I don’t have much to offer on the murder of Tiller, and the fierce re-kindling of the debate over abortion that mostly simmers and smolders in our country. It’s not that I don’t have a bevy of feelings on the matter, because I most certainly do. It’s just that I don’t have anything that’s really as articulate and coherent as, for example, this post by John Cole.  I’m no expert on the subject of abortion, not even the law of it in our country, but I do know that though some anti-abortion activists attempt to portray it as something else, the decision to have an abortion is frequently a difficult and harrowing choice for a woman. And no more so than with a late-term abortion, where a woman may be asked to choose either to have an abortion or give birth to a horribly disabled child, or risk her own physical or mental health to bring a pregnancy to term. According to this account, which is worth excerpting at length, a woman facing such a difficult choice could find no better a friend than Dr. Tiller:

One woman described her elation at being pregnant and how the possibility of motherhood offered a glimmer of hope through several family deaths. Then she found out her fetus had severe spinal and cerebral deformities. “I laid on the table crying and knowing in my heart at that point my son was not going to make it,” she wrote. At almost 23 weeks pregnant, she was too far along for an abortion in her own state, and so, like many women in her situation, she made the anguished pilgrimage to Wichita.

Writing five weeks after her abortion, she said, “I hate that my son is gone. I hate that I had to make the decision to end his life. I hate that my womb and my arms are empty. But I am strengthened in the fact that I made my decision by focusing on him and what was best for him. I am eternally grateful to the wonderful people that guided me through this horrible experience with compassion, love, and understanding.”

Her gratitude toward Tiller and his staff is not unique. Ayliea Holl, the administrator of the site, saw a different doctor for her own abortion, but she’s met many of Tiller’s patients. “Every single one of them received the kindest, most caring and compassionate, the best health care that they could get,” she says. “Dr. Tiller was extremely compassionate. He was so helpful to so many women.”

After his murder, it’s not clear who will take his place. In the mainstream media, Tiller is frequently described as “controversial.” But in the tight-knit world of abortion providers and pro-choice activists, he was often called a saint, because he took on the hardest cases, whether they could pay or not, and was incredibly tender with his patients. “His clinic was known for really treating women with extraordinary decency and respect,” says Carol Joffe, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Davis, and one of the country’s foremost experts on abortion. They sent him volumes worth of letters of effusive and urgent thanks.

Tiller’s death is an incalculable loss to women’s health care. There are two other clinics that do late-term abortions, but neither are known for taking patients regardless of their ability to pay or for ministering so comprehensively to their emotional needs. Tiller’s murder leaves a void that could imperil women across the country.

[...]

Bill Harrison, an abortion provider in Arkansas, referred hundreds of patients to Tiller over the years. “To do what George does is like doing major cancer surgery,” he says. “It’s a subspecialty all its own. It took a real organization to do it safely and effectively and cheaply like he did it.” Over the years, Harrison had 20 or 30 patients who were so poor that he had to give them money for gasoline to get to Wichita. “I would call him and tell him about the patients, and he would say, ‘Send them up,’” he says. “Obviously if they couldn’t pay for gasoline, they couldn’t pay for anything, and he did the abortions anyway.”

Tiller’s murderer believed-like many others-that Tiller himself was a murderer of babies, that he performed abortions “on demand” for money. But Tiller was the last hope for many desperate women, and he was their hope because he believed in what he was doing, believed in helping women who faced extraordinarily difficult decisions the likes of which you and I will never face. He did it even though he knew with certainty that it put his own life at risk. Now, it remains unclear who these women will turn to for the compassion they need to help them make a choice they’d hoped never to make. Yes, the loss of Dr. Tiller is incalculable.

Stuff you should be reading this morning:

1. Iraq: another article on the gradual upswing in attacks, and the largely unabated violence in one of the last bastion’s of the insurgency, Diyala Province.

2. Congressional watchdogs lament the lack of transparency and oversight regarding the handout of TARP funds. Economist Joseph Stiglitz condemn’s the Obama administration’s approach to the crisis on Wall Street, characterizing it as “ersatz capitalism, the privatizing of gains and the socializing of losses.” Paul Krugman’s saying the same, of course.

3. In a surprise move, AG Holder dismiss the Stevens indictment and says there will be no new trial. The Stevens conviction has fallen apart in the face of allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.

