I AM:
A CHILD OF GOD
THE HEART OF A MARRIAGE
THE NEXT GENERATION OF A FAMILY
THE FUTURE OF OUR REPUBLIC
A CITIZEN--WAITING AND WANTING TO BE BORN
A PERSON
DESTROY ME--AND YOU DESTROY THE FUTURE
Posted on 06/07/2004 1:44:14 PM PDT by cpforlife.org
Judge let pregnant woman stay in U.S.
By DONALD BRADLEY
The Kansas City Star
Abortion opponents got a surprise when federal Judge Scott O. Wright refused to deport a pregnant Raymore woman last month.
He was talking their talk.
Wright ruled that the government could not send Myrna Dick back to Mexico, because her unborn child was an American citizen with constitutional rights. As such, the baby was entitled to stay in the country.
Anti-abortion forces have been using a similar argument since the U.S. Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in 1973: A fetus is a human being and worthy of constitutional protection.
The irony is that Wright often has been at odds with abortion opponents during his 25 years as a federal judge. They have accused him of legislating abortion rights from the bench.
How, a Missouri lawmaker wondered last week, can Wright block a ban on partial-birth abortion one day and rule that a fetus is an American citizen another day?
“How does he possibly reconcile these two positions?” asked state Rep. Ed Emery, a Lamar Republican and an ardent abortion opponent who has called for Wright's impeachment. “I would be very interested to hear his explanation.”
Simple, Wright said: “I go by the law.”
Besides the rights of the unborn, the Mryna Dick case also has touched on the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the high-profile Scott Peterson murder trial, now under way in California.
And the man with the gavel is the 80-year-old Wright, a World War II-era aviator who once denounced the country's war on drugs as “absolutely destroying our inner-city communities.” The judge has railed against racial profiling, the loosening of search-and-seizure laws and a school district's ban on students wearing hair in cornrows.
A fan of Minnie Pearl and Roy Acuff, Wright once wrote that one of his most interesting cases was whether the Grand Ole Opry had exclusive copyright to the word “opry.”
He ruled it did not.
Few would deny that Wright is legally savvy, but abortion opponents say he is a liberal who needs to go.
In 1999, Wright issued a temporary restraining order against a ban on partial-birth abortion. Last year he blocked a Missouri law that required a 24-hour waiting period before someone could get an abortion.
In April, Emery presented a resolution to the Missouri House asking the U.S. Congress to impeach Wright because of his abortion rulings. Emery said then that Wright had ruled in favor of abortion rights in every case before him.
The resolution never made it out of committee.
Now comes the Myrna Dick case.
Dick, 29, immigrated to the United States as a young girl and has spent most of her life here. She is married to an American citizen and is pregnant with the couple's first child.
Dick had kept her work permit current and had sought permanent resident status. But in April, when she went to immigration offices to renew her work permit, authorities arrested her. They accused her of claiming false American citizenship during a 1998 border crossing, a violation punishable by immediate and permanent removal from the country.
Dick denied the allegation and hired attorneys. They argue that she was caught up in heightened security measures put in place after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Shortly before she was to be put on a plane to Mexico, Wright issued a stay and ordered both sides to appear in court.
During that May 27 hearing, Dick's attorney, Rekha Sharma-Crawford, challenged the government's evidence that Dick was the person involved in the 1998 border crossing. Sharma-Crawford asked why the government would wait all these years to arrest Dick if they knew her identity.
Jeffrey P. Ray, an assistant U.S. attorney, countered that the government had solid evidence against Dick, including fingerprints. Ray asked that the stay be lifted so that Dick could be deported.
Wright denied the request, saying the government had no grounds to deport Dick's unborn baby. He asked the gender of the baby and from then on referred to it as “he.”
Then, Wright mentioned Scott Peterson, who is charged with killing his pregnant wife, Laci, and the couple's unborn son. The case led to the passage earlier this year of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, also known as “Laci and Conner's Law.”
The act basically grants unborn children equal protection under the law.
When Mary Kay Culp, executive director of Kansas for Life and former head of Missouri Right to Life, first heard about Wright's ruling, she wondered whether the judge was trying to discredit the new law.
Abortion-rights groups had fought the measure, even though it contained an exception for abortion.
“They didn't want any law that included the notion that the unborn is a human, because they lied about that for 30 years,” Culp said.
The national Planned Parenthood Federation of America had argued that the law did nothing to protect pregnant women or punish their assailants. President Gloria Feldt said the law was a deceptive anti-choice strategy to undermine Roe v. Wade.
Peter Brownlie, president of Planned Parenthood in Kansas and Mid-Missouri, declined to comment on the Myrna Dick case.
Culp said that if Wright was sincere in his recent decision, “then he has a whole lot of cases he needs to reverse.”
Wright said he typically did not comment on pending cases, but he denied any motivation beyond the law in the Dick case.
In court, he said that if Scott Peterson could be charged with the murder of an unborn child, then the government could not deport an unborn child who had done nothing wrong.
But then what about abortion?
Wright, citing the abortion exception in the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, said the new law did not contradict Roe v. Wade.
“I'm against abortion, personally, but I feel like it's a woman's choice,” Wright said.
“And we still have Roe versus Wade. As long as it's on the books, then that's the law.”
(Excerpt) Read more at kansascity.com ...
Ditto! Bump.
