So the Supreme Court today upheld a ban on partial birth abortions. This is a bit of good news for pro-life folks. Republican Presidential candidates were quick to comment in a positive way.
Mitt Romney: “Today, our nation’s highest court reaffirmed the value of life in America by upholding a ban on a practice that offends basic human decency...This decision represents a step forward in protecting the weakest and most innocent among us.”
Rudy Guliani: “The Supreme Court reached the correct conclusion in upholding the congressional ban on partial birth abortion...I agree with it.”
John McCain: "I'm very happy about the decision given my position on abortion. Partial birth is one of the most odious aspects of abortion."
Compelling was the concurring opinion by Clarence Thomas, short and to the point.
"I join the Court's opinion because it accurately applies current jurisprudence, including Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992). I write separately to reiterate my view that the Court's abortion jurisprudence, including Casey and Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113 (1973), has no basis in the Constitution." At least someone on the bench has a firm grasp of the obvious!
But though I am grateful for every chip that can be taken out of Roe v. Wade, I cannot be too thrilled with the decision, because it is so exceedingly limited. Ed Whelan at NRO posted a brief synopsis, including the following:
"The Act does not impose an undue burden. Its reach is limited to physicians who carry out the intact D&E after intending at the outset both to deliver the fetus until its head lodges in the cervix and to pierce or crush the fetal skull. It does not apply to D&Es in which the doctor intends from the outset to remove the fetus in pieces."
So, in other words, doctors who wish to perform late term abortions may still do so, they simply may no longer use this particular method. The fate for the child is the same. Dismemberment, death.
Predictably, Democratic candidates parroted the usual Planned Parenthood propaganda as if the world was falling in and as if those who sake to save human lives are the barbarous horde.
John Edwards: "I could not disagree more strongly with today's Supreme Court decision. The ban upheld by the Court is an ill-considered and sweeping prohibition that does not even take account for serious threats to the health of individual women. This hard right turn is a stark reminder of why Democrats cannot afford to lose the 2008 election."
Ill considered? To protect the life of a 4/5 delivered living child is ill-considered?
Sweeping? To curb one and only one method is sweeping?
Hard right? I guess anything to the right of Dr. Kevorkian is hard right.
"Serious threats to the health of women?" Let me try to understand. If a woman has a doctor reach into her uterus and pull a child prematurely from the womb feet first, jams scissors into the skull and then pulls the remains out, she has had her "health" considered, but to deliver the child alive somehow endangers her? Never let logic get in the way of a good political slogan.
Hillary Clinton: "This decision marks a dramatic departure from four decades of Supreme Court rulings that upheld a woman's right to choose and recognized the importance of women's health. Today's decision blatantly defies the Court's recent decision in 2000 striking down a state partial-birth abortion law because of its failure to provide an exception for the health of the mother. "
Ditto. Same talking points. Same nonsense.
Barack Obama: "I strongly disagree with today’s Supreme Court ruling, which dramatically departs from previous precedents safeguarding the health of pregnant women. As Justice Ginsburg emphasized in her dissenting opinion, this ruling signals an alarming willingness on the part of the conservative majority to disregard its prior rulings respecting a woman’s medical concerns and the very personal decisions between a doctor and patient."
Of course this is the same Obama who bravely and compassionately stands for infanticide.
Notice nothing in the statements of the Democratic candidates leaves any hint of consideration that the fetus might be living, breathing (respiring -to be exact), human, genetically distinct from the mother, with an active heart, active brain, fully alive by any reasonable definition, all of which is fully supported by medical fact and common sense. There is no reasonable case to be made against the fetus, so the attention must always be focused on the rights of the woman, and rigidly, mercilessly away from the life of the child.
In my 27 years of following this issue, I have never seen a serious mainstream news article that has honestly looked at the medical evidence for the living human existence of the unborn child. The evidence has been studiously, rigidly blacked out. This allows candidates like Clinton, Obama and Edwards to parrot sheer nonsense and sound compassionate and intelligent. Anyone who would take the time to go to a public library can discover the truth, without the need for "hard right" propaganda, but by and large the general public is blissfully ignorant of the facts, and they seem happy to remain so.
It may take a long time to chip away at Roe. It still boggles my mind how this atrocity, this holocaust, has gone on for 34 years. But it absolutely infuriates me when Christians vote for monolithically pro-death Democrats.
Left leaning evangelicals are fond of saying of late, that "social justice" issues have to be considered alongside life issues. Even "environmental" issues ought to be part of the voter's mix of "issues" to consider. But how can those who are so demonstrably wrong on such a critical issue be trusted with any other issue? Not that I am unflaggingly in favor of waffling Republicans. It's just I could NEVER, EVER vote for those who stand so staunchly for that which is so obviously murder. They, in my mind have forfeited any right to claim any sense of moral or ethical judgment. None of them deserves the vote of any Christian, for that matter of any American with a conscience.
This is a very small victory in a long war. Be thankful for small mercies.
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