I suspect few high school teachers have had the experience of seeing their students break into applause at the news of a Supreme Court decision. I did on April 19, the day after the announcement of the Court's ruling in Gonzales v. Carhart. With that decision, the procedure commonly known as partial birth abortion became illegal in the United States.
Don't get me wrong. My students could not be characterized as a group of staunch pro-life advocates. Truth be told, most of them, when asked, will tell you that abortion should be legal. Even the ones who say they would not personally choose to have an abortion are unwilling to deny other people the right to choose one.
In a society where tolerance is the most important virtue (and sometimes the only one), the only moral outrage many of them are willing to express is against the suggestion that we can make objective moral judgments about the choices that someone else makes.
But for partial birth abortion, they've been willing to make an exception.
During our unit on abortion (one part of an entire year of eleventh grade Religion class dedicated to the topic of morality), I describe to my students the various methods of abortion. My research for this segment is intentionally drawn from objective medical and explicitly "pro-choice" resources, in order to avoid the criticism that I present the information so as to intentionally make abortion sound horrible.
The students' response to learning about partial birth abortion is always a strong one. Even the most jaded, pro-choice students are rattled by the reality of partial birth abortion. Almost all students find it almost incomprehensible that the procedure could be legal in our nation.
That's because it's a grisly procedure and never done for medical reasons. No mother's life or health is saved by partial birth abortion. No teen is spared the humiliation of pregnancy, no woman able to avoid carrying an unwanted baby in her womb throughout a long pregnancy, by partial birth abortion.
Not even the dry, legal, morally neutral language of the United States Supreme Court is able to veil the horror of partial birth abortion (or, you will notice, that of any other abortion for that matter). The April 18 ruling, referring to partial birth abortion as "intact D&E," describes it in this way:
[In most abortion procedures,] [t]he fetus is usually ripped apart as it is removed, and the doctor may take 10 to 15 passes to remove it in its entirety…. [I]n intact D&E a doctor extracts the fetus intact or largely intact with only a few passes, pulling out its entire body instead of ripping it apart. In order to allow the head to pass through the cervix, the doctor typically pierces or crushes the skull.
That's why Congress was able to pass, with bipartisan support, several bans on partial birth abortion in the 1990's. But President Bill Clinton vetoed every one.
That's also why, given Clinton's vetoes, some states passed bans on the procedure around the same time. But in 2000, in Stenberg v. Carhart, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that to ban partial birth abortion was unconstitutional.
To be fair, the Court's ruling was consistent. If U.S. abortion law makes sense, so does legal access to partial birth abortion. The editors of National Review put it well: "There is indeed something irrational about concluding that a method of killing a seven-month-old fetus should depend on the location of his foot."
In 2003, despite the Court's ruling, Congress passed another partial birth abortion ban, and President George W. Bush did not veto it. This provided a bit of contradiction in U.S. law. The Supreme Court had said you can't ban it, and then Congress banned it.
Last year, the Court agreed to take another look at their 2000 ruling, and the result was the April 18 Gonzales v. Carhart decision. Partial birth abortion is now illegal in the United States of America.
I'll tell you one more thing about high school students, even in a Catholic school. It's sometimes difficult to get them to quiet themselves and be attentive to even a brief moment of prayer at the beginning of a class session.
On April 19, I opened class by telling them about the Supreme Court's decision. After the applause and some discussion, I suggested a moment of prayer that included thanksgiving to God for the ruling. I saw several students nod at the idea. What followed was one of the most cooperative moments of prayer I have had all year.
It's a prayer we should all offer this day. There is still far to go in the struggle for the full recognition of the right to life of all persons in America. Still, a significant victory has been won.
