Perspective: When abortion is the issue, reason is a victim

The Food and Drug Administration's approval last week of the abortion pill RU-486 is sure to further inflame the abortion debate. The rhetoric will get uglier on both extremes and reasoned debate will be drowned out.

The majority of Americans have accepted the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Roe vs. Wade that a woman has a constitutional right to choose abortion before the fetus becomes viable. A majority also objects to the gruesome partial-birth abortion procedure and favors reasonable restrictions on abortion, including parental notification. But most of our politicians and abortion activists operate outside that consensus.

Here in St. Petersburg, the abortion issue is at the center of the controversy that threatens the future of Bayfront Medical Center, which stopped performing elective abortions when it joined a health care alliance that includes two Catholic hospitals. The city is suing Bayfront over the issue. Another lawsuit has been filed by outside groups, including the National Organization for Women and the American Civil Liberties Union. If either lawsuit succeeds, Bayfront will be forced to leave the alliance, leaving the financially stressed hospital that serves this area's poorest residents even more vulnerable. But when abortion is the issue, nothing else matters, not even medical care for the indigent.

You would think reasonable people could agree on some fundamental abortion questions, such as the 1994 federal prohibition on the execution of death-row inmates who are pregnant or a proposed law that would give a baby delivered alive during an abortion procedure all the protections of the law that any living person is entitled to. But if you think so, you would be wrong.

Al Gore, who is a champion of unrestricted abortion rights, was asked on NBC's Meet the Press a few weeks ago whether he supported the prohibition on the execution of pregnant federal prisoners. For most people, that would be a no-brainer. But Gore, who lives in fear of offending the abortion-rights lobby, stalled, saying he wasn't familiar with the law in question and needed time "to think about it."

What is there to think about? The execution of a pregnant prisoner is unthinkable. It's bad enough that we execute anyone. Gore's response to Tim Russert's question was remarkable, but his answers got even worse as reporters tried to follow up on the campaign trail.

At a July 17 news conference in Nashville, Gore said he would support delaying the execution of a pregnant inmate temporarily if she chose to have the child live. But in general, the vice president added, "the principle of a woman's right to choose governs in that case." Presumably, if a pregnant prisoner chose to share her execution with her fetus, that would be fine with Gore, who may well be the country's next president. In his mind, it's all about a woman's right to control her body. But the question was not about a woman's choice; it was about the state's choice.

In the real world, of course, states don't execute pregnant prisoners. We're not yet that barbaric. I know what some of you are thinking: A pregnant prisoner could choose to abort her fetus before being executed by lethal injection. So what's the difference? The fetus dies either way.

There's probably no point in asking Gore where he stands on the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, a bill introduced by Rep. Charles Canady, R-Fla., that would, as Congressional Quarterly reported, "prevent the killing of infants who are born alive accidentally or during an attempted abortion."

The bill cleared the House Judiciary Committee, but it may never become law. The abortion-rights lobby is working furiously to bury the legislation, calling it another sneak attack on a woman's right to choose an abortion. The bill says nothing about abortion procedures or restrictions. It seeks only to protect the life of any infant "completely expelled or extracted from the mother's body -- displaying any of the several specific signs of life: breathing, heartbeat and/or definite movements of voluntary muscles." Some abortions don't always go as planned, and the result is a live infant.

I find it incredible that anyone would argue that a baby who survives an abortion procedure does not have the right to live, if only for a few minutes or hours. According to Canady, his bill would write into federal law a principle that already exists in the laws of 41 states and the District of Columbia. There might be less concern about the intention of the legislation if it had not been introduced by Canady, a staunch opponent of abortion who also has sponsored bills to ban the partial-birth abortion procedure.

The state's legitimate interest in regulating abortion lies not with the procedures used but whether the fetus is viable. When there is a likelihood that a fetus could survive outside the womb, abortion becomes hard to distinguish from infanticide.

When a woman chooses to have an abortion, most people would agree the earlier she has it, the better. The RU-468 pill must be used in the first seven weeks of a pregnancy. If all abortions were performed at that early stage, there would be no need for a Born-Alive Infant Protection Act. Shouldn't reasonable people who oppose abortion welcome that?

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