Today’s Life Chain demonstration on Central Campus, an annual effort to bring attention to anti-abortion interests, occurs with special timeliness after Congress passed a ban on partial-birth abortion.

Simply put, abortion rights and anti-abortion activists have different priorities regarding the rights of grown women versus unborn babies. In light of biological evidence concerning life in the womb, there’s little debate that unborn babies are small people with beating hearts and pain-sensing nerves. The abortion debate can therefore be broken down into those who hold the woman’s right to choose over the baby’s right to live versus those who hold the baby’s right to live over the woman’s right to choose.

I am anti-abortion because I see pregnancy as a temporary inconvenience for the mother, whereas death by mutilation for the baby is a painful and permanent solution to a temporary problem (the possibility of adoption reduces pregnancy to a mere nine-month ordeal.) Calling most abortion procedures mutilation is neither exaggeration nor provocation. The following descriptions are paraphrased from the National Right to Life Web site (www.nrlc.org), which extensively cites all of its sources:

* Two first-trimester techniques involve inserting a sharp object into the uterus and basically dismembering the fetal body and either scraping or sucking it out of the womb.

* The second-trimester procedure known as dilation and evacuation (D&E) entails inserting forceps into the uterus and ripping limbs from the fetal body until it is completely removed from the womb. A Planned Parenthood physician from Boulder, Colo., described the method by saying “the sensation of dismemberment flows through the forceps like an electric current.”

* So-called “partial-birth” abortions, known in the medical community as dilation and extraction (D&X), are performed in the second and third trimesters and are undoubtedly the most gruesome method of terminating a pregnancy. During a D&X, the doctor pulls the fetal legs out with forceps, but leaves the head inside the mother’s body. The fetal head is punctured with a sharp instrument, and a suction catheter is then inserted to remove the brain, which deflates the baby’s head so it can be easily removed from the uterus.

Besides inflicting torment on the well-developed fetus, these surgical procedures are also hazardous to the mother. The sharp instruments used have the potential to perforate the mother’s uterus, causing severe bleeding, and the incomplete removal of fetal parts poses the possibility of infection to the mother, though the latter can occur even after non-surgical abortions.

Last month an 18-year-old California woman died of septic shock after taking the so-called “abortion pill” RU-486 to induce non-surgical abortion. The pill kills the fetus by cutting off nourishment from the placenta. A follow-up pill then induces labor so the dead fetus is expelled from the woman’s body. In the California teen’s case, however, “fragments of the fetus” were left inside her, causing a “massive infection” that led to her death, according to a Sept. 22 Associated Press report.

Because partial-birth abortion is widely acknowledged in the medical community to have crossed an ethical line, the partial-birth abortion ban was recently supported by Congress. When Congress tried to enact similar legislation in 1997 (before being halted by President Clinton’s veto), the American Medical Association expressed its support for “restricting a procedure we all agree is not good medicine.”

Opponents of the ban worry that it neglects the health of the mother, but this is simply not true: The bill explicitly states that it “does not apply to a partial-birth abortion that is necessary to save the life of a mother.” But this clause is redundant anyway, as the bill also includes detailed and documented evidence culminating with the claim that “partial-birth abortion is never medically indicated to preserve the health of the mother.”

A major stumbling block to ever achieving meaningful discussion on the abortion issue is the self-righteous intolerance seething from (some factions of) the opposing sides. The “pro-life” and “pro-choice” labels, for example, imply a good-vs.-evil conflict: that their respective opponents must be “anti-life” and “anti-choice.” Though the labels are convenient and will not disappear, it is unfortunate they exist to further polarize an already fiercely divisive issue.

Abortion rights activists are not sadistic barbarians who enjoy, nor necessarily even endorse, killing babies. Nor are anti-abortion activists oppressive chauvinists who seek to restrict women’s right to handle their own bodies. A little less name-calling from both sides could go a long way in promoting candid discussion and advancing understanding between opposing forces.