According to a 2007 report by the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) half of the abortions performed in the United States are performed on women under the age of 25. And of the reported abortions, 80 percent are for women who are not married.

I’ve known a number of young women who’ve had abortions, two of them are very good friends of mine. They are complete opposites in many of the most important ways; perhaps the only thing that these two women have in common is that they are my good friends and that they both underwent the same medical, emotional, physical procedure. One of them was in high school, the other a few years out of college. Different states; different situations – yet the same story – they just weren’t in the position to have a kid. And in 1973 the United States Supreme Court said they had the right to choose not to.

Today, 35 years after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision inRoe v. Wade, reproductive rights are still being debated. Indeed I can think of no issue that draws more passion from both opponents and proponents of a women’s right to obtain an abortion. In Virginia, last week, a federal appeals court again declared Virginia’s Partial Birth Infanticide Act of 2003 (Act) unconstitutional. Under the Act “any person who knowingly performs partial birth infanticide…is guilty of a Class 4 felony.”

The Act defines ‘partial birth infanticide’ as any deliberate act that is intended to kill, and ultimately results in the death of a human infant who has been born alive but has not been completely extracted or expelled from its mother.

There are a number of procedures doctors employ to abort fetuses depending on variables like the health of the mother and how far along she is in her pregnancy. The procedure at issue in this case is called “intact dilation and extraction” (D&E), and according to the Associated Press it is used to terminate pregnancies after about 12 weeks. Standard D&E, which remains legal, and intact D&E differ in the location where the fetus is destroyed. Doctors performing standard D&E operations destroy the fetus inside the womb before extracting it from the mother. During intact D&E the fetus is partially delivered and the skull is crushed to make removal easier. Doctors claim that intact D&E is a safer procedure for some women choosing to undergo abortions after the first trimester.

In response to the court’s decision to allow intact D&E abortions, the Washington Post quotes Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia. “It is disappointing that yet again just two people [Virginia’s Supreme Court of Appeals is comprised of a three-judge panel and the decision was two-to-one] can thwart the will of the people, the action of legislature, and simple justice for nearly born children.”[i]

In response to Cobb’s assertion that allowing this form of late term abortion “thwart[s] the will of the people” I decided to find out where young Virginians really stood on the issue.

Of course, my first stop was social networking internet sites. “Pro-Life,” is a Facebook group for people who are against abortion. As of May 21, 2008 the group has 44,257 members and more than 27,000 wall posts. Group members post photos of children and fetuses and quote icons like Mother Teresa who said:

 “I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.”

Other organizations like “Students for Life of America” actually train young people to “help develop [their] pro-life group into a strong, effective, and lasting presence on campus” by offering training sessions on organization, financing, media and public relations, and activism.

But then there are the opinions of people when confronted and questioned, not behind the anonymous veil of a blog or an internet comment, but asked face-to-face where they stand on the issue. Surprisingly the people that I spoke to are far less decided than the advocates and pundits would have us believe.

When I spoke with Emily Robinson, my friend and co-worker who is nine months pregnant, she initially told me, very decisively, that partial birth abortions shouldn’t be legalized. “The child has developed at that point and has to be surgically removed. If you were in the need of an abortion it should have happened in the first trimester,” she said. But then we started to talk about the health of the mother and the fetus. Emily confessed to me that she and her husband had spoken about what they would do if their child tested positive for Down syndrome or Spina Bifida, two tragic disorders that severely effect development in children. She said that the doctors can’t test the fetus for Spinal Bifida and Down syndrome until the second trimester and that she and her husband had made the decision “that if it does come we will abort.” Robinson then retracted her earlier statement supporting bans on partial birth abortions, saying “I don’t know that you can make a blanket law that says it can be illegal...Medical circumstances should be looked at individually.” She then told me about her friend who she said learned very late into her pregnancy that her fetus had a rare disorder that would keep it from ever developing. Robinson said there have only been 12 cases in the United States and that none of the children afflicted have lived to full term. She then explained her friend’s decision to continue with the pregnancy, explaining “to perform the abortion at 22 weeks they would have had to cut him out limb to limb but she couldn’t handle her child not being in one piece so she’s going to carry him to full term and he’ll die the second he hits air.” She went on to explain that the longest any child has ever lived with that disease is 12 hours and that she feels that in this situation late term abortion should be an option.

Virginia Commonwealth University theater major, Elyse Thaler, spoke with me about where she stood on partial birth abortions when the mother’s health is at risk. She said she thinks partial birth abortions should be an option if the alternative puts the mother’s life at risk. She doesn’t think, however, that the effect of carrying a child to term on the mother’s mental health is a sufficient reason to have a partial birth abortion. We spoke about physical ailments like discovering breast cancer during the pregnancy and being forced to make the decision to choose between chemo therapy and the life of the fetus. “That’s a hard one,” she said, “I guess you can’t really legislate it. It should be up to the woman and her doctor.”

And therein lies the problem with anti-abortion legislation; it attempts to draw a sweeping conclusion about what all women should do, regardless of the health risks or other risks or other nuances of their particular situations.

The case is Richmond Medical Center v. Herring

Check out the court's decision:

•  http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/031821A.P.pdf