“Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.”

Edmund Burke

 The Supreme Court has just decided to take up the abortion issue again, this time regarding parental notification laws.  Unfortunately, unless a certain, often ignored loophole is dealt with, it will invariably end in a practical victory for the Abortion movement, even if the Supreme Court upholds the law.  Why?  The prerequisite that the New Hampshire legislation is allegedly missing—a provision that the requirements can be ignored when a threat to the mother's life is at hand—has traditionally been large enough to practically invalidate any limitations on any abortions in any legislation to which it has been applied.  And that includes practically every attempt to regulate abortion in the past forty years

 Pregnancy is a dangerous thing.  By its very nature, it is a painful and a potentially life threatening situation for any mother.  The number of possibilities of what could go wrong is nearly endless.  My own wife had serious complications before giving birth to our daughter (pre-eclampsia, pregnancy induced diabetes, uncontrollable weight gain) that necessitated inducing labor a full month early.  We are still dealing with some health related issues to it.  A C-section is considered major surgery.  Death in childbirth is the main reason why in earlier generations women had a shorter life expectancy than men.

 Ergo, a person so inclined could say that every pregnancy is a threat to the mother's heath, at just about any point during the child's development.  Add to that the fact that many hospitals, states, and the federal government consider threats to the mother’s vague emotional well-being to be as serious as a breech birth or pre-eclampsia, and abortionists have a free ticket to ignore whatever restrictions a state might place on abortion.  After all, emotional distress can mean anything and everything. 

 Need evidence of this fact?  Just look at Roe v. Wade.  In theory, it allows states to place some restrictions on mid term abortions, and heavy restriction on those performed in late term.  But then it provides the infamous “health and well-being” exception.  The result is obvious.  If no real threat exists, a semi-legitimate one can be manufactured in short order.  In practice, America has enforced abortion on demand, without any real restrictions allowed. 

 Now, please note that I’m not suggesting that there aren’t real, difficult situations in which physicians and family members are placed in the terrible position of having to choose between a mother and a child.  These situations are real, I never want to be placed in one of them, and I will not judge people who have legitimately stood there.  But the simple fact is that serious threats to the mother’s life—that absolutely require an abortion to relieve—account for only a tiny minority of cases:  Less than 5% of all abortions performed in America.  And yet this five percent has been routinely used to justify the other 95% of convenience abortions, even abortions taking place in the very last moments of a pregnancy (where the child is clearly viable). 

 Unless something changes, the Supreme Court will let the abortion lobby use it yet again, this time to “legitimately” invalidate parental notification laws.  In a few short years, there will be another new “right” added to the American vocabulary, which will be placed right in line behind the “right” to a partial birth abortion:  A minor’s guarantee to abortion on demand without parental notification.

 The answer to this problem is absurdly simple and yet extremely difficult (then again, what isn’t?).  Pro-lifers on all levels of the fight must demand a clear, medical definition of what constitutes a threat to a mother’s life.  This definition would have to be realistic, but at the same time clearly exclude abortions for whim, convenience, and/or vague fear.   Since this loophole is one of the real lifelines of the entire American abortion industry and movement, expect the entire Pro-Death establishment to viciously oppose any attempts to close it.