The Supreme Court’s decision to consider the constitutionality of the ban on partial birth abortion is a good sign. The Bush administration asked the Court to reinstate the federal law passed in 2003 but never put into effect. State courts ruled it unconstitutional in California, Nebraska and New York.
PBA Ban Outlook Good
A state ban on partial birth abortion was struck down in 2000 by the Supreme Court by a 5 to 4 margin. Supporting the ban then were Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, joined by pro-abortion Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Hopefully Kennedy will again favor the ban, and new Chief Justice John Roberts will be joined by Scalia, Thomas and Samuel Alito, who replaces pro-abortion Sandra Day O’Connor, giving a 5-4majority, for the ban. O’Connor was the pro-abortion swing vote in 2000.
At that time the federal law was declared unconstitutional because it lacked a health exception, which it still lacks. The fact that 600 doctors agree that this grizzly and dangerous procedure is never medically necessary for a woman’s health didn’t impress O’Connor. Alito is hopefully smarter.
Most pro-lifers see the court’s willingness to take another look the law a healthy sign. Jay Sekulo of the American Center for Law and Justice calls it the front-line abortion case in the country.
Meanwhile, note the hostile tone of the secular media. They call the gruesome procedure “so-called” partial birth, a name given to it “by its opponents.” Their edited descriptions of it attempt to disguise the real horror by having the child’s head punctured or crushed, rather than their explaining that scissors are jabbed into the base of the skull and a machine 30 times more powerful than a vacuum sweeper sucks out the child’s brains into a bottle, as the baby goes into convulsions and sometimes grabs the abortionists arm.
They lie against medical evidence, by claiming that partial birth abortions are sometimes necessary. Six-hundred medical testimonials are not enough to convince them that this “procedure” is never necessary, but is in fact harmful to the woman.
Nancy Northup of the center for Reproductive Rights said the stakes in this case are not whether Roe will be overturned but whether a major pillar of Roe will be reconsidered. Whatever that means. It is being reconsidered, and the result could begin the whittling away at Roe with an ultimate scrapping of the 1973 abortion rights invention by the Burger Court. We need one more Justice to reverse Roe.
South Dakota Attempts To Ban Abortion
In Pierre SD, lawmakers are set to vote on a state abortion ban. If it passes, the abortion lovers will immediately challenge it in court, which is what pro-lifers want. It could then go to the U. S. Supreme Court and be the case to overturn Roe. But local pro-lifers are split over the bill, some believing it is bad timing with five “no” votes still on the court, and others thinking that by the time it gets there we’ll have five.
Carter’s Misguided Answers
Jennifer Hunter in the Sun-Times “Showcase” Wednesday is all agog over Jimmy Carter’s new book, Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis. She agrees with Carter, whom she calls a deeply religious man, when he writes that every abortion is “an unplanned tragedy.”
Carter tries to wiggle out of his pro-abortion support by mocking pro-lifers for not solving every social, economic and emotional problem known to man, every time a woman gets pregnant. It’s the old “How many babies have YOU adopted?” argument. Unless you solve all the problems in the world, you can’t be against abortion.
Carter’s solution —and Hunter’s also— is the old, simplistic and absolutely wrong cop-out: lots more sex education and far more contraceptives. Don’t they know the two things our kids don’t need more of are sex education and condoms? Have Carter and Hunter been living under rocks?
Hunter wishes Pro-lifers had Jimmy Carter’s compassion and wisdom—and possibly his originality. All we can say is from such, libera nos Domine.
