Better Late-Term Than Never

Slate's Will Saletan, author of a new book on the abortion debate, has a piece about the mechanics of partial-birth abortion in which he chides journalists for misrepresenting the procedure in question:

I'm no fan of second-trimester abortions. They're horrible, and if you can avoid having one, you should. They can be particularly disturbing when they're done by extracting the fetus intact, in a manner that looks like birth. But they aren't births.

Whole thing here.

Is the partial-birth ban the start of a rollback of abortion in the U.S.? The Nation thinks so.

On the anniversary of Roe v. Wade earlier this year, I suggested that legal and legislative decisions regarding reproductive rights tend to track pretty well with public opinion, a reality that leaves both pro- and anti-abortion camps less than satisfied.