Bad Laws Never Stop

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There are times I despair of the intellectual functions of the supposedly enlightened lawmakers of the world. As I live in the United States, you can imagine that this feeling of despair has become something of a constant companion over the last four to eight years. The spate of bad legislation championed by the Bush administration ends soon, much to my relief and the relief of millions of others. However, there is a severely misguided feeling of optimism that with the rise of Obama, the United States will enter into the Promised Land or some such. As a properly well-trained historian, as well as an out-and-out realist, I have an obligation to drag everyone back down to Earth and point out the severe holes in the logic of the people who have discovered a new (or should I say old?) opiate of the masses in the form of excellent oratory. While Obama has promised to provide me with unending torrents of bad laws with horrible logical conclusions, I've decided that, for now, I will criticize only a single one of the bills this man is so eager to sign into law. The severely-flawed bill that promises to be unending heartbreak for future generations is known as the Freedom of Choice Act, hereafter referred to as FOCA.

Before Obamania floods my blog with protest, I will note that the supporters of a politician and their belief he can do no wrong does not render his laws well-thought, just, or even moral. They simply cow those who would speak out. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican nor a religious fanatic, and I am most certainly not a foaming-at-the-mouth liberal, so you'll get short shrift from me. That warning out of the way, I will now begin to analyze why FOCA is not a good piece of legislation.

FOCA is a reaction against recent movements to regulate and restrict abortion that at the same time is a handy little bit of propaganda. It sounds distinctly wrong to oppose Freedom of Choice, doesn't it? As a reactionary bill, it takes restraint and sound statesmanship and throws it in a pit of fire. The text of the actual document stops just short of making Roe vs Wade appear like a sacred apparition, inviolable, untouchable, and unchallengeable, issued from the mouth of the One True...secularism. I will now address the actual provisions of this would-be law that are so disturbing. Section 4, Subsection b is the meat of the bill, and the biggest problem. Copied verbatim:

(b) Prohibition of Interference- A government may not--
(1) deny or interfere with a woman's right to choose--
(A) to bear a child;
(B) to terminate a pregnancy prior to viability; or
(C) to terminate a pregnancy after viability where termination is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman; or
(2) discriminate against the exercise of the rights set forth in paragraph (1) in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information.

Now combine the above with Section 6:

This Act applies to every Federal, State, and local statute, ordinance, regulation, administrative order, decision, policy, practice, or other action enacted, adopted, or implemented before, on, or after the date of enactment of this Act.

For those who are not fluent in legalese, allow me to translate. Section 4b, for all intents and purposes, permanently ties the hands of government at all levels when it comes to abortion, and removes the right to set restrictions. Before the naysayers begin to trumpet that a government can change law at will, let me observe what I did earlier: how does it sound to oppose the Freedom of Choice Act? With a simple bit of propaganda, you've rendered any efforts to repeal such a law futile and unpopular with a public that happily believes what it is told by the media. So what happens in the future? Very few people will dare speak out, the ones who do will be liberally bashed in the media, and FOCA will be untouchable. While any legislator wants his laws to stay on the books until the end of time, this sort of law moves to take the government's power to legislate and hamstring it.

However, FOCA is only getting warmed up at this point. Section 4 Subsection b Paragraph 1 Clause C is worse. The full text would be “A government may not deny or interfere with a woman's right to choose to terminate after viability where termination is necessary to protect the life or health of the woman”. This part of the law, in deliberately non-confrontational language, explicitly repeals the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act. To explain in more detail, “viability” is the language chosen to conceal the fact that any child removed from the uterus at this point is capable of surviving in the real world without the umbilical cord. I deliberately chose the word “child” to describe these helpless infants, because documented cases have proven that four month babies (babies born four months into a pregnancy) can and do beat the odds to survive and grow into normal childhoods.

