A Chink In The Armor
How will the pro-abortion crowd spin this story? (HT: Michelle Malkin)
A majority of women in Britain want the abortion laws to be tightened to make it harder, or impossible, for them to terminate a pregnancy.
Evidence of a widespread public demand for the government to further restrict women's right to have an abortion is revealed in a remarkable Observer opinion poll. The findings have reignited the highly-charged debate on abortion, and increased the pressure on Tony Blair to review the current time limits.
The survey by MORI shows that 47 per cent of women believe the legal limit for an abortion should be cut from its present 24 weeks, and another 10 per cent want the practice outlawed altogether. Among the population overall, reducing the upper limit was the preferred option backed by the largest proportion of respondents, 42 per cent, made up of a 36-47 per cent split among men and women.
Only one person in three agreed that 'the current time limit is about right', with slightly fewer women (31 per cent) than men (35 per cent) saying that. Just 2 per cent of women and 5 per cent of men think the last possible date after which a woman can end a pregnancy should be increased from 24 weeks.
The leader of the 4.1 million Catholics in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, called on politicians last night to heed the evidence of a growing demand for a rethink on abortion policy, to include The Observer's findings. 'There has been a moral awakening over the last few years about abortion; the British public have been undergoing a reality check,' said his spokesman, Dr Austen Ivereigh. 'The Cardinal sees in this moral awakening a growing unease with, and erosion of, the idea of abortion as simply a woman's right.'
Increased awareness of the realities of abortion, and the impact of ultrasound images of a 23-week-old foetus smiling and grimacing, have made people change their views, said Ivereigh. The latter 'very dramatically showed that what had been depersonalised in many people's minds as a foetus was clearly seen to be a baby, a human being in formation, and that has come as a shock to many people', he added...
And Michelle adds this little tidbit to the story, which is, no doubt, influencing this change in attitude, written by her in 2003.
All of Britain was buzzing last week after a tabloid published highly controversial photos-not of a topless supermodel or two female pop singers kissing or Prince William in a grass skirt, but of angelic babies smiling in the womb.
The ultrasound images, taken between 26 and 34 weeks of conception, were released by Dr. Stuart Campbell and widely circulated on the Internet via the Drudge Report. Campbell's an obstetrician at the privately-run Create Healthcare clinic in London. For the past two years, the medical facility has offered state-of-the art 3-D/4-D scanning equipment services to expectant parents. Campbell performs an average of 30 scans a week. His outspoken enthusiasm for this blessed technology is refreshing. "Parents love them," he told the Mirror. "I hear so many couples laughing when they see the pictures - it's wonderful."
Campbell's high-tech window to the womb also shows the babies moving their limbs at 8 weeks, leaping and turning by 12 weeks, curling their toes and fingers at 15 weeks, and yawning at 20 weeks. The clients' reactions are overwhelming, Campbell said, "especially with fathers, who rarely get involved. Before they sat in the corner. Now they really show emotion. I enjoy scanning and looking at babies. It is so informative about babies and behavior. Every scan is an adventure."
How have pro-abortion activists abroad reacted after seeing the happy, grinning photos of these unborn babies? With reflexive scowls and dour grimaces, naturally.
Anne Karpf, a commentator for the British-based Guardian who bills herself as a "medical sociologist," says the photos are "deeply disquieting" and ridicules the anti-abortion lobby for being "intoxicated with evidence of a fetus's humanity." (God forbid this cold woman ever be exposed to a pregnant mommy experiencing the undiluted joy of a baby kicking inside her for the first time.) Australian Birth Control Services medical director Geoff Brodie complained that the photos "will be picked up by those groups that use anything and everything to stop terminations but ignore the fact that women have a right to choice."
Karpf, Brodie, and their deathmates are enraged that Dr. Campbell is so gleefully showing the world that the vibrant life inside a mother's womb is much more than inanimate and disembodied material. How dare anyone suggest that the booming business of "terminations" is tantamount to mass murder?
Here in America, the pro-abortion lobby is having the same toxic reaction. It was bad enough when conventional, 2-D sonograms revealed unborn hearts beating and blurry hands waving, but the abortionists are absolutely aghast over rapidly spreading access to 3-D/4-D ultrasound technology. When General Electric began running incredibly moving ads last year celebrating the company's new innovations in sonography, a writer for the liberal American Prospect complained the commercials were "a milieu of clever illusion" that "blur[red] the distinction between a fetus and a newborn infant." This from the masters of deception who gave us the infamous euphemisms "fetal matter" and "uterine tissue," which have successfully blurred the distinction between human life and disposable Kleenex for more than three decades.
