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April 25, 2007
Why Liberals are Angry
I've gotten some flack at Dean's for my assertion that conservatives are hateful people. Some of them are pointing to people on the Left and saying "they do it too!" as if that mattered. The thing is, we liberals do have good reason to be more than slightly angry at the conservatives. Let's put Katrina aside. Let's ignore the gaping running sore in American Foreign Policy that is Iraq. Let's look at Abortion.
President Bush has said:
"I am pleased that the Supreme Court upheld a law that prohibits the abhorrent procedure of partial-birth abortion. Today's decision affirms that the Constitution does not stand in the way of the people's representatives enacting laws reflecting the compassion and humanity of America. The partial-birth abortion ban, which an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress passed and I signed into law, represents a commitment to building a culture of life in America.
Had the President said "gruesome", he would have been correct: major surgery involves blood and pain, and is therefore always horrific. What makes liberals angry about this decision is somewhat technical: Previously a woman and her doctor considered the risks to her life and health before making a decision on whether she was able to carry a child to term. Now, a doctor may only consider a woman's life before deciding whether or not she is legally allowed to have this procedure.
The difference is dramatic. Pregnancy is one of the wildest things biology can do. It's radical, weird, and half of them end in miscarriage. Sometimes a woman is simply unable to maintain both her longterm health and her potential child. Allowing a life exemption without also allowing a health exemption means that we don't care if a woman goes blind, as long as the baby is born...
So, why are we angry? Because congress has substituted, in a situation that is dynamic and life-threatening, it's own judgment static for that of a doctor. Congress has now said that if a woman is bleeding, a doctor must be certain-- absolutely certain-- that she will die unless the pregnancy is aborted. And so we have this:
We were watching TV on the bed at home. Then she felt some pain. But she wasn't bleeding. She was cramping. It was very painful, but again, we checked, and there wasn't that much blood. So we did not go to the ER right then, they said one pad per hour. I called my sister, who suggested a hot bath to ease the cramp pain. And that did the trick. Then she started bleeding more. She panicked. She took off to the ER without even waiting for me to get dressed to go with her. By the time I've joined her there, she is bleeding enough to go through one pad every 10 minutes. Then every five minutes. Her blood pressure is steadily dropping. The machine shows the numbers in orange. Then they are both in red. But all the ER people can do is basically watch her bleed. They don't want to do anything more because of the baby.
[...]
The doctors did not say at this point that it was absolutely necessary. Maybe more blood could be transfused in. Maybe she wasn't dilated - they hadn't figured it out yet. Still too much blood. So then there I was, facing the sort of choice that you usually see only in hypotheticals in ethics and philosophy classes. Only it was real. It was my wife. And I didn't have exactly a lot of time to think about it. It was just me and the clipboard. An empty line there, marked for my signature. My wife bleeding right next to me. The ultrasound of my baby, and its heartbeat, fresh in my mind from minutes before.
Congress has said, and the courts have agreed, that there are certain medical options that are off the table. People are going to die because of this, because congress has said that a fetus has more worth than a living, breathing, human. And so we liberals are angry...
Posted by Andrew at April 25, 2007 08:56 PM