Supreme Court bans PBA

[KevinTheOmnivore]

You frighten me sometimes, kahl.

On a technical point, the Supreme Court didn't ban anything. They simply upheld the Constitutionality of a law passed by Congress against a "practice" overwhelmingly rejected by most Americans.

As for how "ass backwards" our Supreme Court is--I think we should be careful about dismissing the Court for the sake of the whims of popular medicine. In the early 20th Century, a healthy portion of the medical community, and over 3/4 of the states, thought eugenic policies like criminal sterilizations made sense. Despite its popular usage, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected these procedures in 1942, dismissing their constitutionality.

Your real gripe here should be with Congress (including the hypocritical Democrats who voted for the PBA ban and then cried about this decision). And derrida, I think you make a fair point towards the tail end here. I think most folks have a different understanding of what this procedure actually is...I mean, who wants to crush a baby's skull on the way out? It sounds absolutely barbaric, or as Moynihan put it, it's like "infanticide." But to my understnading, it isn't really that simple, and yes, Congress limited the flexibility of abortion doctors () to keep the procedures as non-invasive as possible. But perhaps our I-Mockery residents could elaborate more on that.

[theapportioner]

My "ass-backwardness" comment isn't directed at SCOTUS decision itself, but Justice Kennedy's fatuous and obsolete comments on mother-child relationship, which IMO are abhorrent and irrelevant to the decision.

And look, medicine isn't what it was sixty years ago. After an era of Nazi doctors, Tuskegee, lobotomy, and a whole host of other sorry chapters, the profession is probably more vigilant than ever when it comes to averting issues of this kind. Not to mention, it is also now highly regulated (and I consider this a good thing generally). Many physicians and people working in public health are also at the forefront when it comes to exposing cases of torture, gross disparities in access to health care and treatment, deplorable practices of greed by the pharmaceutical industry, challenging the death penalty, etc.

Do these lapses in ethics still happen? Of course. However, IMO, we should also resist a government that ignores evidence-based medicine, benchtop scientific results, and most importantly, the basic human rights and needs of the patient in pursuing these silly crusades (see medical marijuana and the drug war generally, euthanasia, contraception, and yes, abortion). People who adopt a view on these matters should also take these considerations into account.

Edit for full disclosure: I am a part of the medical profession.