Similarly, pro-abortion advocates have attacked legislation in Congress, introduced by Fla. Republican Cliff Stearns, which would guarantee free ultrasound screenings to any woman who visits a non-profit crisis pregnancy center that receives subsidies for sonogram equipment. Kathryn Allen, Planned Parenthood spokeswoman, griped: "With all the problems going on in our world, I can't imagine that Congress would spend its time and energy on ultrasound for anyone." Alison Herwitt, director of government relations for NARAL Pro-Choice America in Washington, also attacked pro-life supporters of the bill: "They don't want women to go to Planned Parenthood, where they'll get their full range of options," said Alison Herwitt, "They just want them to go to crisis pregnancy centers, where women will be exposed to this weapon at taxpayers' expense."
Liberals in America are all for the government giving away any health services for free-except if it's a service that has the ability to persuade a wavering patient to preserve a life instead of end it. These amazing advances in golden-hued ultrasound have illuminated an insurmountable truth: No amount of NARAL money or NOW screeching can overcome the persuasive power of an unborn child's beaming face.
I know many people are turned off by this debate, and I know why; there's too much emotion involved in it. From the raving death dealers themselves to the Christian activists that look at this grisly practice as an affront to God. For the record, I'm Catholic and I dislike the practice of abortion, but not for reasons that most would assume. True, I believe that the practice is an abomination, but what is more disturbing to me is the fact that nine unelected judges decided this issue for everyone in America.
That's not how it's done, and the Left's cavalcade of moonbats should remember that. When the government has no control over an issue in the forefront of America, it resides in the purview of the states to decide the matter. You want to smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes? Sorry, it's a controlled substance under the FDA regulations and the Controlled Substances Act. You want to kill your baby for whatever reason, and the feds haven't ruled on it, I'm sorry, but your state sets the rules. But in 1973, that wisdom was flushed straight down the toilet in more ways than one.
Abortion wasn't decided through careful, thoughtful jurisprudence. It was decided based on emotion, and the worst sort. It was reactionary and unwarranted. What's worse is that Roe wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back. No, it was the case decided later in the day in Doe v. Bolton which opened the doors to abortion on demand. Which is where we are today. What is worse is as Congress has tried to curtail the act, in attempting to make late-term abortions illegal, the pro-abortion nuts went out in full force. They filed injunctions to prevent the implementation of the law, screaming to high heaven that it violated a woman's "right to choose."
And that is another fallacy in this argument: The inclusion of things that aren't an enumerated right. Abortion was not added to the Constitution via an amendment. Nor did women gain a right to choose through the amending process. Liberal lawyers who peddle these arguments, ladies and gentlemen, are nitwits. You can't defend a right that doesn't exist. Yes, as a "lay scholar" on Constitutional Law, I recognize the idea of precedent, or stare decisis. Here's my answer to that argument.
"Stare decisis is for suckers."
Both Chief Justice Roberts and soon-to-be Associate Justice Alito have maintained that stare decisis, while important, is not the end all, be all for the law. In fact, many scholars are beginning to agree that rulings such as Roe that were decided badly, should be reconsidered and revisited. No one wants to, which is where we go back to the unhinged emotion on both sides. While I'm sympathetic with the cause of the Right, and abhor the stance of the Left, my only answer to both sides is simple, and straight-forward.
Shut up, already!
They're not going to change anyone's opinions regarding the issue. This issue will only be resolved by making the Supreme Court reexamine it's mistake; the trumping of the right of the states to make law to govern their citizens. The strategy is quite simple, and one that I've dubbed "The Tenth Amendment Trump." It's well within the boundaries set forth by the Framers in regard to what is and isn't Constitutional. If the government doesn't already have it's meddling hands in something, it falls to the states to deal with.
But the story from Britain is one that should bring hope to the pro-life people. We adopted the practice of abortion on the heels of Europe's approval of the act. True that as Justice Blackmun's majority opinion included a comprehensive history of the practice with very little reinforcement through jurisprudence. If times are indeed changing, as are sentiments, this debate could reach a climax within the next few years. Roe could be overturned, and returned to the states where it belongs.
Make no mistake, this doesn't solve the practice. In the hands of the states, we know that more than one or two will adopt the practice as the law of their land. Abortion won't be outlawed, as the liars in the pro-abortion camp keep claiming. This is why they aren't lawyers; inherently, these people have zero knowledge--even basic knowledge--of how the Constitution works, and what happenes when a decision is overturned. Sens. Feinstein and Boxer can climb down off of their soapboxes, Sen. Kennedy can quit tossing in the Borking attacks on conservatives. We are not returning to an age of "back-alley abortions" and violations of "women's rights." We would be returning the proper balance of the laws and the courts to where they were before this decision was rendered.
The story from Britain brings a smile to my face in that people are starting to realize this practice is brutal and uncalled for, unless in extreme circumstances. What was created in 1973 was a license to murder. Hopefull, within the next few years, that license will be revoked.
