"The federal government will remain very much involved in the abortion business either directly or indirectly by financing it.
One thing I believe for certain is that the federal government should never tax pro-life citizens to pay for abortions. The constant effort by the pro-choice crowd to fund abortion must rank among the stupidest policies ever, even from their viewpoint. All they accomplish is to give valiant motivation for all pro-life forces as well as the anti-tax supporters of abortion to fight against them.
A society that readily condones abortion invites attacks on personal liberty. If all life is not precious, how can all liberty be held up as important? It seems that if some life can be thrown away, our right to personally choose what is best for us is more difficult to defend. I've become convinced that resolving the abortion issue is required for a healthy defense of a free society." -Pages 5 & 6 of Liberty Defined
Showing posts with label Abortion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Abortion. Show all posts
Monday, September 12, 2011
"Another aspect of this debate needs to be resolved...."
"Another aspect of this debate needs to be resolved: If an abortion doctor performs a third-trimester abortion for whatever reason, a handsome fee is paid and it's perfectly legal in some states. If a frightened teenager, possibly not even knowing she was pregnant, delivers a baby and she kills it, the police are out en masse to charge her with homicide. What really is so different between the fetus one minute before birth and a newborn one minute after birth? Biologically and morally, nothing. We must also answer the grim question of what should be done with a newborn that inadvertently survives an abortion. It happens more than you might think. Doctors have been accused of murder since the baby died after delivery, but that hardly seems just. The real question is, how can a human infant have such relative value attached to it?
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The difference of lack thereof between a baby one minute after birth and one minute before needs to be quantified. The Congress or the courts are incapable of doing this. This is a profound issue to be determined by society itself based on the moral value it espouses.
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My argument is that the abortion problem is more of a social and moral issue than it is a legal one." -Pages 3-5 of Liberty Defined
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The difference of lack thereof between a baby one minute after birth and one minute before needs to be quantified. The Congress or the courts are incapable of doing this. This is a profound issue to be determined by society itself based on the moral value it espouses.
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My argument is that the abortion problem is more of a social and moral issue than it is a legal one." -Pages 3-5 of Liberty Defined
"Some people believe that being pro-choice is being on the..."
"Some people believe that being pro-choice is being on the side of freedom. I've never understood how an act of violence, killing a human being, albeit a small one in a special place, is portrayed as a precious right. To speak only of the mother's cost in carrying a baby to term ignores all thought of any legal rights of the unborn. I believe that the moral consequence of cavalierly accepting abortion diminishes the value of all life.
It is now widely accepted that there's a constitutional right to abort a human fetus. Of course, the Constitution says nothing about abortion, murder, manslaughter, or any other acts of violence. There are only four crimes listed in the Constitution: counterfeiting, piracy, treason, and slavery. Criminal and civil laws were deliberately left to the states. It's a giant leap for the federal courts to declare abortion a constitutional right and overrule all state laws regulating the procedure. If anything, the federal government has a responsibility to protect life- not grant permission to destroy it.
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Almost all regulations by the federal government to protect us from ourselves (laws against smoking, bans on narcotics, and mandatory seat belts, for example) are readily supported by the left/liberals who demand "choice." Of course, to the pro-choice group, the precious choice we debate is limited to the mother and not to the unborn.
The fact is that the fetus has legal rights - inheritance, a right not to be injured or aborted by unwise medical treatment, violence, or accidents. Ignoring these rights is arbitrary and places relative rights on a small, living human being. The only issue that should be debated is the moral one: whether or not a fetus has any right to life. Scientifically, there's no debate over whether the fetus is alive and human - if not killed, it matures into an adult human being. It is that simple. So the time line of when we consider a fetus "human" is arbitrary after conception, in my mind." -Pages 1-3 of Liberty Defined
It is now widely accepted that there's a constitutional right to abort a human fetus. Of course, the Constitution says nothing about abortion, murder, manslaughter, or any other acts of violence. There are only four crimes listed in the Constitution: counterfeiting, piracy, treason, and slavery. Criminal and civil laws were deliberately left to the states. It's a giant leap for the federal courts to declare abortion a constitutional right and overrule all state laws regulating the procedure. If anything, the federal government has a responsibility to protect life- not grant permission to destroy it.
