Posted on 12/09/2004 7:15:59 PM PST by SmithL
LINCOLN -- Twenty-six Republican members of Congress asked an appeals court Thursday to reinstate the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, struck down by a federal judge in September.
The House members sided with the U.S. Justice Department, saying in a friend-of-the-court brief that the government has a "vital and compelling interest in preventing the spread of the practice of abortion into infanticide."
At issue is a federal law banning a procedure doctors call intact dilation and extraction, or D&X. Opponents call it partial-birth abortion. During the procedure, generally performed in the second trimester, a fetus is partly removed from the womb and its skull is punctured.
President Bush signed the ban last year, but it was not enforced because of legal challenges.
U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf in Nebraska ruled in September that the ban interferes with a woman's right to an abortion and is unconstitutional. Kopf's ruling followed decisions overturning the law by federal judges in New York and San Francisco. Those decisions also have been appealed.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
How should we best take action on this, oh wiser ones than I?
Most people believe the court based its Roe v Wade is was on the putative viability of unborn life, and that the court examined all of the existing information, then decided there was no viability, so abortion should be legal.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
I have had to force newspaper editors to retract editiorials on this aspect of the USSC decision.
The court based its decision on the fact that since religion and science could not decide (up to that time) when life begins, they didn't have to, either.
Roe author Justuce Harry Blackmun wrote: "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer."
It appears the Roe Court (or some of them) actually believed that it wasn't possible to determine when the life of a human being begins. But, by not resolving this factual issue, the Court left unresolved the legal question regarding the rights of an unborn child. So, the need to provide an answer to that question is inescapable.
Cutting edge millenium technology offers proof positive that life begins at conception. The issue of when life begins is no longer a difficult question. Scientific and medical evidence proves, without doubt, that human life begins at the moment of conception and that the child is a complete, separate, unique and irreplaceable human being from the moment of conception throughout gestation.
Since 1973, advances in technology have allowed us to obtain new information about human life on a molecular level. This information resolves all doubts that abortion is the act of killing a human being and that this tiny human experiences pain even during early gestation.
At the time of the Roe v Wade decision, abortion was completely illegal in 33 states except when necessary to save the life of the mother. The remaining 17 states allowed abortion in various circumstances. The most permissive, New York, allowed abortion for any reason up to 24 weeks, though New York did not allow third trimester abortions for "emotional health" as required by the Supreme Court.
In recent years, the abortion right has been extended to partial-birth abortions (sometimes termed infanticide) so that a perfectly viable child in the birth canal, in the process of being born, can be aborted in a most gruesome way, if the mother so chooses.
Thanks to FemiNazis, the unborn child has literally no protection in the womb, and is considered fair game by any and all saline/suction-wielding abortionists.
The USSC decision specfically states that under the equal protection clause of 14th Amendment, the unborn child is not considered a "person" and therefore has no legal rights under US law (14th Excerpt: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof......").
Roe v Wade author Blackmun wrote that "the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense" and are not entitled to constitutional protection until birth.
Here, Blackmun was aided by tenets of the Jewish faith, and possibly other faiths, who teach that life begins at birth, not in the womb.
However, the official right-to-life position is that life begins at conception. Pro aborts insist that laws built on those religious beliefs infringe on their constitutional right of freedom from religion, yet they rarely if ever mention that the concept of life beginning at birth is a religious belief.
Abortion is the killing of a baby. Roe v. Wade is preposterous.
Agreed.
And I'll go one step further. We are all guilty as accomplices to murder, by virtue of the fact that we are not incarcerated or killed for attempting to save these innocent lives. By our silence we give consent. By our votes, we give consent.
Hey, we in Oklahoma elected Tom Coburn to the Senate. You can't exactly accuse us of being proabortion.
I do not see how banning the murder of a half delivered newborn baby does anything to inhibit a woman's right to an abortion if she so chooses to have one. She has three months in the first trimester to make up her mind. There is no reason for her to wait until the baby is a viable human being on its own and then decide to have it murdered when it is halfway into this world. I cannot understand why any ethical doctor would be a party to this. There is an alternative...adoption. There are so many good people who are waiting years for an infant.
I heartily agree. If my mother had been abortion minded (I was born under less than planned circumstances) I wouldn't be here and many others would never have a chance to see the light of day. When I ask my female relatives why a baby shouldn't be put up for adoption rather than abortion, they seem unable to grasp the idea, saying
"How long is that woman going to feel sorry after she gives that baby up?" Go figure.
Mike, you just counter right back, "How long is she going to feel sorry for having killed her baby?" A great many women do continue to feel the pain of having made such a decision. At the time, they don't see any other way out. They are afraid, they are embarrassed, they don't know how to handle the situation. This is where counseling comes in. We need homes for unwed mothers in this country. Safe places where they get medical attention, shelter, good nutrition, and where they have time to consider their options. Then they can make the right choice, whether to keep their child or to give it up for adoption. Abortion is not the easy way out so many think it is. And why in the world there are unplanned pregnancies in this country when we have the education available and the contraceptives available I will never know. It is just heartbreaking.
I do believe there are a number of states that have laws that prosecute for two deaths, as when a driver is inovlved in the death of a pregnant mother and child.
Doctors have actually done surgery on the tiniest unborn----while still in the womb---months before the actual birth of the baby. If that is not an indication of viable fetal life, nothing is.
Exactly. So what is the problem with the Supreme Court? I don't see why they have a problem with determining that a fetus is a PERSON!
.....as the Dred Scot USSC decision claimed Blacks were not persons.........
Abortion (gag) rights were once seen as trendy, riding on liberal's rise to prominence, a frontal attack on the conservative establishment, and welded to the women's rights movement.
Yet, just as the light of history has shown that owning slaves was deplorable, abortion will someday be seen as a monumental crime against nature.
Mike, it is alive! It is growing every second! Perhaps before it actually looks like a baby they don't think of the fetus as a baby, but it is still a baby. At the fourth week of development, according to my old Maternity Care Nursing textbook, "the heart develops; double chambers visible; begins to beat; Aortic arches and major veins completed". I think the Supreme Court Justices need to spend some time with some Obstetricians on site!
"Gag" is right! I can't imagine thinking of abortion as "trendy". I sure as heck hate thinking of it as one of "women's rights"! Good grief! Haven't people heard of BIRTH CONTROL????? I can understand taking the morning after pill in case of rape or incest, but just having an abortion because you don't feel like having a baby or because it is inconvenient is no excuse.
Does anyone know why Liz's account has been banned/suspended? Certainly didn't appear to be a troll...
I have been off for the holidays. Sorry. I can't help you. What is a troll? I did not know anyone could suspend an account.????
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