The United States Supreme Court last
week ruled in favor of the Partial-birth
Abortion Ban Act; which was signed into
law by President Bush in 2003, but
immediately challenged in federal court and
ruled unconstitutional. Now,
the Supreme Court has announced its decision
in Gonzales v. Carhart
to uphold the ban.
Each year more than 1 million pregnancies
are terminated in the United States.
Thousands of them are of the partial birth
variety. Because of the Supreme Court ruling, babies will be born next year who
would have otherwise been killed. That
is worth celebrating.
Pro-abortion activists don't like the term
"Partial Birth" because it describes the necessity of delivering
the baby from the womb in order to kill it
by crushing its skull. They absurdly would rather use euphemisms
like "Reproductive Rights" or "Women's
Health" -- when the only
reproductive right that should matter is the
right of a viable unborn baby to be born.
The precursor to this case, Stenberg v. Carhart, was heard by the Supreme Court in
2000. In that decision, the court struck down a Nebraska
statute banning the partial-birth procedure
and stipulated that any ban must allow "for the health of the
mother."
The pro-abortion side of the argument,
however, did not specify an instance when
this procedure was the
only way to preserve the mother's health.
Babies are often born alive and
killed, which is nothing short of
infanticide. And, despite what the
opposition argues, there are no situations which require a
partially delivered human fetus to be
destroyed to preserve the life or health of
the mother. It's a tragedy that this
procedure was ever performed on one baby let
alone thousands.
The fact that the 3 major Democrats running
for president were critical of last week's decision
exemplifies how far to the left the party
has moved. Many abortion
advocates don't realize the Roe vs. Wade
decision stipulated that while states cannot restrict a
woman's right to an abortion during the
first trimester, states can regulate the
abortion procedure during the second
trimester and can choose to
restrict or proscribe abortion as it sees
fit during the third trimester when the
fetus is viable.
There is no explicit constitutional clause granting
the right to
abortion. This would require an amendment to
the constitution. The Supreme Court's ruling in Roe
v. Wade was the Dred Scott decision of the
20th Century.
Millions of Americans fail to see the logic
of finding the right in the U.S. Constitution.
I've heard abortion advocates ask the
question
"Is an acorn a tree?" If the acorn is in the
soil and taking root, yes -- because it is
genetically determined to become a tree and
is only in an earlier stage of development
... Might as well ask "Is a sapling a tree?"
or "Is an unborn baby an adult?"
If life doesn't begin at conception, when
does it begin? No reasonable person can look
at an ultrasound and say it's not a life.
Polls show that abortion is becoming
increasingly unpopular with the American people.
Perhaps in the end we will see fit to extend
our constitutional protections to the unborn
and at least partially right a terrible wrong.