....
Almost all regulations by the federal government to protect us from ourselves (laws against smoking, bans on narcotics, and mandatory seat belts, for example) are readily supported by the left/liberals who demand "choice." Of course, to the pro-choice group, the precious choice we debate is limited to the mother and not to the unborn.
The fact is that the fetus has legal rights - inheritance, a right not to be injured or aborted by unwise medical treatment, violence, or accidents. Ignoring these rights is arbitrary and places relative rights on a small, living human being. The only issue that should be debated is the moral one: whether or not a fetus has any right to life. Scientifically, there's no debate over whether the fetus is alive and human - if not killed, it matures into an adult human being. It is that simple. So the time line of when we consider a fetus "human" is arbitrary after conception, in my mind." -Pages 1-3 of Liberty Defined
"On one occasion in the 1960s when abortion was still illegal..."
"On one occasion in the 1960s when abortion was still illegal, I witnessed, while visiting a surgical suite as an OB/GYN resident, the abortion of a fetus that weighed approximately two pounds. It was placed in a bucket, crying and struggling to breathe, and the medical personnel pretended not to notice. Soon the crying stopped. This harrowing event forced me to think more seriously about this important issue.
That same day in the OB suite, an early delivery occurred and the infant born was only slightly larger than the one that was just aborted. But in this room everybody did everything conceivable to save this child's life. My conclusion that day was that we were overstepping the bounds of morality by picking and choosing who should live and who should die. These were human lives. There was no consistent moral basis to the value of life under these circumstances." -Page 1 of Liberty Defined
That same day in the OB suite, an early delivery occurred and the infant born was only slightly larger than the one that was just aborted. But in this room everybody did everything conceivable to save this child's life. My conclusion that day was that we were overstepping the bounds of morality by picking and choosing who should live and who should die. These were human lives. There was no consistent moral basis to the value of life under these circumstances." -Page 1 of Liberty Defined
Sunday, September 4, 2011
"When Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973..."
"When Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973, striking down abortion laws all over the country, even some supporters of abortion were embarrassed by the decision as a matter of constitutional law. John Hart Ely, for instance, wrote in the Yale Law Review: "What is frightening about Roe is that this super-protected right is not inferable from the language of the Constitution, the framers' thinking respecting the specific problem in issue, any general value derivable from the provisions they included, or the nation's governmental structure." The decision, he said, "is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try and be."
The federal government should not play any role in the abortion issue, according to the Constitution. Apart from waiting forever for the Supreme Court justices who will rule in accordance with the Constitution, however, Americans who care about our fundamental law and/or are concerned about abortion do have some legislative recourse. Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution gives Congress the power to strip the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, of jurisdiction over broad categories of cases. In the wake of the 1857 Dred Scott decision, abolitionists spoke of depriving the courts of jurisdiction in cases dealing with slavery. The courts were stripped of authority over Reconstruction policy in the late 1860's.
If the federal courts refuse to abide by the Constitution, the Congress should employ this constitutional remedy. By a simple majority, Congress could strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over abortion, thereby overturning the obviously unconstitutional Roe. At that point, the issue would revert to the states, where it constitutionally belongs, since no appeal to federal courts on the matter could be heard. (I have proposed exactly this in H.R. 300.)
Let us remember, though, that the law can do only so much. The law isn't what allowed abortion; abortions were already being done in the 1960s against the law. The courts came along and conformed to the social and moral changes that were taking place in society. Law reflects the morality of the people. Ultimately, law or no law, it is going to be up to us as parents, as clergy and as citizens- in the way we raise our children, how we interact and talk with our friends and neighbors, and the good example we give- to bring about changes to our culture toward greater respect for life." -Page 60 & 61 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
The federal government should not play any role in the abortion issue, according to the Constitution. Apart from waiting forever for the Supreme Court justices who will rule in accordance with the Constitution, however, Americans who care about our fundamental law and/or are concerned about abortion do have some legislative recourse. Article III, Section 2, of the Constitution gives Congress the power to strip the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, of jurisdiction over broad categories of cases. In the wake of the 1857 Dred Scott decision, abolitionists spoke of depriving the courts of jurisdiction in cases dealing with slavery. The courts were stripped of authority over Reconstruction policy in the late 1860's.
