Semantic Absurdity and the Carhart Abortion Case

Dateline 4/26/00

Two columnists at Brown Daily Herald certainly go a long way to illustrate how simple semantics can be used to obfuscate Steinberg v. Carhart, the Partial Birth Abortion case to be decided by the Supreme Court. Tony Charuvastra & Jen Swedish lament:

The law makes criminal "an abortion procedure in which the person performing the abortion partially delivers vaginally a living unborn child before killing the unborn child and completing the delivery."

Charuvastra and Swedish then go on to claim -- I swear I am not making this up -- "statutes such as the Nebraska law place a woman’s vagina under the jurisdiction and control of the state, while curiously leaving the uterus alone." They further complain that "moral distinctions based on anatomic geography" are "perfidious."

For the full rant, visit Criminalizing the Vagina.

There are so many flaws in this piece that I'm tempted to dismiss it as too silly to waste my time on. However, evidently some people are paying attention to the likes of Charuvastra and Swedish, so I'll address the three main absurdities.

First is their claim that the law, by distinguishing that it applies to fetuses delivered "vaginally," makes it apply to fetuses contained in the vagina. Anybody who has ever looked at a medical record or a bill from childbirth will notice that all births are denoted either as "vaginal" or "cesarian." By indicating that the law applies to fetuses being delivered "vaginally," the law does not apply to fetuses while in the vagina. It merely distinguishes between a vaginal extraction abortion and a hysterotomy -- removing the living fetus through an abdominal incision. Carhart could grab all the fetuses he wanted to by the head, drag their little heads past the cervix and into the vagina, and poke his scissors into the tops of their heads and suck out their brains through the hole, and be in keeping with the law. Likewise he could do an abdominal incision and strangle the fetus in the uterus before extracting it. But when you drag a baby out vaginally feet-first, the bulk of the baby's body is going to be outside the birth canal, hanging toward the pan catching the blood, by the time he has been pulled out far enough for the abortionist to get at his head.

Now, admittedly the law does leave a bizarre loophole in that it remains legal to kill a baby while performing a c-section. But then, I would wager that very few women want their babies dead badly enough to consent to being sliced open to get at them just to kill them intact.

The second absurdity of Charuvastra and Swedish is their claim that the law "criminalizes the vagina." This conjures images of cops hauling women to prison simply for having vaginas. Do let's be serious here. Where in the law do these sages detect any language that would render it illegal to have a vagina?

The third (but far from final) absurdity is the claim that "moral distinctions based on anatomic geography" are "perfidious." Excuse me? Isn't the whole "right" to abortion based on making a moral distinction based on anatomic geography? According to Roe, if a fetus is in the mother's body, it's a thing. If it's in her arms, it's a person. Roe is a textbook case of making moral distinction based on anatomic geography. Our friends here are sawing off the very limb upon which they sit. They had best remember that it is the prochoice movement that holds that the value of the fetus is based on its location. They shouldn't then throw tantrums when some of us want to more clearly distinguish exactly where, in the geography of anatomy, the lump of valueless and formless tissue becomes a person protected by law.

Previous Articles

For more on Carhart and Partial Birth Abortion:
Partial Birth Abortion
Partial Birth Abortion Lies

Like this link graphic? Click here to learn how to add it to your web page.

View the Cemetery of Choice Calendar