Supreme Court Intellectualism

By now most of you have probably read about the Supreme Court decision banning Dilation and Extraction procedures after 12 weeks of pregnancy. Anyone who knows me and has read my unabashed liberal perspectives can probably guess how I feel about the SCOTUS decision.

But you would be wrong.

I doubt this ban will have the huge chilling effect that many pro-choice advocates are espousing. Less than 1% of overall reported abortions use D&E. Even the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology acknowledges how very rarely the procedure is performed. It’s one of several options available to women who must face termination after the first trimester. So women are not being stopped from enacting their choice. Although the venue for playing out their choice is being restricted, that is not legally chipping away at Roe v. Wade. And once the threshold is reached where enough procedures are blocked so as to render Roe obsolete, I am confident that we will see SCOTUS scales tip back to favor reproductive rights. Time and again, that’s the pattern we see with Supreme Court decisions. There is no reason to believe the political landscape of reproductive rights is the exception to the rule.

So I’m just not that worked up over the decision. What does get me worked up are the fallacies, the bad data and the made-up stories that were used by the lawyers supporting the ban.

Contrary to their stories, there is no abortion epidemic of viable babies. Yes, it does happen. And when it does happen it’s because of a life-threatening and previously undiagnosed illness to the mother or the baby. It’s a difficult choice that must be made within the context of extenuating circumstances. For example, does the government have the right to decide that a woman with a life-threatening illness must die and leave her surviving children without a mother simply because doctors didn’t diagnose her disease early enough? Do *you* want to be the person to explain that to the children left behind? What if a parent learns that her unborn child has tay sachs and is doomed to live in pain for a few short months at most? After the mother of that child has her heart broken from the news that the baby previously known to be healthy is going to die a certain, untimely, and painful death, do you want to require her to have her heart broken again by being forced to endure the child’s living pain? Do *you* want to be the person to explain to the mother why this is so necessary?

And what of this tripe that abortion should be illegal because years later, women often regret their decisions? There are hundreds of thousands of things people regret doing in their lives. People regret getting married. Some regret getting divorced. Most high school and college drop-outs report regretting their choices a few years later. Should we make all these actions illegal? Can you imagine the burden on our law enforcement agencies if they find themselves required to “protect the public” from people who simply do things they may later regret? Now *there’s* a job my mother would love.

So while I am not so worried about the D&E ban per so, I am far more concerned about the low level of intellectualism demonstrated by attorneys arguing the case, and by the justices who bought the arguments. Because in the end, it is that lack of rigor that chips away at our rights and freedoms.