Respect or disrespect?: Death certificate would acknowledge end of life

In the ongoing battle over life and death, the issuance of a death certificate to an aborted baby is a small way to show respect and acknowledgment of a lost life.

Since public debut of the death certificate bill, the proposed legislation has been met by critical attempts to misdirect attention from the bill's goal. The bill was not created to push a religious agenda. Despite assertions by critics, the goal has never been to collect names or Social Security numbers of anyone who has had an abortion, nor is it an effort to create a registry of people who have had abortions.

In fact, Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPPA) laws specifically restrict what critics claim is my intent. The only names registered or published as relates to the bill would be the names of legislators who voted for or against this bill. This bill will not stop abortions, nor will it overturn Roe v. Wade, despite the bad law and science of that famous case. For now, those reversals must take place at the federal level.

The death certificate bill is about life and the admission that life does exist in all stages of development. Some flee debate, and others shy from the admission of life, for if they must admit life, then they must also admit that they chose to end life. Some go so far as to refuse to even use terms other than "embryo" or "globule." But, by all known scientific definitions, it is a life, and life begins at conception.

Most pro-abortion advocates will even admit that the smallest life form (an amoeba) is still a life form. In our U.S. Senate, pro-life and pro-abortion senators, both Republican and Democratic, spent two days hearing testimonies to decide when life begins. When it was all said and done, the vote was unanimous that life begins at conception.

Legally, our government was founded on the principles that all men are created equal -- not born equal but created equal -- and that we are endowed by our creator with the inalienable rights of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Without the "life," the other two rights can never be realized.

In this state, we acknowledge that fact with programs such as TennCare and the WIC nutritional program. Nationally, we can look to the Lacy and Cody Peterson law, where a pregnant mother was killed and the murderer was charged with double murder -- one murder charge for the mother and one for the unborn baby.

In these programs and laws, government bases law on the fact that life begins at conception -- not based on the desire to have a child, on the way it was conceived, who the parents are or potential for handicaps or gestation period. The state acknowledges it is a life.

It is inconsistent to say government can pick and choose on a sliding scale when to count a baby as a baby.

If we have admitted that life begins at conception, as politicians like Sen. John Kerry did in the last presidential election, we must also acknowledge that all beginnings have an end. And, at the end, we must ask the question whether the innocent child is deserving of any show of respect.

Following World War II, the German people realized firsthand the consequences of a failure to respect life in all its stages, and their awakening has made them a leader in acknowledging life. In certain cases in Tennessee, when a life ends by miscarriage, we issue death certificates for the child. My bill would expand the issuance of death certificates to babies killed by abortion.

In the Legislature, we work to protect the weak from the strong, the powerless from the powerful. Legally, in this state, we are unable to warn women of the dangers associated with abortions. Currently, we can't even legislate that only doctors perform abortions or that hands be washed before the procedure. We cannot protect the 50 percent of the people who die in virtually unregulated abortion clinics every day.

In Tennessee, by law we cannot protect healthy babies even in the ninth month of life, but we can at least take this small step of acknowledgement and show respect for the loss of life, just as we do for the elderly, impoverished, weak and handicapped when they, too, pass from this life.

Exactly. The weak, the helpless and the powerless are deserving of society's recognition, respect, and yes - compassion. Which is apparently more than liberals can bear when its extended to unborn children.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

3 posted on 03/24/2007 10:32:49 PM PDT by goldstategop (In Memory Of A Dearly Beloved Friend Who Lives In My Heart Forever)

4 posted on 03/25/2007 5:48:59 AM PDT by Ultra Sonic 007 (Vote for Duncan Hunter in 2008. Audio, Video, and Quotes in my profile.)

To have a death certificate one would also have to a birth certificate. Having a birth certificate would provide protection to the fetus through the 14th amendment by acknowedlging his/her (the fetus's) rights.

5 posted on 03/25/2007 6:10:27 AM PDT by LowCountryJoe (I'm a Paleo-liberal: I believe in freedom; am socially independent and a borderline fiscal anarchist)

Given the present state of over reaching 'crats, I's hazzard a guess that any baby that tried to die without an official certificate would be fined, if not arrested.

Agency Uber Alles!

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