A partial-birth abortion can never be used to save the life of the mother for the rather obvious reasons that it involves giving birth to a near-term infant, detaining the baby unnaturally in the birth canal, and using cutting tools. Simply inducing delivery, without all the dramatics involved in this form of abortion, would be much safer. Ruth Bader Ginsberg's dissent in Gonzales v. Cahart repeats the canard that the Partial Birth Abortion Ban puts women's health in jeopardy. It doesn't, and if you read her words carefully you understand that she's really saying that other abortion procedures, such as a late-term abortion inside the womb, threaten the woman's health. In her words, partial-birth abortion is "safer than alternative procedures." But isn't child birth an "alternative" procedure? Partial-birth abortion is never medically necessary but is deemed a safer alternative--for the mother, not her child--than competing late-term abortion procedures. It is misleading, for abortion proponents, to seize on the law's rejection of a "health" exception as if partial-birth abortions are ever medically necessary. They're not.
Justice Clarence Thomas recognized this in 2000's Stenberg v. Carhart, the case the struck down state partial-birth abortion prohibitions. The justice wrote: "Today’s majority and Justice O’Connor twist Roe and Casey to apply to the situation in which a woman desires--for whatever reason--an abortion and wishes to obtain the abortion by some particular method. In other words, the majority and Justice O’Connor fail to distinguish between cases in which health concerns require a woman to obtain an abortion and cases in which health concerns cause a woman who desires an abortion (for whatever reason) to prefer one method over another."
A culture that has legalized murder, and murder of children no less, can not be expected to be able to control the flood of violence and instability that must inevitably flow from such a decision. I sit here in Vienna, Austria today, and everyone here is telling me how the US must control guns, and how violent the US is. And, quite honestly, it is very hard to disagree with them. But what is unfortunate is that I have no frame of reference to help them understand that it is not the machinery, but the lack of worth of the human being that is the root of the violence. I can't discuss the worth that the Church, for instance, places on every human life, because they are no longer faithful. Further, I'm unable to describe how it manifests itself in other ways in Europe and around the world (sex slavery, general degradation of the individual, euthanasia, etc.). In the end, though, I'm just not smart enough, but I wish I were.
Because it seems to me that the human person is now nothing, unless they have some sort of value to be used or consumed. I think we've become the demons in the Screwtape Letters: "Bring us meat, or become meat yourself". You either have worth, or you don't. You either serve me, or you don't.
These people at VT didn't let a lunatic into their inner circle of sex and drinking/drugs and partying (the life that all external forces say is the good life), so they ceased to have worth to him. To reference Oscar Wilde, the Outcasts Who Always Mourn may know all too well this pain, and how exacerbated it must be by this culture that values this worthless standard of living as something that must be attained at all cost.
How can we be surprised that the value of any life is meaningless when we enshrine the idea that a murder isn't a murder when it's a baby in your stomach? Such a statement is so ludicrous on it's face, how can anyone take any idea seriously ever again?
Guns may kill people, but ideas pull the trigger. I hope the SC decision is the beginning of the end of this Culture of Death (and if you think this phrase has become trite, you need to look at the source again and again and again.)
Homer,
You certainly sound smart enough to me! And you are right, everyone should read Evangelium Vitae, preferably several times carefully and meditate on it. It can be found here: http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae_en.html
Dan, this is a great post. Very pithy and clear demonstration of the basic lack of logic (dishonest lack in intelligent people) that keeps abortion "rights" sacrosanct. And seriously, Thomas writes the best opinions on that court and has done so for a number of years, better than Scalia in my opinion. He is an impressive man, very clear sighted.
4 Then the word of the Lord came unto me, saying
5 "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee;
and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations."
Jeremiah 1:4,5
We are allowing the wholesale slaughter of innocent human beings in the name of "choice"
and our nation is paying a heavy price for it.
One can only hope that we wake up before it's too late.
how cant an abortion help save the mothers life? what if she already has 2 kids or more and needs to be with them? its just stupid because it can save a mothers life. Yes, it is wrong but if it can save a person who already has children wouldn't you want that to happen to you? Would you want to die so your children don't have a mother? I know i wouldn't i thank Goid everyday for my 3 lil ones and I know if i got pregnant and the doctor said to chose between your childs life or yours i would chose mine. Yes, I would feel wrong! but it happens.
