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Virginia's novel approach to ending abortion. Will it stand up in court?
American Thinker ^ | 02/26/2011 | Joseph Ashby

Posted on 02/26/2011 8:08:39 AM PST by SeekAndFind

The 2006 film Amazing Grace depicts William Wilberforce's campaign to end the slave trade in Great Britain. A scene from the movie depicts the abolitionist Members of Parliament discussing how to proceed in the legislature after numerous failures. The issue had become so polarized that a direct vote on the slave trade was a losing proposition. The following dialogue between Wilberforce and fellow Member of Parliament James Stephen (who was about to present his eye witness account of slave operations to the rest of Parliament) ensues:

Stephen: If we go to Parliament with this evidence, there'll be sympathy, there'll be concern, but it'll be just the same as every other time.

Wilberforce: Have you come back to preach hopelessness?

Stephen: No. No, I've had an idea. In my law books I might have stumbled across something and I want to propose it as a strategy. Nosus Decipio. It's Latin. Loosely translated, it means..."we cheat".

The abolitionists created a bill that would put most of the slave traders out of business without directly voting on trade itself. The abolitionists regulated the bulk of the slave-trade out of business.

The Virginia legislature has found a similar route to help end abortion in the state. The legislature passed a law that requires abortion clinics to comply with same regulations as hospitals. From the Richmond Times Dispatch:

Under the legislation, any physician's office performing five or more first trimester abortions a month would be classified as a hospital, subject to special regulations established by the state Board of Health within the next 280 days.

The regulations will require abortion clinics to retrofit their operations. The retrofit could mean everything from widening hallways to additional employee training, according to the Associated Press. The Dispatch reports that most of the state's abortion clinics will be forced to close because of the "lengthy and costly certification process that most clinics could not afford."

The passage of the bill was something of a cliffhanger. The Virginia senate is controlled by the Democrats, 22-18. For that reason, life bills generally die in committee. But the Republican controlled house included the provision as an amendment to a bill already passed by the senate, thereby passing the committee process by putting the bill up for a vote by the entire senate. The two Democrat senators that vote with the pro-life bloc brought the tally to 20 Yeas and 20 Nays. The tie-breaker was made by pro-life Lieutenant Governor Bill Bolling.
 
The abortion lobby will certainly challenge the law in court. But the chances are far better that a court rules in favor of a health-facility regulation than a law restricting abortions in the first trimester.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; US: Virginia
KEYWORDS: abortion; abortuary; billbolling; moralabsolutes; prolife; virginia
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1 posted on 02/26/2011 8:08:45 AM PST by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind
One of Saul Alinsky's rules for radicals is to force your opponent to live by his own set of standards.

About time the Left got a little taste of its own medicine.

2 posted on 02/26/2011 8:14:46 AM PST by E. Pluribus Unum ("If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun." -- Barry Soetoro, June 11, 2008)
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To: SeekAndFind

I don’t know why they didn’t think of this years ago. The abortion clinics don’t have to go through any kind of inspection, like other hospitals and clinics do. I’m not sure exactly how they get inspected, but, if my memory services, I don’t think they get inspected at all.


3 posted on 02/26/2011 8:23:26 AM PST by MsLady (If you died tonight, where would you go? Salvation, don't leave earth without it!)
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To: SeekAndFind
In Roe v Wade, SCOTUS specifically avoided making a determination when life begins. I always thought this was a loophole for the states. I'm waiting for a state to have the cajones to pass legislation saying life begins at conception.
4 posted on 02/26/2011 8:41:25 AM PST by stylin19a ("Marine Sniper - You can run, but you'll just die tired!")
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To: SeekAndFind

This approach would be very hard to oppose, even if you approve of abortion.

Most abortions are dirty cesspitts, rarely cleaned, with septic conditions. They are a terrible danger to young mothers as well as to the babies whom they kill.

And if something goes wrong, it’s not like a hospital, where they can be treated in place. An ambulance has to be called to take them to a real hospital, and the delay may be deadly. Assuming that they even bother to call an ambulance.

And in most states the pro-aborts have agreed never to inspect these abortuaries. If they were subjected even to reasonable medical standards, it would be very costly to bring them up to standard.

But it’s hard to make the “freedom of choice” argument if you ignore the health and welfare of the mothers who go there.


5 posted on 02/26/2011 8:50:31 AM PST by Cicero (Marcus Tullius)
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To: SeekAndFind

bttt.


6 posted on 02/26/2011 8:53:54 AM PST by WinOne4TheGipper (If the Klan killed 60% of black babies, it would be genocide, when the left does it, its "choice".)
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To: SeekAndFind

Nosus decipio is nonsense, gibberish. Whoever wrote this is illiterate in Latin.


