Friday, March 10, 2006

The Text of the Ban

Read the abortion ban here.

You will notice that Section 2 prohibits medical abortion. It remains to be seen whether or not legislators will arbitrarily (and incorrectly) decide that EC falls under this category. Section 3 suggests that they won't, as it makes a provision for contraception, including EC. But again, I suspect that under this ban women may find they are required to take a pregnancy test before they will be allowed to have EC. (Just to be absolutely clear - these are my own concerns. I have not heard any proponents of the ban suggesting anything of the sort. But we do know that they oppose making EC readily available to women.)

In Section 4, the law kindly allows doctors not to be prosecuted for performing an abortion to save the life of the mother, though such doctors are expected to try to save the life of the fetus, as well. I have to wonder what sort of evidence doctors would be required to provide either way, and also what decisions doctors would make in such cases - for example, in a case where a fetus' brain develops outside the skull, would they subject women to caesarian sections in order to produce a "whole" fetus (that would die anyway) rather than simply perfoming the abortion vaginally, at less risk to the mother?

But my favorite part of this piece of legislation, and maybe yours as well, is its title:
The Women's Health and Human Life Protection Act.

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