The Do Nothing Strategy: An Expose of National Progressive Politics

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So much for Sisterhood.

Protecting Choice

While at Fifty plus One I was asked to lobby on the issue of so-called “partial birth” abortion. After looking briefly at the legislation proposed in Maryland it was clear that the way legislation was written, it could ban all abortion. The Maryland legislation had language similar to laws that passed in more than 30 states and in the U.S. Congress. It’s been eight years since the anti-choice movement first introduced “partial birth” abortion legislation in the U.S. Congress and state houses across the country, it is still not recognized as a carefully crafted, national strategy to ban all abortion.

It’s easy to understand why anti-choice zealots portray the bans as narrowly drawn for the limited purpose of stopping a certain late-term abortion procedure, but if you look at the language of the legislation, you see a very different reality emerging. The mystery is why many pro-choice leaders and the mainstream media haven’t exposed the reality that nowhere in this legislation is there any reference to stage of pregnancy—not viability, not trimesters, not weeks of gestation. And the definition of the banned procedure is so broad that it could ban the safest, most commonly used abortion procedures.

The term “partial birth” abortion cannot be found in any medical dictionary because it is a political term that anti-choice zealots made up as part of their public relations campaign to stigmatize all abortion. When talking about the bans, advocates use graphic language about late-term abortion that is different from anything found in the legislation itself. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), which represents most ob-gyn specialists, has rejected these bans, which fail “to use recognized medical terminology and fail to define explicitly the prohibited medical techniques it criminalizes."

Federal Judge Gerald Rosen, a George H. W. Bush appointee, permanently enjoined an early Michigan ban because it was so vague that doctors lacked notice as to what abortion procedures were banned. A temporary restraining order against legislation in Arkansas said that the “act applies at any stage of gestation,” and that it defies logic to say that the language applies to only one type of abortion. Despite evolution in the language defining “partial birth” abortion since these decisions, a 2000 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Stenberg v. Carhart found a Nebraska statute unconstitutional and said that the definition of “partial birth” abortion remains so broad that it could outlaw the safest, most common methods of abortion used in the second trimester of pregnancy.

The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy (CRLP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) both understood that so-called “partial birth” abortion bans could ban all abortion and they have worked at every level to get that message out to voters.

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