Send this guy to 1950s Ireland

Gregg Easterbrook likes to keep things simple -- he doesn't like it when John Kerry has multiple lines of ancestry (much easier for Gregg just to think of him as Jewish); he doesn't like to blame all Hollywood executives for the plague of violent movies (much easier to blame the Jewish ones), and now he doesn't like it when people get in the way of banning late-term abortions, it's just those pesky doctors and lawyers who make it complicated:

[US Congressional] debate over the [ban on late term abortions] has hung up on the side issue of whether third-term abortions should be called "partial-birth" procedures. Terminology ought to make no difference; what matters is whether third-term abortions are right or wrong. In most instances, they are wrong.

So it's all just a matter of terminology, the underlying issue is really quite simple, he says. This is a world in which "pregnancy complications" do not exist. But of course in practice doctors are trusted to make the very difficult judgement calls in late-term pregnancies, and may end up deciding on an abortion as the least bad way out. So any attempted ban involves politicians trying to remove the discretion from doctors, regardless of the scenario -- a task that is either impossibly complicated (if they try to deal with every type of case), or just a threat to the life of the mother (if they go for a blanket ban).

1950s Ireland provides a disturbing example of what happens when this "right/wrong" approach to pregnancy complications works its way into the hospital. A standard option in difficult births is Caesarean section. But the Irish Catholic church was not keen on C-sections, for reasons that are not clear, but seem to reflect a belief that C-sections make birth too easy. So what did the church propose as an alternative? A sickening procedure called symphysiotomy, essentially the breaking of the mother's pelvis. Cowed doctors went along with this, and the procedure leaves permanent damage. Check out this 1955 tirade from the head of the Republic's national maternity hospital at Holles Street; bear in mind that this person is a doctor:

It is unnecessary to stress to Catholic doctors that the practices of contraception, sterilisation and therapeutic abortion are contrary to the moral law," he thundered. "But what we must all guard against and especially is this so in the teaching centres, is the unwarranted and unnecessary employment of Caesarean section."

To the church, C-sections were just the "partial birth abortions" of the 1950s -- always wrong, always a better alternative available. The fact that the alternative resulted in greater mortality risk for the infant, and permanent disability for the mother is irrelevant. By the way, the unspoken but common response amongst sensible Irish doctors to the more bizarre elements of Catholic doctrine on giving birth was to refer their difficult pregnancy cases to Protestant hospitals, where medical discretion as trusted, and who knows, where the dreaded "partial birth abortion" might have been performed to save the mother. Not Gregg's kind of world.

UPDATE: Gregg, perhaps too busy working on his impending "Hitler had good ideas, he just went too far" post, even has his facts wrong: he discusses the abortion issue in terms of whether or not third-term abortions should be banned. But the actual legislation seeks to ban abortions after 12 weeks i.e. including 2nd term. Third term abortions are already nearly always illegal, except to save the life of the mother.