If the federal courts refuse to abide by the Constitution, the Congress should employ this constitutional remedy. By a simple majority, Congress could strip the federal courts of jurisdiction over abortion, thereby overturning the obviously unconstitutional Roe. At that point, the issue would revert to the states, where it constitutionally belongs, since no appeal to federal courts on the matter could be heard. (I have proposed exactly this in H.R. 300.)
Let us remember, though, that the law can do only so much. The law isn't what allowed abortion; abortions were already being done in the 1960s against the law. The courts came along and conformed to the social and moral changes that were taking place in society. Law reflects the morality of the people. Ultimately, law or no law, it is going to be up to us as parents, as clergy and as citizens- in the way we raise our children, how we interact and talk with our friends and neighbors, and the good example we give- to bring about changes to our culture toward greater respect for life." -Page 60 & 61 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
"One of the most contentious issues in our public life..."
"One of the most contentious issues in our public life over the past three and a half decades has been abortion. As a physician, and in particular as an obstetrician who has delivered over 4,000 babies, I have always had a special interest in the subject of abortion. When I studied medicine at Duke Medical School from 1957 to 1961, the subject was never raised. By the time of my medical residency at the University of Pittsburgh in the mid-1960s, though, wholesale defiance of the laws against abortion was taking place in various parts of the country, including my own.
Residents were encouraged to visit various operating rooms in order to observe the procedures that were being done. One day I walked into an operating room without knowing what I was walking into, and the doctors were in the middle of performing a C-section. It was actually an abortion by hysterotomy. The woman was probably six months along in her pregnancy, and the child she was carrying weighed over two pounds. At that time doctors were not especially sophisticated, for lack of a better term, when it came to killing the baby prior to delivery, so they went ahead with the delivery and put the baby in a bucket in the corner of the room. The baby tried to breathe, and tried to cry, and everyone in the room pretended the baby wasn't there. I was deeply shaken by this experience, and it hit me at that moment just how important the life issue was.
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The federal government should not play any role in the abortion issue, according to the Constitution. ... the issue would revert to the states, where it constitutionally belongs.
.....
To those who argue that we cannot allow the states to make decisions on abortion since some will make the wrong ones, I reply that this is an excellent argument for world government- for how can we allow individual countries to decide on abortion or other moral issues, if some may make the wrong decisions? Yes the dangers of a world government surely speak for themselves.
Let us therefore adopt the constitutional position, one that is achievable and can yield good results but that shuns the utopian idea that all evil can be eradicated. The Founding Fathers' approach will not solve all problems, and it will not be perfect. But anyone expecting perfection in this world is going to be consistently disappointed." Pages 58-61 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
Residents were encouraged to visit various operating rooms in order to observe the procedures that were being done. One day I walked into an operating room without knowing what I was walking into, and the doctors were in the middle of performing a C-section. It was actually an abortion by hysterotomy. The woman was probably six months along in her pregnancy, and the child she was carrying weighed over two pounds. At that time doctors were not especially sophisticated, for lack of a better term, when it came to killing the baby prior to delivery, so they went ahead with the delivery and put the baby in a bucket in the corner of the room. The baby tried to breathe, and tried to cry, and everyone in the room pretended the baby wasn't there. I was deeply shaken by this experience, and it hit me at that moment just how important the life issue was.
.....
The federal government should not play any role in the abortion issue, according to the Constitution. ... the issue would revert to the states, where it constitutionally belongs.
.....
To those who argue that we cannot allow the states to make decisions on abortion since some will make the wrong ones, I reply that this is an excellent argument for world government- for how can we allow individual countries to decide on abortion or other moral issues, if some may make the wrong decisions? Yes the dangers of a world government surely speak for themselves.
Let us therefore adopt the constitutional position, one that is achievable and can yield good results but that shuns the utopian idea that all evil can be eradicated. The Founding Fathers' approach will not solve all problems, and it will not be perfect. But anyone expecting perfection in this world is going to be consistently disappointed." Pages 58-61 of The Revolution, A Manifesto
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