4. The World Health Organization warns of an impending “explosion” in cases of drug-resistant tuberculosis.

5. Michael Gerson at the Washington Post says Obama is losing Catholics over the issue of abortion, but unsurprisingly fails to note that American Catholics are as divided on the issue of abortion as non-catholics. As is typical among media pundits (especially those of the conservative ilk) an entire group is said to be represented by it’s conservative members.

6. ADP, a payroll processor, reports that 724,000 jobs were lost in March.

7. The Economist opens it’s new theme park, Econoland (h/t Josh Berthume.) All the horror of the modern world, only funnier.

8. In honor of the day, the top 10 greatest April Fools pranks in modern history.

9. The tabletop wargame Battletech celebrates it’s 25th anniversary. Not that that’s anything special to us, ahem.

AG Eric Holder has announced the Justice Department will end raids on state-approved dispensaries for medical marijuana

The new policy represents a significant turnabout for the federal government. During the Bush administration, DEA agents shut down 30 to 40 marijuana dispensaries, the agency said…

“Holder’s statement marks a dramatic shift in U.S. drug policy and is a major victory for the 72 million Americans who reside in states where the use of medical cannabis is legal,” said Paul Armentano, deputy director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said in a statement.

Thirteen states allow the cultivation, sale and use of medical marijuana.

Armentano said the shift would add momentum to campaigns in states that are considering their own medical marijuana laws. The New Jersey Senate approved such a bill Monday, and Gov. Jon Corzine said he would sign it if it cleared the state Assembly.

Also, President Obama plans to repeal a Bush-era abortion rule:

President Barack Obama plans to repeal a Bush administration rule that has become a flash point in the debate over a doctor’s right not to participate in abortions. The regulation, instituted in the last days of the Bush administration, strengthened job protections for doctors and nurses who refuse to provide a medical service because of moral qualms…

Federal law has long forbidden discrimination against health care professionals who refuse to perform abortions or provide referrals for them on religious or moral grounds. The Obama administration supports those laws, said the HHS official.

The Bush administration’s rule adds a requirement that institutions that get federal money certify their compliance with laws protecting the rights of moral objectors. It was intended to block the flow of federal funds to hospitals and other institutions that ignore those rights.

But the Obama administration was concerned that the Bush regulation went too far and could also be used to refuse birth control, family planning services and counseling for vaccines and transfusions.

The White House released a statement saying that Obama supports a “carefully crafted” conscience clause — not Bush’s version.

“He believes this issue requires a balance between the rights of providers and the health of women and their families, a balance that the last-minute Bush rule appears to upset,” the statement said.

The administration will review comments from the public before making a final decision. Options range from repealing the regulation to writing a new one with a narrower scope.

It’s good to have adults in charge again.

Not only has the rate fallen but the increased use of RU-486 for early abortions has made the procedure more widely available. The goal of the anti-abortion movement, short of over-turning Roe v. Wade has been to attack abortion availability, making it considerably more difficult for poorer women or women living in rural areas to get access to the procedure. But RU-486 can be prescribed by a general practitioner, thus eliminating the necessity of visiting an abortion clinic that can be difficult to get to, might targeted by anti-abortion activists and is certainly more draining emotionally and physically for a woman. This is good news.

Once again, empirical evidence proves conservative arguments completely wrong:

A comprehensive global study of abortion has concluded that abortion rates are similar in countries where it is legal and those where it is not, suggesting that outlawing the procedure does little to deter women seeking it.

Moreover, the researchers found that abortion was safe in countries where it was legal, but dangerous in countries where it was outlawed and performed clandestinely. Globally, abortion accounts for 13 percent of women’s deaths during pregnancy and childbirth, and there are 31 abortions for every 100 live births, the study said.

The results of the study, a collaboration between scientists from the World Health Organization in Geneva and the Guttmacher Institute in New York, a reproductive rights group, are being published Friday in the journal Lancet.

“We now have a global picture of induced abortion in the world, covering both countries where it is legal and countries where laws are very restrictive,” Dr. Paul Van Look, director of the W.H.O. Department of Reproductive Health and Research, said in a telephone interview. “What we see is that the law does not influence a woman’s decision to have an abortion. If there’s an unplanned pregnancy, it does not matter if the law is restrictive or liberal.”

But the legal status of abortion did greatly affect the dangers involved, the researchers said. “Generally, where abortion is legal it will be provided in a safe manner,” Dr. Van Look said. “And the opposite is also true: where it is illegal, it is likely to be unsafe, performed under unsafe conditions by poorly trained providers.”

