Seems clear cut to me too.
For years we have been trying to get partial birth abortions banned. Now, when it's finally happened, it's seen as a loss, a betrayal?
I can only imagine what those who are screaming the loudest about the passage of this bill would have said if a bill hadn't been passed.
I detect something more than dissatisfaction with this particular bill behind all of the wailing and gnashing of teeth.
It's a good strategy on our part to dissect legislation in order to hold the Pubbies feet to the fire. We cannot simply sit back and do nothing. The Pubbies need to know we're watching their every move.
That said, the legislation does seem to ban p/b abortions. Unfortunately, we will have to see how the law plays out. Abortion worshippers have no compunction about breaking laws or finding loopholes that were never intended and/or that don't exist.
I would feel a whole lot better about this law if NARAL, PP and the abortion crowd told us chapter and verse why they opposed it.
That's one way to determine it's efficacy.....how the law's opponents view it.
Do I think Senator Santorum is pulling one over on us? .. No
I have read about the death of Sen Sentorum's infant son and the book his wife wrote .. I watched the debate on the Senate Floor that he gave and IMO he is in his heart sincere about banning PBA
I realize that there are a number RINO's in Congress .. but Santorum isn't one of them
Not content to just write a watered down, sorry excuse for an abortion ban, the Senate goes on in Sec. 4, to let us all know "The Sense on the Senate Concerning Roe. v. Wade". I am not sure what kind of sense these people have, but we have definitely found out what we get for thirty years of loyalty. The 48 Republican Senators who voted to approve S.3, pledged that, "the decision of the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade [410 U.S. 113 (1973)] was appropriate and secures an important constitutional right; and such decision should not be overturned".
Folks, that is a clintonian LIE. 'You need to read that again' ... the author is purposely LYING to the reader by twisting the facts. The Harkin 'sense of the Senate' (S.4) was voted upon prior to the S.3 bill as offered by Santorum. The S.3 bill (which received its designation prior to the Harkin offering, so Harkin's non-binding got S.4 designation) was voted upon after more debate and that bill was passed, then the Harkin ploy was attached to the S.3 bill as an effort to make it an amendment. As I recall, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins and one or two other Republicans voted to support Harkin's 'Sense of the Senate' but they definitely did not vote to make the Harkin NON-BINDING resolution a part of the S.3 bill for passage.
What the author of the article tried to do was have the reader believe 48 Republican Senators voted to have Roe codified into Senate passed law. Count the number of Republican votes for the Harkin non-binding resolution. It comes up far short of 48! Mercuria apparently read the lies the way the author intended, and was led astray. The DNC would be ecstatic if large numbers of republican voters were as easily led astray and manipulated. What has our nation become when blatant lies persuade so easily?! LIES are DNC daily tools, used often and with malice of forethought, to confuse and manipulate We the People. Sadly, too many people swallow the lies without choking, then become the willing dupes of the dissemblers and liars.
The author of the piece wrote, "You need to read that again. I've read it about 20 times and it still hurts to look at it." What utter calculated bullshit! An invitation to reread the lies in an effort to have the reader swallow them whole!
Then this blatant liar goes on in clintonesque fashion to say, "Please understand that it was not just a few renegade Senators who voted for this. It was 48 Republican Senators, including every one of them who ever told us they were pro-life, who put their name on a bill that says; Roe v. Wade was "appropriate." This is a clear, unambiguous reaffirmation of the illegal Supreme Court decision that started this whole mess back in 1973. If I had not read it for myself I would not believe it. The author is a lying agent of dnc propaganda, willingly or unwittingly. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, we'll assume unwittingly. What kind of person who is so easily manipulated is suited to public office. Don't we have enough democrat liars and thieves, dissemblers and murder champions? How very clintonesque to lie and dissemble in order to try and create political capital regardless of the damage done to the nation!
According to the description of a PBA from Clarence Thomas:
Stenberg v. Carhart (2000): "After dilating the cervix, the physician will grab the fetus by its feet and pull the fetal body out of the uterus into the vaginal cavity. At this stage of development, the head is the largest part of the body. . . . the head will be held inside the uterus by the woman’s cervix. While the fetus is stuck in this position, dangling partly out of the woman’s body, and just a few inches from a completed birth, the physician uses an instrument such as a pair of scissors to tear or perforate the skull. The physician will then either crush the skull or will use a vacuum to remove the brain and other intracranial contents from the fetal skull, collapse the fetus’ head, and pull the fetus from the uterus."
