P. O. Box 22100, Lexington, KY  40522

Phone: 859-255-5400

Special to Kentucky Community Papers

The Three-Legged Abortion Mantra and Informed Consent

What happened to the "safe" and the "rare" in "safe, legal and rare"?

by Crystal Chapman

REMEMBER THE CLINTONIA CATCH PHRASE:  “We must keep abortion safe, legal and rare?”  That little triplet rang in my ears this past week as I read an Associated Press story that said, “Abortions at two Kentucky clinics decreased dramatically after Kentucky’s ‘informed consent’ law took effect 11 months ago, the clinic’s administrator Dona Wells said.

”Legislation approved by a Senate committee…might drive the numbers even lower, supporters of legal abortion said.”

Wells, executive director at EMW Women’s Surgical Center in Louisville, went on to lament that there were only 3,057 abortions performed in the Louisville clinic last year, down from 3,828 the previous year.  Abortions are also down at EMW’s Lexington clinic since the law was instituted, Wells said.

Informed Consent, sponsored by Sen. Katie Stine, R-Ft. Thomas, passed the General Assembly in 1998.  It requires that women be counseled by a physician concerning health risks associated with abortion procedures, that they be given information about the gestational status of their unborn baby, and that they maintain a 24-hour waiting period between the time of counseling and the abortion procedure itself.

Abortion advocates’ objected when Stine introduced a bill this session to specify that the counseling be done in person, in response to the Oct. 2001 Kentucky Board of Medical Licensure ruling that said it could be done by phone.  “Over the phone is not good enough,” Stine said in the same AP story.  That “could be interpreted as a prerecorded message.” 

Objections to Stine’s bill, and to the 1998 law, bring up an interesting contradiction in pro-choice ideology.  If the “safe, legal and rare” sound bite is really representative of their position, it seems odd, first of all, that they would object to women being informed about the risks involved in any medical procedure—from a root canal to a heart transplant—or anything in between, including an abortion.  After all, doesn’t education empower women to make wise choices? 

Second, we often hear about how abortion is an emotionally taxing, intensely private decision between a woman and her doctor, so wouldn’t it seem wise to wait 24 hours before making an emotionally charged and irrevocable decision?  What’s that old saying?  “Better safe than sorry?”

When flaws are revealed in the “safe” leg of the pro-choice position, the whole “safe, legal and rare” tripod starts getting a little wobbly.  And speaking of “rare,” it may be that politicians, rather than clinicians, are fondest of this little word.  After all, those who argue that a nice, clean clinic is synonymous with safety are forgetting that abortion is big business, and big business is sometimes prone to see dollar signs before they see people.  If you don’t believe it, just ask the executive secretaries at Enron. 

Common sense tells us a clinic is only as “safe” as the people running it are skilled and responsible, and any medical procedure is only as predictable as the myriad of variables that accompany anyone’s individual health status.  Those are some important things to spend a measly 24 hours thinking about—even if you have to rent a motel room to do it.  Besides, do pro-abortion advocates really expect people to believe that they want abortion to be “rare” when they whine about declining abortion rates?  To put it in perspective, the number of abortions performed last week in America exceeded the number of people killed in the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11.  Last year, the number of abortions in Kentucky exceeded the Sept. 11 death toll, but Louisville and Lexington abortion clinics want more?

Wells said she suspected women were being “precluded” from having abortions because of possible hardships associated with Informed Consent.  How does she know that?  Did she interview the women who decided against an abortion?  Is it possible that after physician counseling some women were informed enough to withhold their consent?  The same people who say visiting an abortion clinic twice is an undue hardship also support the use of RU-486, the abortion pill, which requires three visits to a clinic. 

Considering that the “safe” and “rare” arguments render the pro-choice slogan a bit shaky, the only strong leg left is “legal,” which reduces their position to a simple, “We must keep abortion legal.”  Their objections over Informed Consent show the high price they are willing to pay for their one-legged argument.

###

Crystal Chapman is policy analyst with The Family Foundation of Kentucky, a nonprofit educational organization focusing on public policy issues affecting families.