Publius II
How will the pro-abortion crowd spin this story? (HT: Michelle Malkin)
A majority of women in Britain want the abortion laws to be tightened to make it harder, or impossible, for them to terminate a pregnancy.
Evidence of a widespread public demand for the government to further restrict women's right to have an abortion is revealed in a remarkable Observer opinion poll. The findings have reignited the highly-charged debate on abortion, and increased the pressure on Tony Blair to review the current time limits.
The survey by MORI shows that 47 per cent of women believe the legal limit for an abortion should be cut from its present 24 weeks, and another 10 per cent want the practice outlawed altogether. Among the population overall, reducing the upper limit was the preferred option backed by the largest proportion of respondents, 42 per cent, made up of a 36-47 per cent split among men and women.
Only one person in three agreed that 'the current time limit is about right', with slightly fewer women (31 per cent) than men (35 per cent) saying that. Just 2 per cent of women and 5 per cent of men think the last possible date after which a woman can end a pregnancy should be increased from 24 weeks.
The leader of the 4.1 million Catholics in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, called on politicians last night to heed the evidence of a growing demand for a rethink on abortion policy, to include The Observer's findings. 'There has been a moral awakening over the last few years about abortion; the British public have been undergoing a reality check,' said his spokesman, Dr Austen Ivereigh. 'The Cardinal sees in this moral awakening a growing unease with, and erosion of, the idea of abortion as simply a woman's right.'
Increased awareness of the realities of abortion, and the impact of ultrasound images of a 23-week-old foetus smiling and grimacing, have made people change their views, said Ivereigh. The latter 'very dramatically showed that what had been depersonalised in many people's minds as a foetus was clearly seen to be a baby, a human being in formation, and that has come as a shock to many people', he added...
And Michelle adds this little tidbit to the story, which is, no doubt, influencing this change in attitude, written by her in 2003.
All of Britain was buzzing last week after a tabloid published highly controversial photos-not of a topless supermodel or two female pop singers kissing or Prince William in a grass skirt, but of angelic babies smiling in the womb.
The ultrasound images, taken between 26 and 34 weeks of conception, were released by Dr. Stuart Campbell and widely circulated on the Internet via the Drudge Report. Campbell's an obstetrician at the privately-run Create Healthcare clinic in London. For the past two years, the medical facility has offered state-of-the art 3-D/4-D scanning equipment services to expectant parents. Campbell performs an average of 30 scans a week. His outspoken enthusiasm for this blessed technology is refreshing. "Parents love them," he told the Mirror. "I hear so many couples laughing when they see the pictures - it's wonderful."
Campbell's high-tech window to the womb also shows the babies moving their limbs at 8 weeks, leaping and turning by 12 weeks, curling their toes and fingers at 15 weeks, and yawning at 20 weeks. The clients' reactions are overwhelming, Campbell said, "especially with fathers, who rarely get involved. Before they sat in the corner. Now they really show emotion. I enjoy scanning and looking at babies. It is so informative about babies and behavior. Every scan is an adventure."
How have pro-abortion activists abroad reacted after seeing the happy, grinning photos of these unborn babies? With reflexive scowls and dour grimaces, naturally.
Anne Karpf, a commentator for the British-based Guardian who bills herself as a "medical sociologist," says the photos are "deeply disquieting" and ridicules the anti-abortion lobby for being "intoxicated with evidence of a fetus's humanity." (God forbid this cold woman ever be exposed to a pregnant mommy experiencing the undiluted joy of a baby kicking inside her for the first time.) Australian Birth Control Services medical director Geoff Brodie complained that the photos "will be picked up by those groups that use anything and everything to stop terminations but ignore the fact that women have a right to choice."
Karpf, Brodie, and their deathmates are enraged that Dr. Campbell is so gleefully showing the world that the vibrant life inside a mother's womb is much more than inanimate and disembodied material. How dare anyone suggest that the booming business of "terminations" is tantamount to mass murder?
Here in America, the pro-abortion lobby is having the same toxic reaction. It was bad enough when conventional, 2-D sonograms revealed unborn hearts beating and blurry hands waving, but the abortionists are absolutely aghast over rapidly spreading access to 3-D/4-D ultrasound technology. When General Electric began running incredibly moving ads last year celebrating the company's new innovations in sonography, a writer for the liberal American Prospect complained the commercials were "a milieu of clever illusion" that "blur[red] the distinction between a fetus and a newborn infant." This from the masters of deception who gave us the infamous euphemisms "fetal matter" and "uterine tissue," which have successfully blurred the distinction between human life and disposable Kleenex for more than three decades.
