The Partial Birth Abortion Act:
Rue it or celebrate it? By Judie Brown Now that President Bush has promised to sign the partial birth abortion bill into law, the court challenge will not be far behind. In the wake of this cause for celebration within pro-life political ranks, a few questions come to mind:
- Can the bill survive such a challenge?
- If it does, will it actually impede the killing of children who are not yet fully born?
- Does it move us toward the eventual outlawing of all acts of abortion?
Many, including one member of Congress who points out that the bill is constitutionally flawed, have scrutinized the bill. As Rep. Ron Paul said, "Though I will vote to ban the horrible partial-birth abortion procedure, I fear that the language used in this bill does not further the pro-life cause, but rather cements fallacious principles into both our culture and the legal system." The bill contains this statement: "such a prohibition [upon the partial birth abortion procedure] will draw a bright line that clearly distinguishes abortion and infanticide." But the true goal of the pro-life movement has never been to draw such a line. The efforts we have expended over the past 30 years have been focused on protecting human beings as persons from the moment of conception/fertilization. Does this bill make that goal less attainable? Does it suggest that even pro-lifers recognize the validity of Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton and choose to regulate the killing as best we can? My final beef with the bill is that it establishes a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment if an abortionist is caught doing one of these ghastly procedures. Since when is two years behind bars a sufficient sentence for deliberately and brutally killing an innocent baby seconds before she is fully delivered? The potential penalties for an already-born person who is murdered with malice aforethought far exceeds this paltry "maximum" sentence. As one legal advisor explained to me, "it is clearly legitimate to say that the two-year penalty in the bill certainly does not evince the societal revulsion to partial birth abortion that is suggested in the rhetoric of some pro-lifers." The fact is that even if this bill survives a court challenge, it is questionable that even one baby's life will be saved. Nobody will honestly argue with that point. But because of this bill, for nearly eight years now, Americans have had to hear the debate about an act of killing that requires the insertion of a scissors into the skull of a baby who is seconds from being delivered. Polls show that this debate has dramatically shifted public opinion with regard to such acts of abortion. We know, based on scientific fact and common sense, that every act of abortion results in the death of a human being whose innocence is dismissed as irrelevant because he or she is "unwanted." The question is, why haven't we spent the last eight years pleading with our fellow Americans to look upon this most grisly of practices and recognize that every single abortion - regardless of how it is done - results in somebody being rendered just as dead? I personally cannot answer that question, and so I am troubled. Pro-abortion forces tell the public that even this law, narrowly drawn to address a very few of the babies murdered by abortion, is unacceptable to them. These harbingers of death do not want any restrictions on acts that take the lives of the children - children whose mothers have been led to believe they have a legitimate right to exercise their "freedom to choose" to dispose of their babies.
So as many bask in the glow of what is considered a pro-life victory, let us hope that each of the concerns expressed in this commentary are proven to be unworthy of worry. For if, by chance, I am right about even one of them, then many in the pro-life movement may one day rue the fact that they accommodated politicians who only wanted to focus on one manner of murder so that they could claim enough pro-life credentials to guarantee re-election. For those who may not know it, political ambition is not why pro-lifers strive to stop the madness. We recognize each human being, from conception, as a person who has inalienable rights, the most basic of which is the right to life. We accept the fact that having this position has become unpopular and is not politically correct. We understand that defending each of these human beings requires courage, and evinces chagrin among many in both major political parties. But we strive, not to please others, but rather to be faithful to the little ones who are relying on us to speak for them - not just some of them, but all of them. Release issued: 31 Oct 03
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