The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure Wednesday, handing abortion opponents the long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.
The grusome procedure at issue involves partially removing the fetus intact from a woman’s uterus, then crushing or cutting its skull to complete the abortion, often these children are near full term.
“Today’s decision is alarming,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in dissent.
Of course this is really meaningless as the law will not reduce the number of near term abortions performed because an alternate method — dismembering the fetus in the uterus — is available and, indeed, much more common.
More than 1 million abortions are performed in the United States each year, according to recent statistics. Nearly 90 percent of those occur in the first 12weeks of pregnancy, and are not affected by Wednesday’s ruling.
I know there are no names for these innocent children, but if there were, I wonder if any would be included on any on any of the memorials for so many other innocents that are so brutally murdered each year? There should be one.
“Today’s decision is alarming,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in dissent.
This epitomizes the euphemistic “woman’s right to choose.” It’s not enough for a woman to able to simply “choose” whether or not to kill her baby in the womb. To Justice Ginsburg and scores of other feminist extremists, a woman has a constitutional right to “choose” if she wants the baby’s skull crushed or its limbs torn off.
The fact of the matter is, a woman facing a crisis pregnancy has a large number of choices: adoption (open or closed); long term foster care (open or closed); short term foster care (open or closed); and group homes. That’s seven choices (I’m sure there are more). None of these choices involve the “termination of the pregnancy” (yet another euphemism).
I was heartened recently to see that in the UK, more and more young physicians are refusing to perform abortions on ethical grounds:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/health/healthmain.html?in_article_id=448830&in_page_id=1774&ICO=HEALTH&ICL=TOPART
This reminds me of William Wilberforce, the British member of parliament who fought for decades to end slavery, another subjugation of the powerless to the powerful. In this country, it took a civil war to resolve that issue.
I doubt if abortion will be resolved in my lifetime (I’m 57), but when it is, it will be due to a collective change in heart at least as much as a change in the law.
One of the complaints raised by the pro-aborts regarding this latest Supreme Court ruling is that it doesn’t include any exceptions for the health of the woman.
The problem with that argument is this: Thanks to Doe v. Bolton (the companion case to Roe v. Wade, “health” is defined so as to include not only physical health, but also mental health. Needless to say, this is a loophole wide enough for a Mack truck to drive through.
How right you are. Your comment about doctors in particular striles a cord with me. I cannot understand what kind of person who calls him/herself a doctor sworn to save lives can sit day after day killing babies. Unknown to many, worldwide the primary reason for abortion is sex selection. Kill the girl for the boy. something that has called huge problems in countries like China.
We truly are facing moral issues, that produce not only doctors capable of killing babies, but also events like the shootings at VT.
We are a nation that faces a very bleak future.
I don’t thin I have ever commented on abortion here. I do think abortion is murder but I also have a problem legislating how other people should live their lives Im not saying people should be able to do what they want in every case, like murder or something, of course not, but of all these people who commit aborticide or acomplices of aborticide will face judgement someday.
They are of the same ilk as employers who hire illegal aliens. All profit no morals.
Here’s the loophole from Doe v. Bolton I mentioned earlier regarding the definition of “health”:
We agree with the District Court, 319 F. Supp., at 1058, that the medical judgment may be exercised in the light of all factors – physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age – relevant to the wellbeing of the patient. All these factors may relate to health. This allows the attending physician the room he needs to make his best medical judgment. And it is room that operates for the benefit, not the disadvantage, of the pregnant woman. [Emphasis added.]
And here’s an chilling quote from the majority opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart (the latest Supreme Court opinion banning partial birth abortion), citing the “description from a nurse who witnessed the same method performed on a 26-week fetus and who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee”:
“ ‘Dr. Haskell went in with forceps and grabbed the baby’s legs and pulled them down into the birth canal. Then he delivered the baby’s body and the arms—everything but the head. The doctor kept the head right inside the uterus… .
“ ‘The baby’s little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head, and the baby’s arms jerked out, like a startle reaction, like a flinch, like a baby does when he thinks he is going to fall.
“ ‘The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening, and sucked the baby’s brains out. Now the baby went completely limp… .
“ ‘He cut the umbilical cord and delivered the placenta. He threw the baby in a pan, along with the placenta and the instruments he had just used.’ ”[Emphasis added.]
At first, I thought I’d comment on this, but the nurse’s description speaks for itself.
Here’s a link to the full opinion:
http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/law_librarian_blog/files/05-380_All.pdf
This is truly horrible. It brings tears to my eyes. This doctor is little more than an animal. If you don’t mind CT, I’m going to pass this on to all my e-mail list and other sites I write at.
I’m glad to know someone who has access to stuff like this. Or who at least can easily find it.
If you don’t mind CT, I’m going to pass this on to all my e-mail list and other sites I write at.
Please feel free to pass any or all of it along to anyone you like, celtictexan. And rest assured that all quotes (including the ones below) have been cut and pasted verbatim from their respective Supreme Court decisions.
Here are a few more choice quotes from Roe v. Wade:
The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. In a line of decisions, however, … the Court has recognized that a right of personal privacy, or a guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy, does exist under the Constitution.
* * * * *
This right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we feel it is, or, as the District Court determined, in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.
So the Constitution doesn’t actually mention any right to privacy, but over the years the Court managed to read between the lines and found one. Once that right was discovered in the so-called “penumbras” and “emanations,” it kept growing and broadening until, as Justice Blackmun opined in 1973, it included “a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy” (there’s that euphemism again). Using this logic, I wonder if an abortion performed in public wouldn’t be constitutionally protected.
I’ve recently read critics of Gonzales v. Carhart complain that Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion focuses too much on the procedure itself. How else could the party with the smallest voice and the most to lose be represented?
I keep thinking back to Justice Ginsburg’s comment that the recent decision banning partial-birth abortion was “alarming.” I wonder if she thinks it was any more alarming than what that 26 week fetus had to endure?
Thanks for that I d id remove your name before forwarding. You know I can at times be crude but I would like to add one other choice women have to your above list. They can spread their legs or keep them shut. Personally, until such time as they are old enough and stable enough to support and want a child, I think keeping them shut would be their best choice.