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Pro-Lifers Pushing the
Envelope Part One of Three By Dave Andrusko Good evening. Part Two reminds us of the importance of introducing pro-life youth to the legislative process. Part Three hails the good news coming out of Gallup. Over at "National Right to Life News Today" (www.nationalrighttolifenews.org), we have two lovely stories. One is the true life story of tenor Andrea Bocelli, the other is a terrific (if inadvertently) pro-life ad. Please send all and all of your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like join all those who are now following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha. The headline in yesterday's New York Times (the publication to which the Abortion Establishment has outsourced its PR) said a mouthful: "Abortion Foes Advance Cause at State Level." Mary Spaulding Balch, NRLC's director of state legislation, was merely stating an objective fact when she told John Leland, "This is a good year as far as victories."
Equally important--maybe more--is another point she made: increasingly more states are open to what Leland calls "restrictive laws," what we more accurately describe as protective laws. "I do get the impression that the climate is friendlier," Balch said. There are lots of places where we would quibble with Leland's summary numbers. He relies too much on the Guttmacher Institute, formerly the think-tank for PPFA. But the mega-point is right on the money, as pointed out by Nancy Northrup, president of the pro-abortion Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR): "What's different is that bills of serious consequence have actually passed." According to Leland, Northrup "characterized the volume of legislation as 'an avalanche.'" Which is the reason CRR is busier than at any point since the 1990s in filing suits against pro-life laws. Leland nicely captures how one state passing protective legislation models success for other states and how the deluge of pro-life legislation has a ripple effect. He writes that pro-lifers have "made the most impact at the state level, where laws passed in one state often appear in other legislatures in subsequent years. State laws also have the potential for national consequences by setting off court battles that challenge or limit the scope of Roe." There are matters that are oversimplified. The Supreme Court's 2007 ruling upholding the ban on partial-birth abortions did not "give lawmakers greater leeway to restrict abortion." That came always back in 1992 with the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision. What Gonzales v. Carhart did do is remind state legislators that the brick wall represented by former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor no longer existed. With respect to Nebraska's historic "Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act," Leland was merely recycling the pro-abortion line when he wrote that "much of the medical community says that this [the unborn child's ability to feel pain] does not happen before the third trimester, about 28 weeks." In fact, as the law reflects, the evidence is that the unborn child can experience pain no later than 20 weeks. What the Times may not know, or admit, we can happily fill in. The two laws our opponents are most afraid of are the Nebraska law (the priority legislation for our affiliate Nebraska RTL) and the comprehensive Oklahoma ultrasound law (the highest priority of our Oklahoma affiliate, Oklahomans for Life). These two critically important pieces of legislation came out of National Right to Life models supplied to the legislators by NRLC's state affiliates. All in all, Joseph W. Dellapenna, a law professor at Villanova University and the author of "Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History," got it right when he told the Times, "The right-to-life folks are seeing just how far they can push things." But, again, that's nothing new. That's why we have 50 state affiliates and a hugely effective State Legislation Department--to push the envelope. Editor's note. We reviewed
Prof. Dellapenna's book in two separate installments in National
Right to Life News.
http://www.nrlc.org/news/2006/NRL01/HTML/MythsPage17.html
and As good as the book was, the reviews were even better. |