Intact dilation and extraction, the medically dry term for partial-birth abortion, involves pulling out the child, starting with the feet, as far as the neck, and then penetrating the baby’s skull with a sharp object, inserting a tube, and vacuuming the brain and everything else inside the skull. Keep in mind, these are the same living beings that can be felt kicking inside of a mother’s stomach as the pregnancy progresses. Does anyone else see the jarring contrast involved in this? Were this suggested as a method of execution, every liberal group from California to Paris would be out in the streets protesting, yet when performed on a “viable” baby that can survive outside of its mother’s womb, it’s not only mute, but lauded as advancement of women’s rights. For everyone who is in support of this section of the law and partial-birth abortion, I recommend they Google Image the term, and then come back after you’ve gone through the first five pages. Without image filters.

I am well aware that the exact text of the law says “to protect the life or health of the woman.” However, it is strictly wishful thinking to think that this gruesome procedure would be limited to medical emergencies when those same children can just as easily be removed by C-section without execution. Using the word ‘life’ in this section of the bill is deliberately vague language that allows any woman to abort at any time, as the bill can be easily interpreted to mean that the disruption of day-to-day activities caused by a baby would be a ‘threat’ to the woman’s life.

The last section of this bill that needs to be addressed is Section 6, the final hammer blow in a particularly bad law. Simply put, all laws, rules, regulations, and policies regarding abortion that existed before, during, or after this bill is enacted would be null and void. Not just at the federal level, but all the way down to the local hospitals. That means parental notification laws, waiting periods, requirements of full disclosure of the physical and emotional risks inherent in abortion, the partial-birth abortion ban and many other laws meant to protect not only those who bear children, but the actual viable babies themselves, are meaningless. This last section makes the bill itself immune to being struck down, since the last section would have to be nullified before it could be repealed.

How does striking down parental notification laws, requirements of full disclosure of the physical and emotional risks, and flat-out infanticide make this bill in the slightest way just? It’s impossible for a teenager to get into a fender-bender without insurance companies notifying the parents, yet somehow, this bill deems insignificant informing those self-same parents that their underage child is pregnant and is considering an abortion. A person is not considered an adult until eighteen years of age, when they are expected to be able to act like adults in matters such as smoking, volunteering for military service, and criminal acts. How does it follow that a fifteen year old will be better able to make a decision as complicated as aborting a pregnancy alone when people many years older struggle with that same decision? What about the risks of postpartum depression, the anxiety, fear, and self-loathing that come after a birth? Removing a child from the womb triggers the same exact physiological response as giving birth, so abortion does nothing to stave off the biological responses. What about the sense of guilt and shame that arise after an abortion?

One final observation before I wrap up this post. The terrible irony in this so-called “Freedom of Choice” Act is that the people who are expected to carry it out have no choice in refusing to do so. Section 4b2 makes sure that any refusal to perform an abortion is treated as discrimination, with the full weight of the law. Particularly vulnerable are religiously-based hospitals and organizations. These organizations do not perform abortions because it goes contrary to their beliefs, and as such, are particularly vulnerable to lawsuits for discrimination and non-compliance with a federal law. Supposedly, conscience clause laws protect religious organizations from this law, but I now point to two examples that actually demonstrate the impotence of those laws. Firstly, the bill itself unequivocally states that any rule, let alone law, that attempts to regulate abortion is null and void, and in this case, that means that clause of conscience laws are not worth the paper they are written on. Just as important, the California Supreme Court forced the Catholic Charities of Sacramento, an “organ of the Roman Catholic Church”, to comply with a Californian law that requires that most health care plans include contraceptives. The Roman Catholic Church, a religious organization if there never was one, is morally opposed to contraceptives. To quote the lone dissenter in the California Supreme Court, the decision was "an intentional, purposeful intrusion into a religious organization's expression of its religious tenets and sense of mission."

That leaves religious hospitals, organizations, and medical personnel with two options: violate their morals and ethics, or stop practicing medicine to respect those same morals and ethics. A law that stampedes on social convention, that makes abortion free of regulation or restriction, that tramples the rights of religious doctors and organizations, and is untouchable. And Obama wants this to be the very first bill he signs into law. Who said that the bad legislation was gone?


Sources
Freedom of Choice Act
Miracle baby born FOUR months premature weighing just 1lb celebrates her first birthday
Baby Girl Thriving Despite Being Born Four Months Early
What is partial birth abortion?
Confine & Conquer
Barack Obama Promises to Sign FOCA