Rep. Ed Emery attacks judicial activism by: e-emery
Updated: 2004-04-02 12:30:35-07
http://www.joplinindependent.com/display_article.php/e-emery1080930635
We took a step closer this week to stopping judges who want to legislate from the bench. We also took a step forward to protect marriage from those who would pervert and destroy it as an institution. These steps are closely related. They are both designed to protect us and our families from judicial activism.
I presented House Resolution 263 to the House Rules committee on yesterday. HR 263 is a resolution from the Missouri House of Representatives to the United States Congress requesting that Federal Judge Scott O. Wright be investigated and impeached for violation of his Constitutional responsibilities. Author and national speaker, Bill Federer, testified in support of the resolution. If the committee agrees that Judge Wright should be investigated, then the entire House of Representatives will vote. That vote could send the resolution to Washington to request the U.S. House Judiciary committee to initiate a Congressional investigation. I am convinced that if investigated, Judge Wright will be impeached.
The second success this week was when the House voted 128 to 20 in favor of a constitutional amendment to secure the definition of marriage as a union between one man and one woman. The proposed amendment is now subject to a vote of the people, who will decide whether it will become part of Missouri’s Constitution.
Our State law already forbids same sex marriages, so why amend the Constitution? The answer is to defend marriage from activist judges like Judge Scott O. Wright. Without this amendment, a single activist judge could unilaterally declare our law unconstitutional and legislate sodomite marriage “from the bench.”
We are living in perilous but exciting times. There is nothing more critical to our nation or to our state than the fundamental institutions of Family and Government. The choices we make today are determining our future success or failure. That is why your prayers and involvement are essential.
Editorial comment:
Judge Wright was appointed by President Jimmy Carter to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri in 1979. Emery's measure cites Wright's 1999 decision blocking enforcement of a new Missouri law banning a procedure that opponents call "partial-birth abortion" and doctors call "intact dilation and extraction." The resolution also cites a temporary injunction Wright issued last year blocking a state law that requires a 24-hour waiting period before having an abortion.
The House took no action on Emery's resolution.
Great Point! Hey, lets ask John Frenchie Kerry he knows everything!
Yep, it's the MOTHER's right to "choose" not the baby's or God's right to life. If she want's to abort she still can.
I AM:
A CHILD OF GOD
THE HEART OF A MARRIAGE
THE NEXT GENERATION OF A FAMILY
THE FUTURE OF OUR REPUBLIC
A CITIZEN--WAITING AND WANTING TO BE BORN
A PERSON
DESTROY ME--AND YOU DESTROY THE FUTURE
Even worse is how this judge is completely willing to say that an unborn child is a US citizen and protected by the Constitution yet it is still legal to kill it if it's mother gets a fleeting notion to do so.
that involves logic. Under doublethink rules no.
Its never about abortion, open borders, 99% income tax rates, or even homosexual marriage. For the left it is about degrading the USA, destroying the king of the mountain status of the USA.
This ruling is already making ripples because it brings back the ANCHOR BABIES. Something eliminated by previous immigration laws. Minor US citizens were sent back with illegal alien babies.
Thus the LOGICAL thing for this judge to have do was declare it a US citizen and deport the mother anyways.
Don't be fooled. This is just a case of competing interests.
It's more important that the US be reseeded with Mexicans and the Chicom/Former USSR baby trade than it is to win EVERY ruling, hands-down, for the pro-aborts.
To wit ... the Republicans look after the trial attorneys where damages for unborn "wanted" fetuses are concerned while defining quite clearly the window of "Non-Personhood" in the wake of Bush's ESCR decision.
It's calling eating your cake and having it too.
Big Nanny Loves YOU!!!!(/s)
In this case the baby is the child of an american citizen, so I have no problem with it being allowed to stay. If Mama can't stay, that's just too bad. But still, if you're married to an american and have an american child, I would think that would get you a green card, as long as it wasn't a sham marriage.
IMO , one has nothing to do with the other and the judge is talking out both sides of his mouth. To me, it seems he is pro-abortion and anti immigration and is using the baby to fight deportation. My question would be that if the mother who is allowed to stay in the states to protect this citizen decides she wants an abortion, will this judge rule for the child?
"This judge is weird. Without looking it up, I'm almost sure that a non-citizen's baby has to be born in this country to automatically be a citizen. Otherwise, someone who conceived their child here, then went home and had the baby, would still be able to claim that the baby was a citizen."
And that's it, then. A few judges and bureaucrats get intent on enforcing "the letter of the law" in isolated cases even when the particular letter is bogus and allow great gouts of violations to pass unhindered.
"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others." --George Orwell, Animal Farm
Hey, I'm a busy man! I don't have time to read stuff before I respond to it.
Judge Scott Wright is wrong. He's truly a crazy man, belongs to the Judges' Hall of Shame. Next he won't deport someone because his sperm were formed in this country.
I wouldn't even qualify a "sham" marriage unless a divorce occurs pretty much immediately on entry. I'd hate to leave it to bureaucrats and judges to define a sham marriage.
I imagine it is a judge just looking for a reason not to deport the woman. It's probably still okay to abort, just as long as you don't deport. I'm sure it's all perfectly logical to the left-wingers.
I wonder: Since fertilized eggs are citizens, how about unfertilized eggs? How about sperm?
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