MISSOURI WATCH: UNRECOGNIZED RAMIFICATIONS

Every controversial issue ever presented to a body of elected officials automatically inherits unique features that make its satisfactory resolution very difficult. Most recently the issue of partial-birth abortion procedures presented to members of the Missouri General Assembly in special session provides a perfect example of this observation. One branch of our Legislature dealt with a highly controversial procedure, and no one would truthfully say the issue was resolved to the satisfaction of the great majority of citizens in our state.

Elected officials, like the people they represent, do best when matters can be decided without disagreement, when issues have both clear and concise lines of demarcation between good and evil and between logical and illogical. On days when these are the agenda items for legislatures or just ordinary citizens, it is actually possible to enjoy the process and to believe that life is relatively simple and that decisions can be rendered swiftly and with the assurance that all decisions will be both lasting and beneficial to all parties concerned.

Alas, this is not the way the real world works, just as it is dissimilar to the way individual lives work.

The issue presented by Senate Bill 275 that was designed to halt third-trimester abortions performed in a hideous, barbaric manner represents the kind of question that wise politicians leave to others for it details one of the moral questions that divide communities and states. When there is no clear and easy divide of ramifications, and certainly none was provided by this measure, the question approaches the irreconcilable.

Yet even elected legislative bodies can handle the irreconcilable if there is no further obfuscation. Ah, there lies the rub. The question of partial-birth abortions did not arrive on the third floor of the Capitol without ramifications. It was a document designed to deal specifically with a medical procedure, an abhorrent one that had to be a component of its final decision in this writer's view. The problem is, there were other components as well, as there generally are in political bodies wherever they are found.

The other components of SB 275 included the interplay between the state's two major political parties, one traditionally supportive of something called, after Roe v. Wade, women's right to abortion and the other most often in favor of preventing this medical procedure to assure the life of a fetus, even shortly after its inception.

In a word, this compounding problem is partisan politics, made all the more intense by a gubernatorial veto that raised still another component: protecting the image of the state's chief executive. This in turn precipitated full-page advertisements by Governor Carnahan, urging public support for his rejection of the bill.

Then legislators convened in Jefferson City they were confronted with a series of components, with only a few compatible ones present to allow for logical resolution.

The victims of this brouhaha are more numerous than anyone knows. The victims include the yet-unborn children, the mothers who deliver them, the medical personnel sworn to uphold vows of saving lives -- to name but only the beginning numbers.

The other victims include the legislators themselves, forced to defend or oppose an issue that has rnore lives than a cat. Representative government, never a favorite among the public when decisions go against popular opinion, also became a victim. Even the brave Republican senator from St. Louis who changed her mind in the tradition of all sincere public servants was victimized by the process.

This is not an argument against deciding critical, imponderable issues through the legislative process, for at times it is the only available means. But this was an issue in which important facts were missing.

How many partial-birth abortions are really performed each year in Missouri? What is the actual trauma suffered by third-trimester fetuses to the procedure before life is extinguished? hat are the case histories of women who have undergone this traumatic operation and how did they later cope with the duress it caused? Is science incapable .of substituting a less damaging surgical procedure, and if not, why not?

There are numerous other issues, including assisted suicides for suffering humans, that are slowly making their way to legislative calendars in Missouri and other states.

Some of these issues have already been dealt with, such as the political decision to turn over many state-run mental health programs to private health corporations that must make a profit to justify their capital investments. In this instance, Missouri 's Legislature made its decision without full realization of what was involved. Unfortunately, many still do not.

In this case, the principal argument was that the state could save money, a compelling argument to be sure, but one made without adequate proof and without regard to the quality of care that was being substituted. The irony attached to this particular example is that taxpayers have spent millions of dollars in wasted capital improvements to effect the transfer from public to private mental health management---perhaps spendi ng more to effect the transfer than will ever be saved by profit-motivated corporate management.

No important issues are ever resolved in a vacuum. All vital issues have primary, secondary and even tertiary effects that weigh on the wisdom of the decisions made. This is why many questions prove to be inadequately considered and inadvertently incorrect when final resolutions are made.

This suggests a warning be attached to critical public issues decided by political bodies: "Caution! This law may be hazardous to your health, prosperity, happiness and peace of mind!"

~Jack Stapleton of Kennett is the editor of Missouri News and Editorial Service.