Similarly, pro-abortion advocates have attacked legislation in Congress, introduced by Fla. Republican Cliff Stearns, which would guarantee free ultrasound screenings to any woman who visits a non-profit crisis pregnancy center that receives subsidies for sonogram equipment. Kathryn Allen, Planned Parenthood spokeswoman, griped: "With all the problems going on in our world, I can't imagine that Congress would spend its time and energy on ultrasound for anyone." Alison Herwitt, director of government relations for NARAL Pro-Choice America in Washington, also attacked pro-life supporters of the bill: "They don't want women to go to Planned Parenthood, where they'll get their full range of options," said Alison Herwitt, "They just want them to go to crisis pregnancy centers, where women will be exposed to this weapon at taxpayers' expense."
Liberals in America are all for the government giving away any health services for free-except if it's a service that has the ability to persuade a wavering patient to preserve a life instead of end it. These amazing advances in golden-hued ultrasound have illuminated an insurmountable truth: No amount of NARAL money or NOW screeching can overcome the persuasive power of an unborn child's beaming face.
I know many people are turned off by this debate, and I know why; there's too much emotion involved in it. From the raving death dealers themselves to the Christian activists that look at this grisly practice as an affront to God. For the record, I'm Catholic and I dislike the practice of abortion, but not for reasons that most would assume. True, I believe that the practice is an abomination, but what is more disturbing to me is the fact that nine unelected judges decided this issue for everyone in America.
That's not how it's done, and the Left's cavalcade of moonbats should remember that. When the government has no control over an issue in the forefront of America, it resides in the purview of the states to decide the matter. You want to smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes? Sorry, it's a controlled substance under the FDA regulations and the Controlled Substances Act. You want to kill your baby for whatever reason, and the feds haven't ruled on it, I'm sorry, but your state sets the rules. But in 1973, that wisdom was flushed straight down the toilet in more ways than one.
Abortion wasn't decided through careful, thoughtful jurisprudence. It was decided based on emotion, and the worst sort. It was reactionary and unwarranted. What's worse is that Roe wasn't the straw that broke the camel's back. No, it was the case decided later in the day in Doe v. Bolton which opened the doors to abortion on demand. Which is where we are today. What is worse is as Congress has tried to curtail the act, in attempting to make late-term abortions illegal, the pro-abortion nuts went out in full force. They filed injunctions to prevent the implementation of the law, screaming to high heaven that it violated a woman's "right to choose."
And that is another fallacy in this argument: The inclusion of things that aren't an enumerated right. Abortion was not added to the Constitution via an amendment. Nor did women gain a right to choose through the amending process. Liberal lawyers who peddle these arguments, ladies and gentlemen, are nitwits. You can't defend a right that doesn't exist. Yes, as a "lay scholar" on Constitutional Law, I recognize the idea of precedent, or stare decisis. Here's my answer to that argument.
"Stare decisis is for suckers."
Both Chief Justice Roberts and soon-to-be Associate Justice Alito have maintained that stare decisis, while important, is not the end all, be all for the law. In fact, many scholars are beginning to agree that rulings such as Roe that were decided badly, should be reconsidered and revisited. No one wants to, which is where we go back to the unhinged emotion on both sides. While I'm sympathetic with the cause of the Right, and abhor the stance of the Left, my only answer to both sides is simple, and straight-forward.
Shut up, already!
They're not going to change anyone's opinions regarding the issue. This issue will only be resolved by making the Supreme Court reexamine it's mistake; the trumping of the right of the states to make law to govern their citizens. The strategy is quite simple, and one that I've dubbed "The Tenth Amendment Trump." It's well within the boundaries set forth by the Framers in regard to what is and isn't Constitutional. If the government doesn't already have it's meddling hands in something, it falls to the states to deal with.
But the story from Britain is one that should bring hope to the pro-life people. We adopted the practice of abortion on the heels of Europe's approval of the act. True that as Justice Blackmun's majority opinion included a comprehensive history of the practice with very little reinforcement through jurisprudence. If times are indeed changing, as are sentiments, this debate could reach a climax within the next few years. Roe could be overturned, and returned to the states where it belongs.
Make no mistake, this doesn't solve the practice. In the hands of the states, we know that more than one or two will adopt the practice as the law of their land. Abortion won't be outlawed, as the liars in the pro-abortion camp keep claiming. This is why they aren't lawyers; inherently, these people have zero knowledge--even basic knowledge--of how the Constitution works, and what happenes when a decision is overturned. Sens. Feinstein and Boxer can climb down off of their soapboxes, Sen. Kennedy can quit tossing in the Borking attacks on conservatives. We are not returning to an age of "back-alley abortions" and violations of "women's rights." We would be returning the proper balance of the laws and the courts to where they were before this decision was rendered.
The story from Britain brings a smile to my face in that people are starting to realize this practice is brutal and uncalled for, unless in extreme circumstances. What was created in 1973 was a license to murder. Hopefull, within the next few years, that license will be revoked.
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 2:05 PM
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