The data also suggested that the best way to reduce abortion rates was not to make abortion illegal but to make contraception more widely available, said Sharon Camp, chief executive of the Guttmacher Institute.

The study also shows abortions are declining worldwide due to wider use of birth control practices, but right-wingers want more abstinence-only education (like we have here in Texas – the state with the highest teen pregnancy rate).

The number of abortions annually fell to under 42 million from 46 million between 1995 and 2003, with rates decreasing most significantly in Eastern Europe, said the report from the Guttmacher Institute and the World Health Organization.

The number of abortions fell most in developed countries where it is legal compared to poorer countries where it is largely banned and considered unsafe, the researchers said…

The report said an estimated 20 million unsafe abortions occurred in 2003, 97 percent of them in developing regions and places where the procedure is banned.

“Each year, about 70,000 women die due to unsafe abortion and an additional five million suffer permanent or temporary disability,” Paul Van Look, director of the WHO’s department of reproductive health and research, said in a statement.

So basically, if “pro-lifers” are really interested in reducing abortion and upholding the “sanctity of life,” they’ll make sure it’s safe and legal (so women don’t die), and rare by also supporting increased access to contraceptives and sex education (which reduced unwanted pregnancies).

Many people believe-quite reasonably-that the availability is determined by the law on abortion, and precedential Supreme Court decisions like Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Casey and now Gonzales v. Carhart. But the reality is that foes of abortion have waged an underground campaign aimed at circumventing a woman’s right to have an abortion by attacking the availability of abortions in general. This article in the LA Times discusses just one example of this phenomenon:

Thousands of women have safely ended pregnancies at this clinic since it opened in 1987. Conservative lawmakers in Missouri say abortion patients deserve better.

They have enacted the most far-reaching regulations in the nation — dictating the physical layout, staffing and record-keeping policies of any facility that performs five or more abortions a month, including private doctors’ offices that regularly prescribe the abortion pill.

The law, which a federal judge is to review today, would force the immediate closure of at least two of Missouri’s three abortion clinics, plus a private medical practice near St. Louis run by a doctor who offers first-trimester terminations in his office. Those facilities would need extensive renovations to comply with the law; the requirements could include widening hallways, raising ceilings, installing locker rooms, rerouting plumbing, and creating surgical suites stocked with emergency resuscitation equipment, even when no surgery is performed on-site.

“We’re applying the same standards of healthcare to abortion clinics as we are to other medical facilities,” said Pam Fichter, development director of Missouri Right to Life.

So ostensibly, the purpose of this bill is to make abortion safer. What it will actually do is make an abortion much more difficult to obtain. This is the bill’s purpose of course, as Gov. Matt Blunt admitted when he said the bill was “one of the strongest pieces of pro-life legislation in Missouri history” as he was signing it in a Baptist church. As the article explains, this new strategy may prove to the means by which anti-abortion activists attack abortion in other states as well. Not that the underground campaign hasn’t already done it’s work; note above that Missouri has only three clinics that provide an abortion in the whole state. Three, in a state in a country where a woman is supposedly guaranteed the right to choose. Thus, a woman may choose an abortion…she just may not be able to get one.

Make no mistake, the attack on availability is the single greatest threat to the right of a woman to have an abortion in this country today, and pro-choicers are quite simply losing the battle.

The House voted 355-69 on Thursday to adopt a proposal, as part of a $34.2 billion bill that funds State Department operations and foreign aid, to revive the Iraq Study Group.

The House also voted 223-201 to reverse a ban on contraception aid to groups overseas that offer abortions in an effort to overturn Bush’s ban via executive order. Bush will veto the measure and conservatives in the House will uphold it.

Lawmakers from both parties proposed opening up agriculture exports to Cuba and ending travel restrictions, putting them at odds with a White House adamantly opposed to easing a half-century-old embargo.

On the Senate side, progress on the energy bill was a mixed bag. The Senate voted to increase fuel economy standards to 35 miles per gallon for cars and SUVs, the first significant boost demanded of automakers in nearly 20 years. The agreement was announced at a news conference and then quickly adopted by the Senate without a roll call vote. However, the chamber refused to limit debate on a $32.1 billion tax package proposed by the Finance Committee that would roll back tax cuts for oil and gas companies in favor of renewable energy sources, like the bill the House passed earlier in the year. However, there is still hope for the bill to come back and be passed. Democrats got enough Republican support they were only three votes down from the 60 votes needed. Sen. Boxer was out of town, and Sen. Reid only voted against it as a procedural move so he can bring it back up later when potentially Sen. Johnson will be back in the Senate after having recovered from his stroke earlier in the year. Thus, they would have the three votes needed for passage.

