There was quite the gem in the Cornell Daily Sun today via a column by Laura Taylor ‘07 titled “Life and Death.”

Taylor begins dramatically,

With the aftermath of the Virginia Tech killings monopolizing media attention, a grave regression of women’s rights in this country passed largely unnoticed last week.

Well, you know what they say: One grave regression to women’s rights, one huge progression for unborn children’s lives! Or something like that…

(Disclaimer: In the likely case that some pro-abortion reader does not recognize the sarcasm in that last statement, let me be clear. I do not consider the murder of unborn children to be an inherent “right” of any sort, therefore, in my opinion there is nothing to regress from. In fact, I believe abortion harms women, so this is truly a step forward for both mother and child.)

Anyway, back on topic. There is one part of Taylor’s column where she truly shines:

Much of the reason late-term abortions developed in this country is due to the legislative and judicial decisions promoted by anti-choice advocates. Abortions are expensive (1975 Hyde Amendment bars insurance coverage), difficult to obtain (87 percent of counties in the country have no abortion provider) and are further constrained by state restrictions that limit access to abortion. A pregnancy does not stop to wait for a woman to raise money for medical, travel, lodging and childcare expenses. (emphasis added.)

In that blip is one feature that appears frequently in Taylor’s columns: factual errors. I am in no position to judge whether or not these errors are based in ignorance or purposeful misinformation, but it is her tradition. (She’s had real winners ranging from calling Iranians Arabic - they’re Persian - to calling Israel an apartheid state - which may be all the rage in Jimmy Carter’s circles, but not so popular among observers of the real facts.)

Specifically in this column is the blatant misconception of the 1975 Hyde Amendment, which as everyone knows (even the pro-abortion ACLU) only restricts federal funding for abortions, i.e. Medicaid coverage. The Hyde Amendment even has exceptions for cases of rape, incest, and when the mother’s life is in danger. So… Taylor tries to portray this as completely threatening to a woman’s so-called “right” to an abortion, when it is nothing of the sort.

Furthermore, common sense makes me question her argument that abortions are difficult to obtain because clinics are just so darn hard to find! Does anyone have any statistics or information on this? (There is only so much time I can devote to research when I have 50 pages of essays waiting on me.) At the very least, I am quite positive that every major urban city in the nation (unfortunately) offers an abortion clinic of some variety. I am absolutely sure that every state has something available. If the child is really that much of an inconvenience, I am sure that a woman will go out of her way to find an accessible murderer *cough* I mean, abortionist.

Anyway, I would suggest reading her column simply because she summarizes the pro-abortion crowd’s most frequent arguments against the ban. After reading her column, you absolutely must (I strongly urge you to) visit Douglas Johnson’s (Legislative Director for the National Right to Life Committee) article entitled “The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban - Misconceptions and Realities.”

If I had to do a bullet point summary of ways to respond to Taylor’s column simply from Johnson’s article, this would be it:

* Taylor argues that the ban can affect all abortions after 12 weeks. Besides being an unsupported, this claim is completely illogical. This bill bans only partial-birth abortions, defined as any abortion in which the baby is delivered “past the [baby’s] navel … outside the body of the mother,” or “in the case of head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother,” before being killed. As Johnson explains, this only occurs at a certain point - far past 12 weeks in the pregnancy.

* Regarding Taylor’s claim that “partial-birth abortion” is not even a medical term: As stated brilliantly by Johnson, “In short, besides being a legal term of art, ‘partial-birth abortion’ is as much a ‘medical term’ as ‘heart attack’ (which both journalists and others usually use in preference to ‘myocardial infarction’).”

* Concerning the so-called safety of partial-birth abortion: According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which is affiliated with Planned Parenthood, there are approximately 2,200 partial-birth abortions performed each year out of a total of over 1,000,000. If this procedure is truly the safest for women, as argued by Ms. Taylor, why is it so rare?

* And of course, in response to the argument that the Court is forsaking its duty to protect human life (I love it when the pro-murder-of-unborn-children crowd plays that card): There is an exception if the mother’s life is at risk, so this is not some oppressive law that will kill women. Instead, it merely restricts the ways abortionists can kill unborn children.

Well, what think you?

(Off topic: Does anyone actually know how to do real bullet points in wordpress?)