more from Katha

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Nov 6 12:22:03 PST 2000


X-From_: kpollitt at thenation.com Mon Nov 6 15:10:01 2000 Date: Mon, 06 Nov 2000 15:07:19 +0000 From: Katha Pollitt <kpollitt at thenation.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 To: dhenwood at panix.com Subject: could you post?

Hi Justin, actually I knew this, and had said this in a much ,longer version of the post I sent the list which I cut because it was too long. Casey was where the rot set in. But I think the dissenters in Carhart wanted to go a step further. they wanted to say: even if your health will de damaged, you can't have this procedure. the point about undue burden was that they were supposed to be undue -- not determinative of whether you could have a procedure or not. Just something you had to go through on the way to make you "think' or "be sure" or "have all the facts." I believe Casey left the door open for pro-0choicers to demonstrate that particular burdens were in fact preventing women from getting abortions. (as they are) But all attempts to make this case have fallen on deaf ears. Sandra Day O'connor in particular never met a burden she didn't like.

Thing about kennedy is -- there is no way of performing a second or third trimester abortion that cannot be made to look gruesome. If he thinks "partial birth" is infanticide, why not the alternatives -- poisoning that same fetus in the womb, or cutting it up into pieces. today it may seem to him like the crucial element is that in p-b the fetus is partially outside the womb. tomorrow, that may seem just a detail.

of course nobody knows what kennedy would do in a case that offered the opportunity to overturn roe. But you should be able to understand why not everyone feels as comfy as you, or thinks voting for Nader is worth the risk of finding out.

you know, every time a naderite scoffs at the danger to abortion or SC generally from Bush I feel my pro-nader feelings slipping away. It's not a winning strategy.

katha


> >Katha,
> >
> >Wake up! The Roe trimester framework is dead, killed by Casey, and
> >replaced with the undue burden standard. Roe is not the law as far
> >as trimesters goes. Really, abortion rights activists should know
> >this.
> >
> >--Justin Schwartz (a lawyer)
> >
> >Katah Pollit says.
> >
> >Second, the
> >>bans
> >>clearly DO violate Roe, by permitting the criminalization of a procedure
> >>performed during the second trimester, when such bans are explicitly
> >>forbidden by Roe, and by disregarding women's health which Roe
> >>explicitly says must come first at EVERY STAGE of pregnancy. file
> >>>at
> >>> http://profiles.msn.com.
> >>
> >
> >_________________________________________________________________________
> >Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
> >
> >Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
> >http://profiles.msn.com.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list