The Senate Judiciary Committee continued to ramp up its pressure on the White House by authorizing Chairman Patrick Leahy to subpoena documents relating to the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. Republican Sens. Hatch, Grassley, and ranking member Specter joined all Democrats on the panel in subpoenaing both the Executive Office of the President and the Department of Justice for documents relating to the authorization of and legal justification for the wiretapping program.

UPDATE:

According to the AP, the Senate passed an energy bill late Thursday that includes an increase in automobile fuel economy, new laws against energy price-gouging and a requirement for huge increases in the production of ethanol.

“Shortly before midnight, senators voted 62-32 to cut off debate, and followed by passing the bill 65-27. The measure now awaits action by the House, which is expected to take it up next week. But attempts to combine the two bills and send legislation to President Bush probably won’t be possible until later this year.”

UPDATE II:

On Friday, the House voted to prohibit any aid to Saudi Arabia as lawmakers “accused the close ally of religious intolerance and bankrolling terrorist organizations,” according to the AP. The prohibition was attached to a foreign aid funding bill for next year that has not yet been debated by the Senate. It also faces a veto threat from the White House.

Though I could write about this in the sense of right-wingers caring more about already-discarded embryos (stem cell research) than the actual killing of infants (the Israeli offensive on Lebanon), I want to bring up another “pro-life” issue.

Firstly, a new poll shows that South Dakota voters are leaning against supporting the abortion ban that was passed by lawmakers earlier this year. It was to become law on July 1, but opponents gathered enough signatures to delay it and to let voters decide in November whether the ban should take effect. If voters reject the abortion ban at the ballot box, they would effectively repeal it. The statewide survey of 800 registered voters found 47 percent opposed the strict ban, while 39 percent favored it.

This is certainly good news and will be a tremendous setback for the anti-choice lobby. However, in the same poll, 59% of respondents said they’d support the ban if exceptions were in place for unwanted pregnancies due to rape or incest. So, the issue for many is not the restriction of abortion rights for women, but that the only exception is for the life of the mother and not these other sympathetic cases.

Ok, here’s my thing. While I respect the “pro-life” side in the abortion debate – and even agree with them on partial-birth abortion (as long as their is a medical exception) and parental notification (as long as there’s a judicial recourse for those girls who have been raped by a relative) – and I certainly appreciate being sympathetic to those women who had pregnancy forced upon them by vile men, is there really an intellectual consistency here?

Look, if you *truly* believe abortion is murder, if you truly believe it is the killing of an innocent life, you can’t support it no matter what the circumstances (except “life of the mother” where it’s hard to say whose life is more important, though I know Catholic doctrine would hold that the woman is dying a natural death, and the baby, murder). Though in cases of rape and incest it may be more understandable to a pro-life person, you still can’t support the destruction of an innocent life. If we are being honest, to do so is to say that the real issue is the sexual history of the woman. If she wanted to have sex and got pregnancy, well she has to bear the child. If she was raped, well you can kill it. No, that doesn’t make any sense.

And given that many who are opposed to abortion adrently support the death penalty, they should support the death penalty for the women and doctors involved in any abortion right? I mean, is it not murder? Yet many only favor a fine or small prison sentence. I do not mean to be harsh or overly cynical, and obviously I don’t believe any of this myself, but would this not be more logically consistent?

While I would certainly not argue for anyone to become more ideologically extreme here, and it’s obvious many do honestly hold this “pro-life” view, I would ask them to consider whether they are looking more at the nature of the woman’s sexuality than protecting life. While there is also intellectual dishonesty on the pro-choice/left in regards to some of these issues (and many who would make the “slippery slope” argument from the other end), at least there are some well-thought out positions on why it’s acceptable to be pro-choice up to a certain point (including my personal favorite discussion on the abortion issue by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan).

But whatever side we are on here, let’s just be honest with what we really believe and why we believe it.

A few years ago here in Denton, Texas (where I attend the University of North Texas), a young woman who had been raped was denied the morning-pill at a local CVS pharmacy by a pharmacist who cited his religious convictions in opposition to dispensing the medication. As you can imagine, this incident started quite a stir in the community and the state, and the above-linked article brings up several examples and the controversy over – how the article frames it – “religious freedom vs. patients’ rights.”

