Every Stone

With O’Connor gone and now with Alito and Roberts on board, the Supreme Court has ruled to uphold the Bush partial-birth abortion ban despite three federal appeals courts’ rulings against the government and thirty years of precedent.

The long-term effects are clear: it’s the first step to banning abortion. What few people understand or are covering is the short-term consequence or even the demographic affected by this decision. Partial-birth abortion, medically known as intact dilation and evacuation (IDX) is rare, less than .08 percent of abortions in 1997 according to the Guttmacher Institute. The new ban does not have an exception for maternal health. Women whose health and future fertility are jeopardized by dangerous pregnancies are now banned from obtaining late-term abortions. The accounts I have read from women who have made the decision to undergo this procedure are heart-wrenching, and it stuns and horrifies me that in all of the politics surrounding this issue neither the pro-choice or the “pro-life” groups have recognized the personal reality of IDX.