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NRL News
WAILING
FROM THE PRO-ABORTION IVORY TOWERS By now most pro-lifers will have learned that on April 18, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. In 1992, Dr. Martin Haskell presented this horrific abortion method to a meeting of fellow abortionists. NRLC’s incomparable Douglas Johnson got a copy of Haskell’s step-by-step instructional paper—and, as they say, “the rest is history.” But remember this history amounted to fourteen years of hard work and an enormous expenditure of money before partial-birth abortions were finally banned. Along the way, we suffered setbacks in the form of two vetoes by Bill Clinton, a hostile main-stream press, a barrage of lies by the abortion pressure groups, and a multitude of adverse court decisions. The Supreme Court’s latest decision, Gonzales v. Carhart, does not abolish a woman’s so-called “constitutional right” to an abortion. It only upholds the congressional ban on one specific abortion method. Yet, the abortionists’ and pro-abortionists’ reaction to the Court decision goes beyond the expected (namely, fund appeals and exhortations to retake the White House in 2008): there is a sense of betrayal and cold fury. First, the Court had given them an invaluable gift by inventing a “constitutional right” to abortion. Then, for 34 years, the Court had been providing abortionists with a free-fire zone, declaring all sorts of abortion regulations unconstitutional “on the face of it” because they did not contain all-purpose “health” exceptions to the Court’s liking. But beyond these legal milestones, there had been something deeply satisfying to the “enlightened” pro-abortionists: the Supreme Court’s pro-abortion majorities had accepted the language and world view of this new ideology. Killing her unborn child was not only a mother’s right, it was “central” to her becoming a full human being. Abortionists, once considered low criminals, were now professionals nobly serving women. And killing (“according to the best judgment of her physician”) was done to advance “health.” Clearly, the Supreme Court’s pro-abortion majority had been light years ahead of the stupid, church-going, right-wing-nuts voting pro-life. With its Stenberg v. Carhart decision of 2000, the progressive Court majority had told those people in Nebraska to take their partial-birth abortion ban and forget about it. Like a beacon, the Court had been projecting sheer enlightenment through the country, creating quite a few “penumbras,” to be sure. And now WHAT is in Gonzales v. Carhart? “Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child”? The government has “legitimate interests in regulating the medical profession in order to promote respect for life, including life of the unborn”? “It was reasonable for Congress to think that partial-birth abortion… ’undermines the public’s perception of the appropriate role of a physician during the delivery process, and perverts a process during which life is brought into the world’”? And “the law need not give abortion doctors unfettered choice in the course of their medical practice, nor should it elevate their status above other physicians in the medical community”? It is time for progressive minds to become unhinged. Let me give you two examples of unhinged progressives. The first is a member of the medical elite: Dr. Michael F. Green, an associate editor of the New England Journal of Medicine [NEJM], the world’s most prestigious medical journal. Dr. Green is professor of obstetrics, gynecology, and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School and director of obstetrics at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The second is a member of the judicial elite: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Justice Ginsburg is a radical pro-abortionist who was appointed by Bill Clinton after pro-life Justice Byron White retired in 1993. Commenting on Gonzales v. Carhart, Dr. Green wrote in an editorial in the NEJM (4/23/2007): “A Dutch oncologist was describing to an audience of American physicians … the circumstances under which euthanasia was performed in the Netherlands at a time when the practice was illegal yet widely used. Each act of euthanasia was reported, after the fact, to the local prosecutor, who investigated the case and routinely declined to prosecute any treating physician who had acted transparently and in the best interest of the terminally ill patient [who must have testified from the grave]…. The Americans had no confidence that their own judicial system would judge them fairly under similar circumstances… “This lack of confidence that the U.S. judicial system would treat them fairly has cast a pall over those who practice reproductive medicine [i.e., perform abortions] as they consider the recent decision by the Supreme Court, in Gonzales v. Carhart, to uphold the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. The ruling creates an intimidating environment surrounding pregnancy terminations at more advanced gestational ages.” First note that Dr. Green seems to be quite comfortable with the perversion of the medical art of healing into the executioner’s trade of killing—all “in the best interest” of the patient, of course. And it’s only “fair” that the judicial system looks the other way. But now something awful has happened with Gonzales v. Carhart. There is “a pall over … reproductive medicine” (the most insidious euphemism yet for “abortion”) and “an intimidating environment surrounding pregnancy ter-minations.” And he is also “alarmed by the … intrusion by our government into the practice of medicine.” Poor Dr. Green, he must have overlooked all the other government intrusions into medicine. Justice Ginsburg is, of course, the quintessential progressive justice: we liberal justices make new law, you conservatives accept the judge-made law as “precedent”—and all will be fine. But things were definitely not fine with Gonzales v. Carhart. In her dissent, she demands a return to the good old days of precedents informed by good progressive thinking in lieu of the Constitution, the all-overwhelming “health” exception, and the judicial arrogance expressed in the likes of the Stenberg v. Carhart decision. Justice Ginsburg at last gives full expression to her deep annoyance with the Court’s new cultural tone: “The Court’s hostility to the right Roe and Casey secured is not concealed. Throughout, the [majority] opinion refers to obstetrician-gynecologists and surgeons who perform abortions not by the titles of their medical specialties, but by the pejorative label ‘abortion doctor’ [which is, in fact, the mainstream media’s ‘politically correct’ term]. A fetus is described as an ‘unborn child,’ and as a ‘baby’.” Oh, where will the horror stop. |