Certainly seen in this view it is a complicated matter. No one wants to force people to do what they are opposed to, especially out of religious conviction, but at the same time, professionals have a professional duty and responsibility to their patients. And how far can it be taken anyway before it’s completely unnacceptable? Many are sympathetic to Christian pro-lifers who don’t want to be involved in anyway with abortion, but what if it was a scientologist who didn’t want to dispense anti-depressants? Furthermore, many would argue these patients can simply be helped by other people, but as the article points out, the people who would deny them can also rationalize not referring them to other health professionals who wouldn’t.

I have to say my personal feelings lean towards that of the side that says maybe if you’re in a position where you don’t feel you can discharge your professional responsibilites you shouldn’t take them on in the first place. But what this article overlooks is the actual legal situation.

Currently, it’s not illegal not to dispense the morning-after pill, etc. I don’t think anyone’s in favor of making it so either. But what some in the legislature here in Texas, and in other states, pushed for was a law that would have prohibited CVS from letting go the pharmacist that refused the rape victim the morning-after pill.

Now while I would never want anyone to be forced into participate in something they thought was morally wrong, I don’t think they should be given special protection for doing so either. If CVS felt that they needed to replace this pharmacist, they should’t be prevented from doing so. I think it’s easy to see how whether their actions were understandable or not, that’s unreasonable, and probably why enough conservatives opposed the Texas bill for it not to pass.

What pharmacies and hospitals do need to do is make sure they come up with policies to deal with these types of situations. I would hope some reasonable solutions can be found.

According to a new Zogby poll, “Americans are pro-life across the board on numerous abortion-related issues… Americans support every pro-life law considered on the state and national level and believe life begins at conception.”

It’s clear that though a consistent majority of Americans do not favor the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade as many conservatives do, many or most take a “pro-life” stance on many or most abortion-related issues.

In this highly charged atmosphere over abortion, with South Dakota banning most abortions and the confirmation battles of two new Supreme Court justicies, the poll found that pro-abortion Democrats who want to use the abortion issue to gain votes will have a hard time.

Pollster John Zogby noted that “Democrats will have trouble gaining a political advantage by using the emotionally charged issue of abortion.”

Indeed, and while the Democrats should – and rightfully – remain the pro-choice party, it is becoming clear that Democrats will have to find a way to retake the issue or it will continue to be a liability in much of the country.

Luckily, according to The Hill, Democrats in the Senate are backing what they hope to be a way to do just that.

The Senate Democratic leadership says it has found a wedge issue to strengthen the party’s position on abortion rights… legislation expanding access to contraceptives and sex education, which polls show a majority of Americans support but which Democrats are betting will be difficult for social conservatives in the Republican base to accept.

The bill is called the Prevention First Act and has over 20 Democratic co-sponsors. The article says polls show an overwhelming majority support such a plan, even many pro-lifers. But this would force conservative Republicans to have to go on record about it, which could hurt them with moderates or their conservative base depending how they vote.

The bill would prohibit group health plans from excluding contraceptive drugs, devices and outpatient services if they cover the cost of other prescription drugs and outpatient services. It would also require the secretary of health and human services to disseminate information on emergency contraception to healthcare providers and require hospitals receiving federal money to provide emergency contraception to victims of sexual assault.

The bill would also mandate that federally funded programs provide information about contraceptives that is medically accurate and includes data on health benefits and failure rates.

This sounds like a good start at least. William Saletan makes a good case for such a stategy in his article “Life After Roe.” Hillary Clinton and our U.S. Senate candidate here in Texas, Barbara Radnofsky, call it “target-zero” abortion, taking Bill Clinton’s “safe, legal, and rare” meme to an even more mass-appealing level.

Unfortunately, many activists on the left reject the strategy as I witnessed at UNT when Sarah Weddington (the lawyer who succesfully argued Roe) came to speak and several of those who asked questions took the oppurtunity to attack the Democrats’ perceived acquiescence on the issue. I understand and sympathize with their frustration, but it’s not productive. And it won’t help them get what they want, which is continued legal access to abortion.

As I said, Democrats must remain the party that stands for the right to choose. However, we must also be the party that has its own strategy for making abortion less common, or rather, for making it as least common as possible. I think we can all agree, no matter what side of the debate we are on, that is a worthy goal.