Ugly reality

Third trimester abortions. It’s not a pretty topic and the odds that you or someone you know will ever have one are slim. Considering the mental discomfort and the lack of immediate applicability, ignoring the current state of the Supreme Court is a pretty attractive choice. However, it is imperative that we remain concerned about the outcome of the ongoing Supreme Court case Gonzales v. Carhart. The future role of government in our lives depends on it.\nIn November 2003, the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 was passed, which eliminated third-trimester terminations without any medical caveat. The ban was immediately challenged by a group of pro-choice doctors. After the lower courts decided in favor of the doctors, the government appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court is now deliberating over the constitutionality of the ban and a decision is expected in the near future.\nThe Supreme Court should find the ban unconstitutional on three grounds: privacy precedent, medical autonomy, and equal protection. Since Griswold v. Connecticut in 1965, followed by other decisions, the courts have recognized a constitutionally protected space for sexual privacy and autonomy. \nIt is impossible to separate a right to privacy from medical autonomy. The prospect of a late-term termination is not a decision made lightly, and only someone with decades of medical training should be left to decide. The government claims within the ban that there is never a time when a woman’s health would require a late-term termination, therefore requiring no such caveat. However, there is a group of doctors who disagree strongly enough to dedicate their lives to this case and dozens more who claim otherwise have signed their names to amicus briefs. The sharp dichotomy between the government and the medical field should be evidence enough that this is a matter better left to medical professionals individually, not sweepingly determined by the moral leanings of medically underqualified politicians.\nFinally, this is a matter of equal protection. Within the ban, the government implies that it knows better than the woman what is best for her well-being. Through this wording, the government succeeds in unequally eliminating the rights to physical autonomy and medical freedom for women, while continuing to protect those rights for men. Since the peculiarities of pregnancy are of a biological nature outside the realm of human choice, it is unconstitutional for unequal legislation to be passed with that as its basis.\nThe government’s interest in eliminating something so repulsive as third trimester terminations from our society is a compelling one. In fact, “moral” is the second word of the act, and it is difficult not to hope for a future where such a thing does not have to be argued. But, fundamentally, this is not an issue of a right to life or of morality, but of defining the role of government in our lives. With hope, the Supreme Court will be compelled against a paternal government and finally take this issue out of the political arena and put it back in the private sphere of medicine where it belongs.