Healthcare Prof:
5 (2 votes)
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recognition last month of an argument advanced by some abortion-rights opponents that the “interests with the pregnant woman as well as the fetus are … the same” has “galvanized” antiabortion groups and has “se[t] the stage for an intensifying battle over new abortion restrictions within the states,” the New York Times reports.
According towards the Times, the “political struggle” over abortion often has been framed as a “starkly binary choice” in between the “interest with the woman,” advocated by abortion-rights supporters, versus the “interest with the fetus,” advocated by abortion-rights opponents. However, some groups — like the Justice Foundation, National Right to Life Committee and Feminists for Life — in the last decade have been building an argument that abortion is not in the “best interest” with the woman and that females are often “misled or ill-informed” about the risks related towards the procedure.
According towards the Times, many abortion-rights supporters and opponents viewed part of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in a ruling that upheld a federal law (S three) banning so-called “partial-birth” abortion as an “invitation from a newly conservative court to pass difficult new counseling and informed consent laws intended for females seeking abortions.”
Abortion-rights supporters say that the focus on females by abortion-rights opponents “is motivated by ideology, not women’s wellness,” the Times reports. “Informed consent is really a misleading way to characterize it,” Roger Evans, senior director of public policy litigation and law for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said, adding, “To me, what we’ll see is an increasing attempt to push a state’s ideology into a doctor-patient relationship to force doctors to communicate more and more of the state’s viewpoint.”
Wanda Franz, president of NRLC, stated, “We think of ourselves as very pro-woman,” adding, “We believe that when you help the woman, you help the baby” (Toner, New York Times, 5/22).
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