July 9, 2000

Abortion Issue Advocates Duck Reality and Better Way

The more that the U.S. Supreme Court tinkers with abortion, the closer it gets to legalizing infanticide – an ultimate position resulting from the eagerness of liberal justices 27 years ago to establish social laws Congress refused to adopt.

The Court admitted by 5-4 decision in Section VIII of its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision: “The Constitution does not explicitly mention any right of privacy. However, the Court has recognized that a right of privacy does exist …. by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment (equal protection of the laws).”

In striking down a Nebraska law banning “partial birth abortions,” the court last week attempted – again by a one-vote margin -- to justify its mistake a generation ago.

Abortion advocates were jubilant. “Right-to-life” proponents were disheartened but pointed out that the narrowly divided opinion hinged on a quibble.

The ban on partial-birth abortions was not declared illegal. The stumbling block was simply that the Nebraska law – adopted by the legislature with only one contrary vote – did not specify an exception “for the health of the mother.”

Thus, similar anti-abortion laws in 30 other state legislatures – including Florida -- are subject only to amendments favoring mother health.

Pro-choice people are pleased that the health issue is one to be determined by the abortionist. Critics believe health necessity would be invoked whenever wished by the woman.

Everyone slides over the gruesome details.

So-called partial-birth abortions – described medically as “dilation and extraction,” or D&X – is performed about 600 times a year according to the Planned Parenthood Association. Total legal abortions for 1998 – the latest figures available – were 1.2 million.

What is never mentioned outside medical circles is that late-term D&X abortions often are performed explicitly to take – or deny – life of a deformed baby. This is justified on the basis that saving a deformed child would be condemning it to a life of pain and hopelessness.

Such a case can be defended, but the method can not. The procedure involves turning a baby in the womb so it emerges feet first – breach – puncturing its skull still in the birth canal and sucking out its brains.

Whatever language or letters employed to conceal a barbaric procedure, the abortionist and mother are but seconds away from murder – if not already.

In dissenting from the one-vote majority, Justice Clarence Thomas described late-term abortion as something “that millions find hard to distinguish from infanticide.”

Another dissenter, Justice Antonin Scalia, declared partial- birth abortion is “so horrible that the clinical description of it evokes a shudder of revulsion.”

The most common mid-term abortion – that no one talks about – is perhaps even more unsettling. Called “dilation and evacuation,” or D&E, it consists of reaching up into the woman’s womb with a pliers, twisting off the arms and legs of the “fetus” and removing all “fetal material.”

Even in premature death, the developing human being is robbed of its personhood dignity. It is a revelation that pro- abortion advocates can not bear to speak plainly and so make up euphemisms to hide unpleasant facts.

Surely medical science can apply a painless, lethal injection before maiming a creature that reacts to pain and other stimuli. Physicians say developing babies at five months flex their muscles, hear music and detect their mothers’ moods.

George W. Bush, Republican presidential candidate and governor of Texas where the Roe v. Wade case originated, said he was “disappointed” by the Court’s interpretation of the Nebraska law.

Al Gore, vice-president and Democratic presidential candidate, said, “One extra vote on the wrong side of those issues would change the outcome, and a woman’s right to choose would be taken away.”

On the abortion issue, there is bright-line difference between the two candidates. Whichever one is elected probably will have the privilege of nominating at least two Supreme Court justices – maybe four.

One vote difference in Roe v. Wade, or in the Nebraska ban, would have swung the law to pro-life.

Not that this would have changed reality in the long run. Abortions – spontaneous or induced – have existed since the beginning of time. There is a need to take over from Mother Nature on occasion.

It is impossible to regulate abortion by fiat. Roe v. Wade will be overruled eventually. Legal bans on certain abortion procedures will be rendered meaningless by “health of the mother” exceptions.

Justice Scalia summed up reality in his dissent: “The possibility of limiting abortion by legislative means has been rendered impossible by our decisions from Roe v. Wade to Stenberg v. Carhart [limiting protests at abortion clinics].

“For those who share an abiding moral and religious conviction – or, for that matter, simply a biological appreciation – abortion is the taking of a human life. There is no option but to persuade women, one by one, not to make that choice.”

As the father of four adopted children, I have one other suggestion – government-paid pre-natal care of unwed mothers for full-term delivery of a baby for adoption.

There is a better way than the options now debated.

Lindsey Williams is a Sun-Herald columnist and can be reached at linwms@lindseywilliams.org