Abortion holocaust anniversary: 50 million dead
By Krista Kafer (krista555@msn.com)
On January 22, 1973 the Supreme Court struck down most state laws protecting unborn children in the notorious Roe vs. Wade decision. Thirty-four years and 50 million lives later, there seems to be no end in sight for this American holocaust. New “uses” for unborn children as scientific guinea pigs does not bode well; as Eli Whitney’s cotton gin accelerated the demand for slaves, new “uses” for unborn children will likely increase the death toll. Although legislative victories have reduced the incidence of abortion since the late 1990’s, new technology could unleash the demand for human life.
Recent articles foretell a dark road ahead of science used to create and exploit human life. A chilling January Economist article described how scientists are using cloning technology to create human embryos and fusing them with cells from other species. Less macabre but more tragic, a U.S. News and Weekly Report article heralds pre-implantation testing on in vitro embryos to “weed out” those with genetic diseases. Such tests, however, are “increasingly… being used for choices that are less clearly beneficial to the child” such as sex selection,” the article states. The implication here is that death is a benefit to a disabled child but not one for simply being a girl or a boy.
Another January article in U.S. News said that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists are now recommending that all pregnant women receive screening to check for Down syndrome in the first trimester “allowing plenty of adjustment time… or an opportunity for an early abortion.” Again, the use of science to “weed out” disabled children is heralded as a good thing. While the magazine may quibble with less noble reasons to snuff out a life, the distinction is quite arbitrary. Whether a child dies because of her gender, disability, or the timing of her conception, she joins the yearly million casualties of choice.
The author can be reached at John@BackBoneAmerica.net
Over 3,500 terminations per day, over 1.3 MILLION per year in the United States alone.
50 or 60 MILLION per year World Wide.
Sometime in the not too distant future, people will look back with disbelief and horror
by ausblog | Tuesday, Jan 23, 2007 | 6:58 pmat many of the practices of today.
I have found some evidence that proves that a fetus is a living human being…….
The Unborn Victims of Violence Act is a United States law which defines violent assault committed against pregnant women as being a crime against two persons: the woman and the fetus she carries.
This law was passed in 2004 after the murder of the then pregnant Laci Peterson and her fetus, Connor Peterson.
by ausblog | Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 | 2:50 amAnd this,
The “born alive” rule is a legal principle that holds that various aspects of the criminal law, such as the statutes relating to homicide and to assault, apply only to a child that is “born alive”. Recent advances in the state of medical science have led to court decisions that have overturned this rule, and in several jurisdictions statutes have been explicitly framed or amended to include unborn children.
The born alive rule was originally a principle at common law in England that was carried to the United States. Its original basis was that because of the (then) state of medical science and because of the rate of still births and miscarriages, it was impossible to determine whether a child would be a living being. This inability to determine whether a child in the womb was in fact alive, and would be successfully born, had ramifications with respect to the laws relating to assault and to homicide. (It is not possible to kill a child that has already died, for example.) Thus the act of a live birth was taken to be the point at which it could be reliably determined, in law, that the various laws applied.[1][2]
However, advances in the state of the art in medical science, including ultrasonography, foetal heart monitoring, and foetoscopy, have since made it possible to determine that a child is alive within the womb, and as a consequence many jurisdictions, in particular in the United States, have taken steps to supplant or abolish this common law principle.[1]
As of 2002, 23 states in the United States still employed the rule, to lesser or greater extent.[2]
The abolition of the rule has proceeded piecemeal, from case to case and from statute to statute, rather than wholesale. One such landmark case with respect to the rule was Commonwealth vs. Cass, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, where the court held that the stillbirth of an eight-month-old foetus, whose mother had been injured by a motorist, constituted vehicular homicide. By a majority decision, the Supreme Court of Massachusetts held that the foetus constituted a “person” for the purposes of the Massachusetts statute relating to vehicular homicide. In the opinion of the justices, “We think that the better rule is that infliction of perinatal injuries resulting in the death of a viable foetus, before or after it is born, is homicide.
by ausblog | Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 | 5:42 amI genuinely detest telling other people what to do, which is at the very core of why I have been a life-long Republican. I honestly don’t think it is my place, either morally or ethically, to order a pregnant woman to bear a child using the brutal power of the State.
I don’t agree that a fertilized embryo has an absolute right to life, and rather doubt that Krista would appreciate it if our government stopped her on the street and injected an embryo into her uterus. But those of you who adopt this extremist position would have to agree that that would be a permissible use of state power, under your worldview.
When is an embryo and/or fetus entitled to legal protection? I don’t presume to have a conclusive answer and daresay that you don’t, either. Why isn’t it prudent to leave that decision in the hands of the people who have to pay the freight?
by Suitably Appalled | Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 | 10:07 amAusblog wrote:
The Unborn Victims of Violence Act is a United States law which defines violent assault committed against pregnant women as being a crime against two persons: the woman and the fetus she carries.