Now to me, that looks like as long as you can't see the navel, you can still perform a Partial Birth Abortion and it will be legal according to this:
1531 A)`(1) the term `partial-birth abortion' means an abortion in which-- `(A) the person performing the abortion deliberately and intentionally vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a head- first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is outside the body of the mother for the purpose of performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the partially delivered living fetus;
Tell me where I'm wrong.
I believe that in their twisted minds, they think that only a massive geo-political upheaval, with the associated bloodbath of "the guilty" will be sufficient to punish the evil-doers of our society.
They are some really sick puppies!
Well Jim, either Rick Santorum is trying to put one over on us or UncleBill & Co. are trying to put one over on us. Which is more likely? [Rhetorical question, we already know the answer.]
The reason the bill is so carefully worded is simply to withstand constitutional challenge from the SCOTUS. The text is drafted in a fashion that makes it impossible for the current SCOTUS to invalidate it without either flatly contradicting itself or fashioning a new pretext out of whole cloth. The hard core pro-aborts on the Court will do whatever is necessary, but IMO the flippers are unlikely to go along with the Ginsburgs. I'd characterize this effort as a job well done.
It's pretty clear from the Finding of Facts section that the Senate included the "when the life of the mother is endangered" exception only because the Supreme Court recently declared a similar ban unconstitutional for lack of same. The Findings of Fact section also make it clear that Congress agrees with the AMA and 99.8% of obstetricians not on Planned Parenthood's payroll that PBAs are NEVER required to save the life of the mother.
If an abortionist tries to rely on the mother's life exception, the compelling and unambiguous Congressional findings on the subject will be part of the record before whatever court faces the issue. Any abortionist who performs an PBA from now on will be gambling his freedom on the luck of the draw in getting a lefty judge assigned to his case who'll accept his bogus exception excuse in the face of overwhelming medical evidence and these Congressional findings. As Clint Eastwood would say, the question for the PBA performing abortionist is "Do you feel lucky?"
The bill also includes a civil damages section that allows parents to sue physicians for injuries, including psychological injuries, incurred during PBAs. This section creates a financial incentive for otherwise erstwhile allies in the culture of death (i.e., greedy trial lawyers) to devour their own for a change. It's an in terrorem clause for abortionists that hits them right where they live. I like it.
Instead of focusing on these sections, the author of this hit piece and his dupes focus on a legally meaningless resolution of the Senate affirming the Supreme Court's decision Roe v. Wade. To borrow Mercuria's phraseology, this is the real "Potemkin" section of the law. Actually my preferred legal phraseology for this insertion is "BFD." This section adds nothing to the law, it takes away nothing from the law. It is simply included as a political figleaf for the pro-abort RINOs who otherwise might have balked at passing a PBA ban. If they had held out for Mardi Gras beads, that would have cost more, plus we might have had to endure the spectacle of RINO women in the Senate like Snowe and Specter topless. [Coulter joke]
The gratuitous praise for Blackman's folly in this section is almost the perfect insult. Generally speaking, one expects Supreme Court decisions to stand on their own merit without the need for Stuart Smally-like affirmations from other independent branches of government. When referees make calls, they don't usually solicit approval from the players. It speaks volumes to the insecurity and uncertainty of Roe's defenders that they think this sort of lip service adds any legitimacy to that dubious decision. It's almost as if they believe Harry Blackman is reading this somewhere and saying "You like me, you really like me."
We can agree with the naysayers on these points: The bill doesn't ban all abortions. It doesn't overturn Roe (Congress CANNOT overturn Supreme Court decisions.) It doesn't even ban all third-trimester, only the most horrific ones, unspeakably gruesome procedures notorious for their singular savagery and barbarism. It doesn't mark the end of Roe v. Wade, but it is a start. After 30 years of legalized slaughter of innocents, even a small victory is cause for hope. "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."
The peculiar institution of slavery wasn't abolished overnight. The Emancipation Proclamation specifically declared slaves free only in those states that were in insurrection with the government that issued the proclamation. Is there any doubt how the author of this article would have characterized the Emancipation Proclamation or the Republican president who signed it?
The defeat of the Evil Empire didn't happen overnight either. The first setback for Communism in the Cold War seemed insignificant at the time. The liberation of Grenada was similarly ridiculed as was the Republican president who engineered what seemed like a relatively miniscule setback in the inexorable march of Communism. Grenada was followed by major Communist setbacks in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Angola, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany and elsewhere.
In the larger scheme of things, the curious timing of second-guessing from certain quarters not heretofore known for their unflinching pro-life views should come as no surprise. No century has a monopoly on malcontents or myopia.