Salon: How George Bush* Will Ban Abortion

[kskiska]

Republicans and the religious right are working to outlaw abortion -- one small step at a time.

Unnoticed by much of the public, the Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress have been laying the groundwork for a repeal of abortion rights. The effort to ban late-term abortion was just the beginning -- anti-abortion activists expect the president to sign several landmark pieces of pro-life legislation next year. Meanwhile, in the wake of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, John Ashcroft ordered the Justice Department's civil rights division -- attorneys responsible for prosecuting anti-abortion terrorism, among other crimes -- to go after doctors performing late-term abortions, a move that sources inside and outside of the Justice Department say is meant to endow the fetuses with civil rights. Abroad, unfettered by domestic scrutiny, the Bush administration has slashed away at funding for family planning programs that have failed to renounce the mere mention of abortion.

Even as Bush placates moderates by saying that the country isn't yet ready for a total abortion ban, he's doing his best to prepare for that eventuality. And except for committed pro-choice activists, American women aren't mounting much of a defense. Roe vs. Wade might stand a while longer, but it's being hollowed out, termite style. Another Bush term augurs its eventual collapse.

Backed by a crescent of beaming congressmen, Bush signed the Partial Birth Abortion Ban on Nov. 5, marking the first time since Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973 that the government has outlawed an abortion procedure. According to Cynthia Gorney, a University of California at Berkeley professor of journalism and author of "Articles of Faith: A Frontline History of the Abortion Wars," the ban was "the biggest victory that the abortion opponents have had in a long time," and the fruit of a strategy that began even before Roe vs. Wade.

(snip)

Indeed, right now much of the pro-life strategy is focused on changing the way people think about abortion. Some of that happens largely outside the law, through things like clinics and pregnancy crisis centers, anti-abortion organizations that disguise themselves as health clinics. But within the law, opponents of legal abortion are using a variety of subtle measures to create legal and rhetorical recognition of fetal personhood, which they hope will in turn undermine Roe.

Attorney General John Ashcroft demonstrated this immediately after the Partial Birth Abortion Ban was passed. At 11:40 a.m. on the day Bush signed the law, the Justice Department's entire civil rights office was called into what a Justice Department source describes as a highly unusual meeting. There, civil rights attorneys -- who ordinarily prosecute offenses like hate crimes, racial harassment and anti-abortion terrorism -- were told they would be in charge of prosecuting the doctors thought to be in violation of the new abortion ban.

more…
http://salon.com/news/feature/2003/11/12/abortion/index.html

[sam sarrha]

1. the new ban is on a procedure that is used to save the life of women

with stillborn fetus's...many women testified with their doctors at the senate hearings whose lives had depended on that procedure. once again their policy puts dogma before the concern of our citizens well being.