I don’t know what that proves. Roe v. Wade put the fetus into a weird sort of legal limbo, wherein the fetus isn’t quite human, but not nothing. I’m not at all persuaded that it does anything.
by Suitably Appalled | Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 | 10:24 amMay I suggest that any couple having an abortion be denied a portion of Social Security since they denied ‘the people paying the freight’ a worker contributing to ‘freight’.
by Helen Hipsher | Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 | 4:16 pmSuitably appalled,
Have you read comment 3 ?
by ausblog | Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 | 7:59 pmActually, I have. Roe granted the viable but unborn fetus a unique status — not quite entitled to the protections afforded the born child, but more than a zygote. (The closest analogy I can think of is the Catholic notion of “quickening.”) The statute you cite doesn’t appear to take that doctrine any further.
Think about it. If the right to an abortion is an unenumerated right — whether sourced in the Ninth Amendment, or any other penumbra you might find — then any law that purports to grant the fetus full human status is null and void. As I tell people, it’s a flaw in the Constitution, which can only be fixed via an amendment.
by Suitably Appalled | Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 | 10:19 pmHelen Hipsher says:
May I suggest that any couple having an abortion be denied a portion of Social Security since they denied ‘the people paying the freight’ a worker contributing to ‘freight’.
You might, but that would make exactly no sense. If you have been paying into the system all your life, you have presumptively purchased that annuity; that others have already spent the money is not something you have control over. Besides, the Republican Bush-Andrews plan appears to be to let all sorts of workers cross the border (because corporate America loves cheap labor), and let them pay into the system.
by Suitably Appalled | Wednesday, Jan 24, 2007 | 10:22 pmThere once existed a law upholding the notion that African-Americans weren’t really human beings. Did that make it so? Did they only become fully human when those laws were overturned?
And now you have laws that say that abortion isn’t murder, eventually they will be overturned also………………
by ausblog | Thursday, Jan 25, 2007 | 5:55 pmausblog says:
There once existed a law upholding the notion that African-Americans weren’t really human beings. Did that make it so? Did they only become fully human when those laws were overturned?
To correct that appalling error, we had to fight a civil war and amend the Constitution. It seems to me that the only proper remedy for Roe consistent with the rule of law is amending the Constitution.
What you can’t have happen is for judges to simply declare tomorrow that Roe was wrongly decided just because five judges said so. That is the kind of naked “judicial activism” that any who believe in the rule of law would rightly abhor, as it ignores the principle of stare decisis essential to law as we know it.
Chief Justice John Roberts speaks of “precedent on precedent” — precedent that prohibits judges from revisiting Roe. There are theoretical conditions under which Roe could be overturned in accordance with law, but none of them come close to existing in the real world. For instance, if the entire civilized world granted full human status to the zygote, we’d be compelled to follow suit, just as we recently did with the juvenile death penalty (and, as you might recall, conservatives howled like banshees). On a planet where overpopulation and its attendant effects threatens our ecosystem and as such, our very existence, that isn’t about to happen any time soon. However, the notion that an ardent minority passionately believes that life begins at conception (mostly on religious grounds) and wants to implement that belief into law is not a legally adequate ground for abandoning the rule of stare decisis.
I don’t mean to chill your ardor, but this is all about trade-offs. If you believe that “judicial activism” is a bad thing, then you have to eschew it even when it works in your favor. If the price of overturning Roe v. Wade is sacrificing the Bill of Rights in toto, is it worth the price? That is the ultimate question, and there aren’t that many conservatives willing to go that far.
by Suitably Appalled | Friday, Jan 26, 2007 | 6:31 am“Your comments are awaiting moderation” is Andrews for “I don’t like what you have to say, and I can’t argue with you intelligently, so I have to make your thoughtful posts disappear!”
Nice move, Comrade.
by The Anti-Censor | Friday, Jan 26, 2007 | 1:59 pmAusblog, I would have loved to have had a cordial discussion with you, but it seems that John Andrews concluded that I annihilated you in our debate, and that it would be harmful to his propaganda blog for us to continue.
Fascism is a natural function of power and character weakness.
by Thoroughly Appalled | Friday, Jan 26, 2007 | 5:34 pmThe Unborn Victims of Violence Act is a United States law which defines violent assault committed against pregnant women as being a crime against two persons: the woman and the fetus she carries.
This law was passed in 2004 after the murder of the then pregnant Laci Peterson and her fetus, Connor Peterson.
If it is right for a man (or woman) to be charged for homicide and sentenced to prison (or worse) for killing the unborn (and rightfully so)
then shouldn’t the unborn have equil consideration in relation to abortion..?
Is a fetus earmarked for abortion of any less value to a fetus killed by violence…?
Is not abortion a violent attack on an inocent life just the same…?
I think it’s not ethical to protect one without the other…..
they’re one and the same……..
by ausblog | Monday, Jan 29, 2007 | 5:39 am