IT'S THE SUPREME COURT, STUPID

Bush signs anti-abortion law November 5, 2003. photo White House.

“I TRUST WOMEN.”

Say it with me. I know you can.

How hard was that?

The below article is true.

I wrote it eight years ago as an op-ed for the Seattle Times which danced around putting it up and then didn't.

The incident happened to my then best girl-friend.

This is the horror men whom have never been in the same room with a woman who has aborted her own fetus without benefit of medical help, would visit on us all.

“You belong to the State, bitch, and so does the fruit of your loins.”

Steve published this November 10, 2006 in The News Blog. It was the first time I'd been front-paged and I was over-joyed. Thank you Gilly.


IT'S THE SUPREME COURT, STUPID

August 10, 2000
Seattle, Washington

George Bush and Dick Cheney would let my best friend die.

Melinda’s my best friend* – Twenty-nine, married, two-year old son, five months pregnant, works at Boeing.

When a routine screening test for neural tube birth defects came back positive, her doctor did a special ultrasound. Melinda’s five-month fetus is missing its abdominal wall, and basically has no viable organs below the heart and lungs – no kidneys, no liver, no stomach, no intestines, no sexual organs, no bladder, no pancreas, no gall bladder.

There is no chance this baby could live. There is no chance this baby could be delivered alive. Sometime during the pregnancy, this fetus will inevitably die. If this were forty years ago, Melinda would also die.

Dick Cheney has voted against abortion no matter what – rape, incest, even to save the life of a mother. George Bush and Dick Cheney have made it clear they plan to stack the United States Supreme Court with anti-abortion justices.

Bush/Cheney and the GOP support a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion. And even though there is absolutely no hope for Melinda’s child to be born alive, a Bush/Cheney Supreme Court would let the states make laws which would have my best friend die instead of allowing her an abortion – as a matter of moral principle.

By the time you read this, Melinda will no longer be pregnant. Tomorrow morning, August 11th, her physician will perform a late-term Dilation and Extraction, the so-called “Partial-Birth” abortion. By removing a fetus with no chance for survival, a mother’s life will be saved.

Melinda has this choice because the United States Supreme Court says she does. But what the Supreme Court gives, it can take away. Because Melinda still has a right to choose today, tomorrow a two-year old boy will still have a mother, a husband will not be a widower, and a grandmother won’t be grieving over the death of her daughter.

A large majority of US citizens support abortion if necessary to save the life of the mother, with only the real zealots disagreeing. And a majority of citizens support a women’s right to choose an abortion during the first trimester. But a majority of state legislatures do not. All that is stopping them from outlawing abortion is a 5-4 United States Supreme Court, with at least two of the majority justices likely retiring during the next presidential term.

This election is not about our thriving economy, and it is not about Bill Clinton. It is about the Supreme Court and the direction of the United States for the next twenty-five years.

If Bush and Cheney are elected, abortion will become a felony in states throughout America, because Bush’s appointments to the Supreme Court will make it so. And as the religious right rejoices over another fetus saved, families throughout America will grieve as their loved ones die from the complications of pregnancy and back-alley procedures – all in the name of a loving God.

I understand many people believe abortion is morally wrong. I also understand many people want abortion to remain legal, yet still have qualms about late-term procedures.

What I don’t understand is how anyone could condemn Melinda to death, in the name of respect for life, in the name of God, to uphold a principle.

But then what do I know about principles? I’m just someone who loves my best friend.

* Not her real name