Partial birth infanticide

Federal Judge Scott Wright in Kansas City, Mo., quickly responded to
a frantic appeal from Planned Parenthood and issued an order preventing
the implementation of a law designed to prevent partial-birth abortions.
The law, titled the Infant Protection Act, was passed in mid-September,
when both houses of the Democrat-controlled Missouri legislature voted
to overturn a veto by Democrat Gov. Mel Carnahan.

The law applied to abortions not performed in utero, meaning they are
performed outside the womb. That’s what happens in the heinous and
unnecessary form of barbarism called a partial-birth abortion. When all
of the baby is out of the birth canal except the head, the abortionist
drives scissors into the base of the skull, inserts a suction device,
and sucks out the brain. Those who have witnessed this procedure report
seeing the baby’s tiny hands clenching and unclenching and its tiny feet
kicking. This is clearly infanticide.

State Sen. Tom House, a Democrat, captured the sentiment of the state
legislature with this comment during a television interview: “This kind
of brutality should not be tolerated in a civilized society.”

It is a procedure that is indefensible. Former U.S. Surgeon General
C. Everett Koop said the following when President Bill Clinton vetoed a
similar bill: “Clinton was misled by his medical advisers on what is
fact and what is fiction in reference to late-term abortions. Because in
no way can I twist my mind to see that the late-term abortion as
described — you know, partial-birth, and then, destruction of the
unborn child before the head is born — is a medical necessity for the
mother. It certainly can’t be a necessity for the baby. So, I am opposed
to … partial-birth abortions.”

It is argued by politicians like Gov. Mel Carnahan and President Bill
Clinton that the proposed law does not permit the use of this procedure
to protect the “health” of the mother. This is not an argument, but an
excuse. Abortionists use the “health” loophole to justify killing the
babies of mothers who complain of a wide variety of vague maladies,
including nervous twitches, anxieties and headaches. However, as Koop
says, there is never a medical necessity for a partial-birth abortion.

Since 1995, 28 states have passed laws similar to the one passed in
Missouri. However, the courts have blocked enforcement in 19 of these
states. In late September of this year, a three-judge panel of the
Eighth U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that bans on late-term abortions in
Nebraska, Arkansas and Iowa are illegal in that they place “… an undue
burden on the right of women to choose whether to have an abortion.”

Since Roe v. Wade became law in 1973, there have been more
than 38 million abortions. That works out to more than 4,000 a day. Less
than 3 percent of these have anything to do with rape, incest or the
health of the mother. For the most part, these babies are simply
unwanted, so they are killed.

This is a staggering number of acts of violence. And yet, America’s
news media and newsmakers are selectively indifferent and unmoved. They
have managed to turn our compassion in other directions, to lesser
tragedies that service some liberal political agenda or some liberal
social cause. This lack of outrage reflects a stunted view of life in
the womb as subhuman, if human at all, unentitled to protection by the
Constitution and unworthy of protection by the human conscience.

Nevertheless, there is hope. The public’s opinion of abortions of any
kind is clearly shifting. A Zogby poll released in August of this year
reveals that 52 percent of respondents “said they personally believe
that abortion destroys a human life and is manslaughter, while 36.1
percent did not believe abortion destroys a human life.”

However, while public opinion is catching up with science, the
Supreme Court is not yet catching up with the Constitution. The right to
abort babies was hallucinated into the Constitution by activist judges.
It was never legislated or voted on by the people.

The esteemed legal scholar Robert H. Bork, in his book, “Slouching
Towards Gomorrah,” put it this way: “… Roe v. Wade … was a radical
deformation of the Constitution. The Constitution has nothing to say
about abortion, leaving it, like most subjects, to the judgment and
moral sense of the American people and their elected representatives.
… Roe is nothing more than the Supreme Court’s imposition on us of the
morality of our cultural elites.”

The most innocent and defenseless among us have been betrayed by
those institutions whose primary mission is their protection: the
government, the system of justice, the medical community and, alas, much
of the Protestant church.

Those who should lead the fight against this conspiracy of death have
become parties to it by their silence and by their cowardice.