the overwhelming weight of the trial evidence proves that the banned procedure is safe and medically necessary in order to preserve the health of women under certain circumstances. In the absence of an exception for the health of a woman, banning the procedure constitutes a significant health hazard to women."

[our emphasis]

No one likes abortions — we've never heard of anyone who gleefully galloped off for a quickie. No one takes it lightly. But the fact remains, all people deserve the right to make their own decisions concerning their own life and the life of their unborn child. The government has no place making that decision for us. And when the government ignores doctors and scientists, and states that this procedure is "never medically necessary," they are both lying and putting people's lives at risk. That is simply unacceptable to us, and we're shocked and amazed that anyone could feel different.

Next time, open your eyes before you open your mouth, and maybe you'll sound less like a thoughtless follower and more like an intelligent person with the capacity for rational thought.

I'm puzzled by people who keep asking "Why are you always so angry about everything?"

Sharon, they didn't create this page to rant about stuff they like.