7 posted on 02/26/2011 9:01:43 AM PST by Houghton M.
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To: E. Pluribus Unum

Yup about time.

No reason why Virginia can’t have its own OSHA.


8 posted on 02/26/2011 9:03:25 AM PST by A'elian' nation (Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred. Jacques Barzun)
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To: Houghton M.

“In all the Internet citations of the phrase, the word nosus is never explained, but (as in this Wikipedia citation) the verb decipio (”I cheat”) is frequently referred to. Nosus does not look like Latin at all. It occurs to me that it might be a misspelling for notus (pparticiple of nosco, “I know”) so our phrase could mean something like “I am a known cheat.”

http://www.translatum.gr/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=30239a6cf4e9bad8da69828001fca14a&topic=121281.0#ixzz1F5NBeW9a

Looks like a phrase made up by someone for a film, and now assumed to be accurate.


9 posted on 02/26/2011 9:17:25 AM PST by Mr Rogers (Poor history is better than good fiction, and anything with lots of horses is better still)
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To: Houghton M.

“Nosus decipio is nonsense, gibberish.”

I assume nos decipio would be correct?


10 posted on 02/26/2011 9:18:00 AM PST by DrC
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To: Mr Rogers

“Looks like a phrase made up by someone for a film, and now assumed to be accurate.”

That was my impression until I ran across this:
http://latinr.com/nosus-decipio.html

I don’t know who compiled it, but it seems unlikely they would have allowed a popular film to be the source of their translation.


11 posted on 02/26/2011 9:42:18 AM PST by DrC
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To: Mr Rogers

Could it perhaps be better rendered as “I know, therefore I cheat”?? That seems to fit the meaning here.


12 posted on 02/26/2011 9:49:53 AM PST by Wonder Warthog
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To: DrC

No, because nos is first person plural and decipio is first person singular. Since nos can also be an accusative object as well as a nominative subject, it’s possible to read it as “decipio nos” (I deceive us) but that makes no sense in the context of the story.

Whoever wrote this is clueless.


13 posted on 02/26/2011 10:01:43 AM PST by Houghton M.
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To: Wonder Warthog

No, nosco never takes the form of nos or nosus. As it stands, it’s gibberish.


14 posted on 02/26/2011 10:06:27 AM PST by Houghton M.
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To: MsLady
"I don’t know why they didn’t think of this years ago."

All things happen for a reason, and now, the timing may be better than ever since Kermit Gosnell is out there as a poster child. In fact, I'd like to see that be the tipping point in order to give some sense of purpose to that horror.

15 posted on 02/26/2011 10:11:16 AM PST by Joe 6-pack (Que me amat, amet et canem meum)
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To: Houghton M.

Thanks. My memory of a single year of high school Latin taken 40 years ago obviously has dimmed. So if it said “nos decipiamus” or whatever the first person plural is, it would have been right? “We deceive” makes more sense that “I deceive” in the context of the movie (which I never saw, but now am motivated to add to NetFlix).


16 posted on 02/26/2011 10:44:29 AM PST by DrC
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To: DrC

Yeah, except that nos decipiamus could mean either “we deceive someone else” with the someone else understood rather than specified or “we deceive ourselves”—though normally the latter would be “nosmetipsos decipiamus” or something like that.

And you don’t need the nos at all if you mean “we deceive us” — you’d just say, “decipamus.”

But it doesn’t say “decipiamus.” It’s gibberish. Must have been too cheap to pay a real consultant.


17 posted on 02/26/2011 10:55:30 AM PST by Houghton M.
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To: Joe 6-pack

pro-lifers have been complaining for decades that abortion clinics were held to medical standards. It’s probably mostly just a result of electoral changes and a growing awareness that the back-alley remained the location for abortions, after RvW as much as before. Pro-lifers have been saying this for years but the abortion lobbey always protected themselves with the medical regulation people. It’s taken this long to build enough grass roots support, and I suppose the Gosnell case helped catalyze things.

It’s not that no one thought of this before. It’s that our pleas to regulate the clinics like any other “medical facility” fell on deaf ears.


18 posted on 02/26/2011 10:59:15 AM PST by Houghton M.
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To: Houghton M.

that abortion clinics were held to
should read:

that abortion clinics were NOT held to


19 posted on 02/26/2011 11:00:04 AM PST by Houghton M.
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To: Houghton M.

I didn’t mean to imply this legislation came about because of Gosnell...I know it had been an approach thought of some time ago, and you’re right about the changing electoral demographics. Nevertheless, the coincidence between this coming up with the Gosnell case (as well as Lila Rose’s undercover stings) will make it very, very difficult for any person with any political aspirations to defend “common-sense regulation” of the abortion industry.


20 posted on 02/26/2011 11:05:02 AM PST by Joe 6-pack (Que me amat, amet et canem meum)
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