What I Don't Like About the Court's Partial Birth Abortion Opinion

Now I haven't read the whole thing, I admit.

But I did read the NY Times article about it. Yeah I know the NY Times is known to have a liberal lean, but the author of the article I read didn't put these words in Justice Kennedy's mouth:

“Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child,” he said, adding: “It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child, a child assuming the human form.”

How eloquent. What lovely words. How true.

And, yet, how paternalistic. So what are you saying? We need to protect women from themselves? Yes, those poor, overly emotional, gentle, fragile creatures surely would f*ck themselves up if left to their own devices.

Yes, I know that this is a decision that some will come to regret. Knowing the mechanics of what they chose will hurt. The other method used for late term abortions is dismembering the baby while in utero. If a woman comes to regret her decision, she's going to find the mechanics of it disturbing no matter what.

Justice Kennedy, why'd you have to f*ckin ruin this? Couldn't you have left it as 'not medically necessary' and kept emotions and flowery crap out of it? You could have decided this just on the facts, yet you had to throw this stupid sentiment in…this sentiment that surely is going to be jumped on by pundits across the country and used liberally by those who oppose this legislation to point at you and it and call both sexist. Would they be out of line? You totally just put your own personality and beliefs before the law, at least that's what's going to be said. You could have just said that, according to Roe's own construction based on trimesters and the point of viability of a baby and the flat out cruelty of it, the state has a legitimate interest in intervening and banning this method of abortion.

Now you just f*ckin ruined it. Thanks a lot. I'm glad that children aren't going to be stabbed in the base of the neck and have their brains sucked out anymore just when they're on the cusp of legal personhood, but you would have done a lot more to protect them after you're dead and gone and can no longer wield flowery, emotional language if you had just stopped and stood on the facts.