 |
As the 31st anniversary of Roe v. Wade approaches, on
January 22, ethicist N. Ann Davis, a professor of philosophy
and the McConnell professor of Human Relations at Pomona
College, is available to discuss today’s biggest challenges
to the landmark court decision as well as the on-going
battle on restrictions.
Davis focuses her research on bioethics, ethics, morality
and the abortion debate. Her most recent publications
include:
- "Moral Dilemmas," in A Companion to Applied Ethics
(Blackwell's, 2003);
- "Fiddling Second" (a discussion of Judith Jarvis
Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" ) in Fact and Value (MIT
Press, 2003);
- "Abortion" in The Encyclopedia of Ethics (Garland
Publishing, 2 ed., 2001); and
- "Not Drowning but Waving: Reflections on Swimming
Through the Shark-Infested Waters of the Abortion Debate,"
in Advances in Bioethics, Vol. 2 (JAI Press, 1997).
Following are her thoughts on the status of the Roe v.
Wade decision and abortion politics today:
“The biggest challenge to Roe right now comes from two
areas: the enactment of the 'partial-birth' abortion ban,
and the public's general failure to appreciate how much of a
difference it makes to a society to have abortion safe and
legal. So many women have grown up in an environment in
which abortion, however it may be stigmatized, has been
legal, that it is tnot surprising that there is not a more
lively awareness of what it would mean to dramatically
restrict women's abortion rights.
“Banning 'partial-birth' abortion, a non-scientific and
obviously polemical term, amounts to an attempt to win
politically what the Court will not grant legislatively. And
it is politics of the basest sort: engage people viscerally,
and they react in disgust. They do not think.
“The reality is that there is no significant moral
difference between post-first-trimester abortions (PFT
abortions) performed by D&X (the medical term that refers to
the procedure identified as 'partial birth' abortion) and
those performed by other methods. The choice of method is a
medical choice, one influenced by the specific details of
each case.
“What 'partial-birth' abortion opponents do NOT tell people
is that D&X is often chosen when the size of the fetal head
is so great that it could NOT pass through the birth
canal--in which case there is often no possibility of
meaningful life for the fetus, even if it were NOT aborted.
It makes no sense, morally or medically, to ban D&X while
allowing other PFT abortion techniques. Like many surgical
procedures, PTF abortion is not pretty, but the prettiness
of the surgical technique is not important. What matters is
the good being served. Anyone who has witnessed a heart
bypass procedure can tell you how grisly that procedure is.
But because it saves lives (or restores health), the seeming
barbarity does not matter to us.
“Critics of the ban on 'partial birth' abortion charge that
banning that technique is the first step down the path to
banning ALL PFT abortions, and ultimately overturning Roe.
One does not have to be an enthusiastic supporter of the Roe
decision to realize how pernicious this would be. Returning
abortion issues to the states--probably the best case
scenario one could hope for from the current Supreme
Court--would result in a severe truncation of women's
reproductive freedom.”
Prof. Davis can be reached at her office (909) 607-1695 or by email at
NAnn.Davis@pomona.edu.
Or read her
Faculty Profile. |
