The ghosts of the unborn
By Bruce Walker
In our civil war over abortion, those who champion life know that the abortion supporters lie. Bernard Nathanson, the abortion doctor who co-founded of NARAL, later in his life repented and told the truth about NARAL abortion statistics. He said that the NARAL claim that 60% of Americans favored permissive abortion was simply invented, that NARAL statistics claiming that one million illegal abortions were performed each year in America was false, and that the real number 100,000. He also said that when NARAL told America that 10,000 women died each year from these abortions, it knew that the true figure was 250. Nathanson's story is hardly unique. Ron Fitzsimmons, Executive Director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, said that he "lied through his teeth" about the prevalence of partial birth abortions in America. Norma McCorvey, the "Roe" in Roe v. Wade, dishonestly claimed that she had been raped when she sought an abortion in Texas. The reliance upon convenient mendacity, so common among the left, produces inconsistent positions. Conservative state legislatures are challenging those inconsistencies with tightly focused new laws.
Nebraska has passed a law requiring that the agony of infanticide – fetal pain - be grounds for abolishing abortion. Other states are following Nebraska's lead. The left stands against any form of torture against any form of life, yet the left is quiet on fetal torture. Vegans, most passionate animal rights folks, are "all over the board." On the issue of abortion and the American Vegan Society is deafeningly quiet . PETA has been equally silent about abortions, even the death by torture of partial birth abortions.
The left also stands up for those who cannot speak for themselves. Environmentalists have argued this as early as 1972, when leftist icons Justice Douglass, in Sierra Club v. Morton, asked "Do trees have standing?" (He argued they did.) In Roe v Wade, one year later, Douglass supporting abortion rights and never asked "Do unborn children have standing?" The fetal pain laws do more than just prevent torture: these laws grant rights to the inarticulate unborn. The left believes in giving rights to inarticulate life, provided that the life given rights is not human.
Arizona is challenging another contradiction in leftist abortionology. Racial profiling is anathema to leftists. Ending human life on account of race is not just racial profiling but genocide. If the Nazis' plan to exterminate German Jewry had been compulsory abortion all unborn Jewish babies, that would still have been genocide. The history of the last century showed close ties between eugenics in America and Nazi racial theories. The reduction of inferior races was an overt goal of both. Abortion, as practices in America today, achieves that goal as well: Black mothers are much more likely to have abortions than white mothers. Arizona is prohibiting doctors from performing abortions when race is a factor.
Other states are whittling away at Roe v Wade by asserting the right of states to regulate abortion. Some laws require that doctors give all the medical information (like sonograms) to the mother about her unborn child before killing that child. Other laws create waiting periods before an abortion is performed. Still others require parental involvement if the mother is a minor. The left likes government regulation, especially regulation intended to protect people. So how can the left object to regulation of abortion?
Prior to Roe v Wade, states regulated abortion; they did not ban abortions. Four states allowed abortion on demand. Many other states allowed abortion if a mitigating factor existed, like a potentially damaged fetus. "Roe" in the historic case did not allege that Texas banned abortions, but that the state little authority to regulate abortions. If Roe had been gang raped, as she claimed, then an abortion could have been performed.
Abortion was treated like other sorts of human actions. Homicide, for example, may be murder, manslaughter or completely lawful, according to the variations of state laws. Texas could have made homicide legal – any state could – but no state ever has. The definition of "rape" has varied from state to state. No state has ever decriminalized rape and the definition of rape, like the definition of murder or abortion, was intended by state governments to balance a number of factors and reach a just result.
States, not federal courts, are the logical place for people's representatives to consider fetal pain, teen pregnancy, racially biased abortion patterns, and mitigating factors like rape, incest, and the health of the mother. The federalization and "constitutionalization" of abortion was the product of a concerted campaign based on fabricated data and outright lies. Now states are unraveling the threads of those lies and it will be harder and harder for those who proclaim that the Constitution allows abortion on demand to make their case.
The ghosts of the murdered unborn are stirring in our land. They are rising up from the ashes of Moloch's sacrifices and finding voices throughout our nation. The champions of these ghosts are not seeking to ban abortion when the mother might die or in other cases when there is no clear moral answer. They are seeking an end to abortion as the sacrament of leftism, the mockery of life, and the exaltation of mendacity over truth.
Bruce Walker is the author of a new book Poor Lenin's Almanac: Perverse Leftists Proverbs for Modern Life.