Topic category:  Other/General

Abortion advocates prefer to refer to abortion as a medical procedure and to extol choice without focusing on each choice, in order to make abortion seem more palatable.

Like other businesses, the abortion business is dependent upon the law of supply and demand.

It is also dependent upon special legal protection (in the former of court-created constitutional protection for abortion) to make it available for virtually any reason and to restrict as fully as possible the power of the people's elected representatives to restrict abortion. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's dissenting opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart, the United States Supreme Court decision upholding the federal partial birth abortion, is notable for how alarmed Justice Ginsburg (a former ACLU counsel) professed to be while insisting that upholding the ban would not stop a single "fetus" (aka preborn baby) from being aborted (since there is another unprohibited abortion technique available).

The problem with Justice Ginsburg's insistence is that whether or not a pregnant woman has an abortion depends upon more than the availability of a medical procedure for the purpose. It also depends upon how abortion is perceived by each pregnant woman and the people, female and male, who might encourage or discourage her to allow her pregnancy to continue through delivery, as well as the state of abortion law.

Time will tell how significant the Carhart decision is.

I hope that its significance will be enormous, that Carhart is a harbinger of a United States Supreme Court decision that will do what Justice Ginsburg really finds “alarming”: reject judicial activism, return to constitutional fidelity and judicial restraint and overrule Roe v. Wade as a grievous judicial mistake.

The upholding of the federal partial-birth abortion ban reflected both judicial and public understanding of what partial-birth abortion (virtually infanticide) actually is: a late-term abortion in which the baby’s skull is punctured and her/his brains vacuumed out so her/his body can be extracted and disposed of (intact D&E).

With that generally appreciated, upholding the ban was predictable.

The key to reducing abortions (bad for the abortion business, of course)is educating the public about (1) abortion, (2) the gestation of a fetus and (3) abortion law.

With education,(1) abortions will be fewer, (2) abortion on demand will no longer be a constitutional wrong masquerading as a constitutional right, (3) public support for restricting and regulating abortion will be greater and (4) the people's elected representatives will set abortion policy instead of judicial activists and the abortion business.

Justice Ginsburg wrote that “nonintact D&E” is just as “brutal” as “intact D&E” (the euphemism for partial-birth abortion). If expectant women think about this, fewer will choose abortion.

Bad news for the abortion business, but good news for society.

The Ethics and Public Policy Center's Ed Whelan stated in a National Review Online Bench Memo: "After a brief education about what Roe v. Wade really means, public support for overturning Roe and restoring abortion policy to the democratic processes dramatically increases. That’s what a recent poll jointly commissioned by the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Judicial Confirmation Network shows.

On May 14, 2007, JCN's Wendy Long and EPPC's Ed Whelan issued this memo on the poll results:

"TO: Leaders of Pro-Life, Pro-Family, and Judicial Restraint Groups

"FROM: Wendy Long, Judicial Confirmation Network; Ed Whelan, Ethics and Public Policy Center

"SUBJECT: Nationwide Education Campaign on Roe v. Wade

"Now is the time for a fact-driven discussion about Roe v. Wade. We need your help to launch an immediate nationwide education campaign about Roe v. Wade: what it has really done to the law for the past 34 years, and what overturning it will mean. For three decades, the abortion industry and other advocates of abortion have misled the public and misrepresented what most Americans really believe about abortion.

"To lay the groundwork, the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Judicial Confirmation Network recently commissioned the highly respected national public-affairs research firm Ayres, McHenry & Associates to conduct a national survey of registered voters on abortion issues.

"We just got the results. They are both revealing and encouraging. The survey first asked participants whether they would like the Supreme Court to overturn its Roe v. Wade ruling. It then asked them whether they believed that abortion should be legal or illegal in each of twelve circumstances. The surveyor then briefly informed the participants (1) that Roe prohibits states from restricting abortion during the first six months of pregnancy in any of those circumstances, and (2) that if Roe were overturned states could make abortion policies that would permit abortion for some reasons and bar it for others. Participants were then asked again whether they would like the Supreme Court to overturn Roe.

