“Next week [March 29], as trial begins in New York, Nebraska, and California, the Justice Department will work vigorously to defend the law prohibiting partial-birth abortions. The Department will be devoting all resources necessary to defend the bipartisan findings of Congress that this violent practice is unnecessary, as well as painful and cruel to the partially-born child. A bipartisan majority in Congress reached this conclusion after eight years of testimony from respected medical professionals who stated that partial-birth abortion is never medically necessary.”
A statement issued last week by a Justice Department spokeswoman.
I used the time waiting for my youngest to get ready for her soccer match Saturday morning to quickly skim over the abortion-related headlines online. Here’s one we ought to keep.
Referring to NARAL president Kate Michelman, the headline writer for the San Francisco Chronicle opined, “Activist warns that Bush wants limits on abortion.” You don’t say? The second sentence was almost anti-climatic: “Rights group's leader urges vote for Kerry.”
On other hand, while we will read three gazillion words over the next seven months, this headline does have the advantage of cutting right to the chase, doesn’t it? To the average citizen the message is, if you want limits on abortion, vote for George W. Bush. If you’re comfortable with vacuuming out the brains of almost fully developed, almost fully delivered unborn children, then John Kerry is your kind of guy.
Today is a day rich in symbolism. From sea to shining sea, the abortion-without-apology crowd is challenging the new Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.
Courts on each coast–New York City and San Francisco–and one in middle America –Lincoln, Nebraska–will hear criticisms from the likes of the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, and the National Abortion Federation (NAF) challenging the ban signed into law last November by President Bush. In response the Justice Department will vigorously rebut charges that (a) the narrowly and specifically written law would ban the use of other abortion techniques, and (b) the law is unconstitutional because it does not contain a health exception.
As was pointed out by Al Kamen of the Washington Post this morning, it is serendipitous that all three trials should commence the same day. The Justice Department had sought a firm court date “no more than four months after the initial filing of the lawsuits, and all three judges chose today, about the last day of that period.”
To Kamen’s credit, of all the stories I read online this morning, his was the only one to remind the reader that the law passed “handily” in both Houses of Congress and that a sizeable number of Democrats voted in favor. While pro-abortion Democrats in the Senate were especially ingenious in trying to sidetrack an up-or-down vote on the law, in the end 17 Senate Democrats voted for the measure, joining 62 of their Democratic colleagues in the House.
Once procedural obstacles were cleared away (along with counterfeit “substitutes”), a lot of Democrats thought better of opposing a proposal backed by an overwhelming majority of the American people. [Much the same occurred last week, when the Unborn Victims of Violence Act survived a killer amendment by Sen. Dianne Feinstein.]
Just one quick word about the tenacious, ongoing battle over abortion records.
Pro-abortion plaintiffs contend they must–just MUST–have access to the grisly partial-birth abortion technique because sometimes it is needed to preserve a woman’s “health.” But they’ve fought tooth and nail the Justice Department’s eminently reasonable request to see the records (with all personal information removed) of women who’ve been aborted with this hideous technique to determine if that is true.
Two other points and we’ll be done for today. First, some news stories have been remarkably fair, others remarkably one-sided. When a reporter writes something that comes out of left field as if it is a fact rather than a concoction of the pro-abortion spin machine, don’t let them get away with it.
Newsday, for example, wrote this morning, “The New York case, which includes seven physicians among the plaintiffs, challenges the ban that seeks to halt abortions 13 weeks [sic] and later in a pregnancy.” That is patently untrue. It is a talking point sent out to gullible/sympathetic reporters in furtherance of the pro-abortion game plan.
Second, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Casey has ruled that renowned pediatrician Dr. K.S. Anand can offer his considerable expertise on the issue of fetal pain. Dr. Anand’s carefully conducted work with newborns over a period of twenty years has persuaded this professor of pediatrics, anesthesiology, pharmacology, and neurobiology that the unborn child can experience pain at 20 weeks.
If we compared the legal sparring to a boxing match, winning in Congress was almost like a qualifying round. The real fight began when the bad guys won preliminary injunctions last November.
Round One was all the filings of legal briefs. We are, in effect, in Round Two. In those courts where the referee (the judge) is neutral, we have reason to believe we will prevail. In others, where he or she isn’t, it’ll be tougher going.
But this slugfest will ultimately make its way to the United States Supreme Court. All along the way, even if only by osmosis, the public will learn more and more about the disastrous fallout inherent in the vicious stupidity that is Roe v. Wade.
And the more the people learn, the better off the cause of life.
“Next week [March 29], as trial begins in New York, Nebraska, and California, the Justice Department will work vigorously to defend the law prohibiting partial-birth abortions. The Department will be devoting all resources necessary to defend the bipartisan findings of Congress that this violent practice is unnecessary, as well as painful and cruel to the partially-born child. A bipartisan majority in Congress reached this conclusion after eight years of testimony from respected medical professionals who stated that partial-birth abortion is never medically necessary.”