3 May 1999: Anti-Choice Logic

There was a story on "60 Minutes" about an over-35 woman who elected to abort a 16-week fetus after amniocentesis indicated an extra 18th chromosone and thus likely mental retardation and assorted other physical defects. Fine so far. Later when pregnant again, she saw autopsy results indicating that the fetus was not only not the other gender the amnio indicated but apparently healthy too. Either the hospital performing the amnio or the lab analyzing it or both erred.

I can just imagine the anti-choice reaction to this. If she had merely chosen to bring the fetus to term, despite the self-awareness that told her she couldn't be a good mother to such a child, she'd've had a pleasant surprise. If all women were merely forced to do the same, the Columbine High School shootings wouldn't've happened.

No lie. The Colorado Right to Life Association has made that brilliant claim of clear-cut cause and effect.

The Denver Post archives its articles only for a week (but devotes a whole section to JonBenét Ramsey), so if the above link is dead, the lead: "An anti-abortion group says a major reason for the shootings at Columbine High School is Colorado's legacy as the first state to legalize some forms of abortion. An appropriate response...Colorado Right-to-Life wrote in a letter to state senators that was distributed Monday [26 April] would be to pass anti-abortion legislation." Also: "The letter draws a direct line from the passage of Colorado's first legislation in 1967 allowing abortion to the Columbine massacre."

(That first measure, btw, allowed the bare minimum: rape, incest, fetal abnormality, serious injury or death of woman. I need to find out when laws were passed to ban abortion in the states--mostly in the latter half of the 19th century.)