Drawing a line in the abortion debate

“If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I? And if not now, when?”

This is a quote by sage Rabbi Hillel — one LeRoy Carhart must live by every day, and more so than ever since May 31 of last year.

On that ill-fated Sunday morning, George Tiller stood in the foyer of Wichita, Kan.’s Reformation Lutheran Church, handing out service bulletins to incoming parishioners.
Then Scott Roeder ambled in and slew him with a single bullet from his .22 caliber handgun, proceeding to leave in his powder-blue Taurus and stop for gas and pizza.
Roeder murdered Tiller in God’s house because he could do so nowhere else — his car was custom-armored, the walls around his house high, his now-closed clinic an indomitable fortress.

Tiller was a brave man, one of only a few left still willing to perform late-term abortions. His clinic was bombed in 1985 and both of his arms were shot by a protestor in 1993.
Carhart, who has refused to be intimidated by Tiller’s murder and so many other acts of hatred, is a similarly high-profile target.

His farm was burned, killing 17 horses, and death threats to him are numerous. But he remains undaunted, just as Tiller was.

When Tiller was alive, Carhart would make the five-hour trip from his own practice in Nebraska to Tiller’s clinic in Kansas to assist him every third Sunday.

Since Tiller’s death, Carhart had to take up the demand and started performing late-term abortions in his own clinic — until Nebraska outlawed them in April, that is.
The legislation went into effect on Oct. 15, and it has led Carhart to announce to the Omaha-World Herald his plans to establish two new clinics out of state and to expand one in Indiana.

Late-term abortions are most controversial in the pro-choice, pro-life debate and seem horrific (especially to those who believe humanity begins at conception).

But does it?

Yes, no, maybe.

With a polarizing moral debate such as this one, there will never be a concrete answer.

But before decrying abortion providers and condemning them to the depths of hell, please consider why they risk their lives.

Some of the facts: A fetus is generally considered viable at 24 weeks, and abortions are rarely performed past 20 weeks. Only 1.3 percent of abortions are performed at or past 21 weeks, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Sarah Kliff, when interviewing Carhart for Newsweek last year, reported that “he bases his practice on a conservative interpretation of Nebraska law and will operate only when another physician has declared the fetus unable to live more than momentarily outside the womb.”

As for infamous partial-birth abortions, the procedure is severely rare and used only to minimize risks to a patient’s well-being, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act makes that type of abortion illegal, but even with the legislation’s exception for a mother’s life being in danger, it is unfairly disallowed even for the rare occasions where it is the safest option.

It should be noted that Nebraska’s new legislation has a similar exception for a woman’s life being at risk, as well as for the risk of “substantial and irreversible physical impairment of a major bodily function.”

So why, then, does the law make Carhart feel the need to open out-of-state establishments, besides his desire to expand his operations and make his service more accessible to women?

Many Americans support abortions for women whose lives are at risk.
But the real debate lies in where this line should be drawn, especially for late-term abortions and especially for ones performed past viability (24 weeks).
An abortion doctor will not operate past 24 weeks without a “compelling reason,” reported Kliff, but who decides what is compelling? Must the risk be merely physical or can it be mental as well?

For instance, Carhart once assisted a severely suicidal rape victim but turned away a woman who would put her baby up for adoption if it were born. He took into consideration the mental health of both women.

Other serious questions should also be actively debated.

The new Nebraskan law is seminal because it legitimizes itself based on the possibility of pain the fetus might feel rather than viability.

While currently unsubstantiated, it is a question that should (and is) being investigated. Perhaps this will lead to legislation based on more than just viability.

Meanwhile, Carhart, in his admirable stubbornness, refuses to back down. Even those who wish him death should give him grudging respect for the dangers he faces everyday to provide women an option — women who, in older times and with nowhere to turn, would have been part of the daily death toll, composed of a sad list of botched home abortions.


E-mail: celgrund@indiana.edu