"With even this brief education about what Roe really means, public opinion on overturning Roe swung a full 16 points in the direction favoring the reversal of Roe: from 55 to 34 percent against overturning Roe to 48 to 43 percent against. In the face of more than three decades of media misrepresentation about what Roe means and what overturning it would mean, this swing is very striking. Compared to the brief comments of an anonymous surveyor, consider what a sustained public education campaign on these matters could achieve. (It's also worth noting that the survey understated how radical the Roe regime is, as the surveyors avoided the complication of explaining that the "health" exception is so expansive that abortion is, for all practical purposes, available for any reason through all nine months of pregnancy.)

"Here are some other highlights:

1. Republicans initially favored the overturning of Roe by 60 to 32 percent. By the end of the survey, that already whopping margin had increased to 67 to 29 percent.

2. The swing among Democratic voters was especially marked: 26 points in the direction of favoring a reversal of Roe.

3. Voters in red states (Democrats, Republicans, and Independents) initially opposed the overturning of Roe by 50 to 39 percent. By the end of the survey, they favored the overturning of Roe by 47 to 44 percent.

4. A substantial majority of Americans well in excess of 60 % believe that abortion should be illegal in the very circumstances that actually account for well over 90 % of this country's abortions.

"For all who care about pro-family and pro-life issues, as well as the proper role of the Supreme Court in our system of government, it is imperative that the American people understand how extreme Roe really is. It is equally imperative that they learn that the reversal of Roe would merely restore to the American people their ability to make abortion policies through their elected representatives, instead of having abortion law made by unelected judges.

"We believe this is the perfect moment in the wake of the Gonzales v. Carhart partial-birth abortion decision, and while the abortion issue is center stage in the presidential campaign to implement a comprehensive national education campaign about Roe. To that end, we would like to invite you to join a call of national pro-life, pro-family, and judicial restraint leaders. Details of that call will follow."

Hopefully, Justice Ginsburg was wrong about Carhart not saving anyone and right to be alarmed.

Michael J. Gaynor

Biography - Michael J. Gaynor

Michael J. Gaynor has been practicing law in New York since 1973. A former partner at Fulton, Duncombe & Rowe and Gaynor & Bass, he is a solo practitioner admitted to practice in New York state and federal courts and an Association of the Bar of the City of New York member.

Gaynor graduated magna cum laude, with Honors in Social Science, from Hofstra University's New College, and received his J.D. degree from St. John's Law School, where he won the American Jurisprudence Award in Evidence and served as an editor of the Law Review and the St. Thomas More Institute for Legal Research. He wrote on the Pentagon Papers case for the Review and obscenity law for The Catholic Lawyer and edited the Law Review's commentary on significant developments in New York law.

The day after graduating, Gaynor joined the Fulton firm, where he focused on litigation and corporate law. In 1997 Gaynor and Emily Bass formed Gaynor & Bass and then conducted a general legal practice, emphasizing litigation, and represented corporations, individuals and a New York City labor union. Notably, Gaynor & Bass prevailed in the Second Circuit in a seminal copyright infringement case, Tasini v. New York Times, against newspaper and magazine publishers and Lexis-Nexis. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed, 7 to 2, holding that the copyrights of freelance writers had been infringed when their work was put online without permission or compensation.

Gaynor currently contributes regularly to www.MichNews.com, www.RenewAmerica.com, www.WebCommentary.com, www.PostChronicle.com and www.therealitycheck.org and has contributed to many other websites. He has written extensively on political and religious issues, notably the Terry Schiavo case, the Duke "no rape" case, ACORN and canon law, and appeared as a guest on television and radio. He was acknowledged in Until Proven Innocent, by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson, and Culture of Corruption, by Michelle Malkin. He appeared on "Your World With Cavuto" to promote an eBay boycott that he initiated and "The World Over With Raymond Arroyo" (EWTN) to discuss the legal implications of the Schiavo case. On October 22, 2008, Gaynor was the first to report that The New York Times had killed an Obama/ACORN expose on which a Times reporter had been working with ACORN whistleblower Anita MonCrief.

Gaynor's email address is gaynormike@aol.com.