Prometheus 6

He fails, subtlely.

If abortion were returned to the democratic process, this landscape would change dramatically. Arguments about whether and how to restrict abortions in the second trimester — as many advanced democracies already do – would replace protests over the scope of third-trimester medical exemptions.

Abortions are already subject to the democratic process, and the outcome is not good.

Recognizing that strong Democratic majorities and the election of Barack Obama as president make it increasingly unlikely that federal laws will be tightened or Roe v. Wade overturned, opponents are pressing legislators to make abortion more difficult to obtain and, they hope, harder to accept.

Rules requiring that a woman be offered the chance to view a sonogram are designed to make her think again. Laws imposing a waiting period after a first visit to a provider have the added effect of raising the obstacles and the costs, especially for poor and working-class women, who are the ones most likely to have an unintended pregnancy.

In states from South Dakota to Texas where the fights are waged, supporters of a woman's right to abortion feel increasingly embattled. Some doctors and clinic personnel feel threatened, particularly since last week's slaying in Kansas of physician George Tiller, the nation's best-known abortion provider. Others say they simply feel beleaguered.

"The states are the battlegrounds and certainly the testing grounds of new kinds of restrictions," said Gretchen Borchelt, senior counsel at the National Women's Law Center, which defends abortion rights. "State legislatures can be more creative in what they're trying to push and see what works."

"We tried every which way, and we were successful in the state way," said Terri Herring, head of Mississippi's Pro-Life America Network. She calls ever-stricter regulations a matter of common sense and creative strategy.

And it's not like the anti-abortion folk have that much respect for the law. They spent years trying to frame Dr. Tiller, only to have the most recent charges against him dismissed in 45 minutes. And we know what the response to that was...

Under current law, if you want to restrict abortion, post-viability procedures are the only kind you’re allowed to even regulate.

Well, no...you can regulate pre-access procedures and make them too difficult to execute.

This city of 358,000 people, once the focal point of protests because of four abortion clinics — most significantly Dr. Tiller’s, which provided rare late-term abortions — last week had no abortion facility open for business, no target in chief, no immediate reason for this network of anti-abortion forces to be based here.

I like reasonable editorials

Unfortunately, when they have no grounding in physical reality, they cannot be reasonable.