Half Child, Half Fetus
Justice Scalia makes a grim observation during the on-going partial birth abortion hearings at the Supreme Court (which I recently posted on here):
In one of his few remarks during the two hours of arguments in the Supreme Court today about partial-birth abortion, Justice Scalia responded to Justice Stevens’ assertion that we should say “fetus” rather than child.. Justice Scalia said, “half-fetus, half-child.”
The point was clear. This is not simply about abortion. This is a hijacking of the delivery process for the purpose of killing the child. This is infanticide. I don’t know why Justice Scalia was otherwise so quiet, and Justice Alito completely silent during the arguments, but I know one reason I would be. The barbarity of partial-birth abortion is so self-evidently wrong that it is beyond dispute, beyond discussion, that it should not be legal in our country - or anywhere else, for that matter. Silence in this matter speaks volumes.
Scalia’s comment highlights the absurdity abortion’s current legal status here in America. Inside the womb the unborn child is a “fetus.” A group of cells of no real consequences. Outside the womb, the child is a person with full rights. Taken to the extreme, this legal status has allowed a woman to go free after shooting herself in the stomach to kill her unborn child on its due date. Had this woman waited a few hours to shoot her child after it had emerged from her womb she would have been put in jail as a murderer. And rightfully so. But because she has a “right” to an abortion, she literally got away with murder.
Here’s another interesting observation from the column linked above:
In the course of the two hours of oral arguments, the Court considered three key reasons why abortion advocates want the Court to strike down the Federal ban on partial-birth abortion: a) the ban lacks a health exception; b) the ban is too broad, that is, by its wording it actually bans most if not all second and third trimester D&E (dismemberment) abortions rather than just partial-birth abortion, and c) the ban is vague, and because the language is not clear and specific enough, doctors won’t know if it really applies to them.
Having listened carefully to the oral arguments and having read all the briefs, I don’t think the abortion advocates made their case, and I don’t think a majority of the Justices think they did either.
One of the most important admissions made in the arguments by the pro-abortion side was that we really have no measurements about what kind of a health need is met by partial-birth abortion. Their key argument, after all, is that the procedure must be allowed for the sake of women’s health. They admitted that the Court could ban this procedure if its health advantages were minimal rather than significant, yet they could not establish, by statistical measurement, the assertion that the health advantages of partial-birth abortion are significant.
Going beyond even partial birth abortion, I’d like to see pro-choice advocates explain what health need is served by abortion in general. Certainly there are rare instances where a mother’s health is put in jeopardy by a pregnancy and I think most of us can agree that an abortion in such a situation is a legitimate option, but the vast majority of the time the only “need” served by abortion is the need of the mother to rid herself of the responsibility of having a child.
It’s going to be very interesting to see what comes of this case before the Supreme Court.
