North Star Writers Group

Imagine a woman you love and care about - your sister, a daughter or a dear friend - is pregnant. She and her husband/partner are eagerly anticipating the birth of their baby.

Then, far into her second trimester, something goes horribly wrong. It could be that tests show the fetus has an exposed spine or its brain is missing. Maybe she is diagnosed with cancer. In this case, however, the sac inside her womb that holds the fetus and the amniotic fluid has ruptured prematurely.

Your loved one is staring straight down the barrel of a loaded gun that, when it discharges - and it will discharge - will cause major septic infection leading possibly to permanent disability, or death, for her and the fetus. It will certainly cause the woman great pain, no matter what the outcome.

Your loved one already has a young child and does not want to risk dying or being disabled and unable to care for that child. She and her doctor have determined that she needs a late-term abortion. Unfortunately, when she’s on the operating table, ready for the procedure, the doctor discovers that the safest method of abortion in this case has now been outlawed. Using it leaves the physician wide open to a felony prosecution and two years in prison. The doctor instead opts for a procedure that isn’t as safe for your loved one, and she suffers unnecessarily as a result.

Does the preceding sound like a bad fairy tale? Alas, with the recent decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, this or similar nightmares can and will come become reality. It’s only a matter of time and circumstance.

The law makes a black-and-white distinction between the kind of late-term abortion known as D&X, or dilation and extraction, and the more common D&E, or dilation and evacuation. In a D&X, the intact fetus is withdrawn partway out of the womb and then dismembered, while during a D&E procedure, the fetus is dismembered inside the womb and then removed. The law bans the D&X procedure, with no exceptions for the woman’s health.

The problem with the distinction between D&X and D&E, according to Dr. Cassing Hammond, director of the Program in Family Planning and Contraception, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Northwestern University School of Medicine, is that real late-term abortions transpire more along a continuum between the two procedures. In other words, a D&E may well contain elements of a D&X. It’s not cut-and-dried, except perhaps to the politicians who are now practicing medicine without a license or even any training.

Compounding the confusion is the imprecise wording of the 2003 statute, Dr. Cassing adds. Despite Justice Anthony Kennedy’s assertion in the majority opinion that only the D&X procedure is banned, the law itself is so vague that it could be construed by an overzealous prosecutor seeking to score political points as applying to far more late-term abortions than just the D&X.

Think an improper federal prosecution would never happen? Under this administration, it already has. The 7^th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals recently took the highly unusual step of freeing Georgia Thompson, a former Wisconsin civil servant, from prison even before writing its opinion. Judge Diane Wood rebuked Steven Biskupic, the U.S. attorney in Milwaukee who prosecuted the hapless woman, telling him, “Your evidence is beyond thin. I’m not sure what your actual theory in this case is.”

Mr. Biskupic’s prosecution of Ms. Thompson made highly convenient fodder for the 2006 gubernatorial election in Wisconsin, as the GOP used her supposed crime in political ads that unsuccessfully tried to unseat the Democratic incumbent, Gov. Jim Doyle.

This recently affirmed law politicizes a highly private and personal decision. Think back to 2005, when the Republicans who controlled Congress passed special, highly discriminatory legislation aimed at preventing the husband of Terri Schiavo from exercising his right to make decisions about his comatose wife’s medical care.

Those who want the government – federal, state or local – intervening in and dictating the course of personal medical decisions are no doubt ecstatic. The rest of us should be furious and very, very alarmed.

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