Pro-abortion ideologue Amanda Marcotte abandons "trust women" rhetoric when faced with 39 week abortion

In her piece for the American Prospect, Amanda Marcotte can't follow her "abortion is moral," "trust women" and "my body, my choice" rhetoric to it's obvious conclusion when faced with Sarah Catt's near term abortion. Instead, she lamely tries to claim that Catt's action of taking abortion pills to try to kill her child in her womb is somehow vastly different than an abortion.

The problem is that what Catt did doesn't have much relationship to the cluster of medical procedures that get grouped under the common term "abortion"—which is how the British press is describing Catt's actions. Inducing labor with intent to miscarry is a much different thing than procedures designed to prevent birth in the first place.

What? That's absurd. Every year there are numerous abortion procedures which are designed to prevent live birth by killing the unborn before they are born. Like RU 486 abortions (sure the children are smaller but they still end up outside the woman's body). Or like induction abortions. You know, the kind of late-term abortions performed by the late George Tiller or Colorado-based abortionist Warren Hern.

This word choice conflates Catt's actions with ordinary abortions—and does so in a world where a woman's right to have one is hotly contested.

Oh....so only "ordinary abortions" are okay? Why can't a woman decide to have an abortion at 39 weeks? Shouldn't Catt be set free? Her body, her choice, right? Trust women, right? After taking the time to spout off about the rareness of post-24 week abortions, she then hilariously writes this:

Dr. George Tiller, who was assassinated for providing these abortions, had a second physician sign off on all abortions after 24 weeks and was able to repeatedly demonstrate his careful documentation in court.

Yeah, that second physician was Kristin Ann Neuhaus, who lost her license to practice medicine because of her lax medical exams when she signed off for Tiller's abortions.

Of course, the debate on late-term abortion remains unsettled, and there are many reasons women should be allowed to have them. Remember, Catt was convicted because she induced labor, on her own, after her fetus was viable. At 39 weeks, the only real way that Catt could have ended her pregnancy was by going into labor, induced or otherwise. That the baby was stillborn is something the court has taken on faith, and even if true, there's no evidence, especially without a body to autopsy, that the drugs she took to induce labor also killed her baby. Catt's actions fall outside the abortion debate.

Why? What an absurd assertion. Marcotte can't cope with the reality that some women (though obviously not very many) like Sara Catt want abortions very late in pregnancy. The evidence seems to show (though an autopsy of the child's body would be more conclusive) she took drugs designed to kill her child and induced labor. That's an abortion. A very late one but an abortion. How can a woman being prosecuted for an illegal abortion fall outside the abortion debate?

Government must build abortion law around the needs of the one in three women who will get an abortion in her lifetime, not around criminally minded outliers like Sarah Catt.

But according to various pro-choice beliefs shouldn't the British government have protected Catt's inherent right to have a post-24 week abortion? Or is the right to abortion a non-inherent right? If so, doesn't that demolish the whole pro-choice position? Marcotte seems to think she can talk about the elephant in the room without ever talking about the issues the elephant in the room raises for people who base their arguments for abortion on the ideology that women should be able to do as they will with their bodies throughout pregnancy. When someone has an abortion at the end of a term pregnancy, Marcotte seems to think asserting "It's not an abortion" and "It's rare" somehow allows her to escape from defending the precepts of her ideology.