The Judge Report

Guest Post by Cardinal Egan:

The picture on this page is an untouched photograph of a being that has been within its mother for 20 weeks. Please do me the favor of looking at it carefully.

Have you any doubt that it is a human being?

If you do not have any such doubt, have you any doubt that it is an innocent human being?

If you have no doubt about this either, have you any doubt that the authorities in a civilized society are duty-bound to protect this innocent human being if anyone were to wish to kill it?

If your answer to this last query is negative, that is, if you have no doubt that the authorities in a civilized society would be duty-bound to protect this innocent human being if someone were to wish to kill it, I would suggest—even insist—that there is not a lot more to be said about the issue of abortion in our society. It is wrong, and it cannot—must not—be tolerated.

But you might protest that all of this is too easy. Why, you might inquire, have I not delved into the opinion of philosophers and theologians about the matter? And even worse: Why have I not raised the usual questions about what a “human being” is, what a “person” is, what it means to be “living,” and such? People who write books and articles about abortion always concern themselves with these kinds of things. Even the justices of the Supreme Court who gave us “Roe v. Wade” address them. Why do I neglect philosophers and theologians? Why do I not get into defining “human being,” defining “person,” defining “living,” and the rest? Because, I respond, I am sound of mind and endowed with a fine set of eyes, into which I do not believe it is well to cast sand. I looked at the photograph, and I have no doubt about what I saw and what are the duties of a civilized society if what I saw is in danger of being killed by someone who wishes to kill it or, if you prefer, someone who “chooses” to kill it. In brief: I looked, and I know what I saw.

But what about the being that has been in its mother for only 15 weeks or only 10? Have you photographs of that too? Yes, I do. However, I hardly think it necessary to show them. For if we agree that the being in the photograph printed on this page is an innocent human being, you have no choice but to admit that it may not be legitimately killed even before 20 weeks unless you can indicate with scientific proof the point in the development of the being before which it was other than an innocent human being and, therefore, available to be legitimately killed. Nor have Aristotle, Aquinas or even the most brilliant embryologists of our era or any other era been able to do so. If there is a time when something less than a human being in a mother morphs into a human being, it is not a time that anyone has ever been able to identify, though many have made guesses. However, guesses are of no help. A man with a shotgun who decides to shoot a being that he believes may be a human being is properly hauled before a judge. And hopefully, the judge in question knows what a “human being” is and what the implications of someone’s wishing to kill it are. The word “incarceration” comes to mind.

However, we must not stop here. The matter becomes even clearer and simpler if you obtain from the National Geographic Society two extraordinary DVDs. One is entitled “In the Womb” and illustrates in color and in motion the development of one innocent human being within its mother. The other is entitled “In the Womb—Multiples” and in color and motion shows the development of two innocent human beings—twin boys—within their mother. If you have ever allowed yourself to wonder, for example, what “living” means, these two DVDs will be a great help. The one innocent human being squirms about, waves its arms, sucks its thumb, smiles broadly and even yawns; and the two innocent human beings do all of that and more: They fight each other. One gives his brother a kick, and the other responds with a sock to the jaw. If you can convince yourself that these beings are something other than living and innocent human beings, something, for example, such as “mere clusters of tissues,” you have a problem far more basic than merely not appreciating the wrongness of abortion. And that problem is—forgive me—self-deceit in a most extreme form.

Adolf Hitler convinced himself and his subjects that Jews and homosexuals were other than human beings. Joseph Stalin did the same as regards Cossacks and Russian aristocrats. And this despite the fact that Hitler and his subjects had seen both Jews and homosexuals with their own eyes, and Stalin and his subjects had seen both Cossacks and Russian aristocrats with theirs. Happily, there are few today who would hesitate to condemn in the roundest terms the self-deceit of Hitler, Stalin or even their subjects to the extent that the subjects could have done something to end the madness and protect living, innocent human beings.

It is high time to stop pretending that we do not know what this nation of ours is allowing—and approving—with the killing each year of more than 1,600,000 innocent human beings within their mothers. We know full well that to kill what is clearly seen to be an innocent human being or what cannot be proved to be other than an innocent human being is as wrong as wrong gets. Nor can we honorably cover our shame (1) by appealing to the thoughts of Aristotle or Aquinas on the subject, inasmuch as we are all well aware that their understanding of matters embryological was hopelessly mistaken, (2) by suggesting that “killing” and “choosing to kill” are somehow distinct ethically, morally or criminally, (3) by feigning ignorance of the meaning of “human being,” “person,” “living,” and such, (4) by maintaining that among the acts covered by the right to privacy is the act of killing an innocent human being, and (5) by claiming that the being within the mother is “part” of the mother, so as to sustain the oft-repeated slogan that a mother may kill or authorize the killing of the being within her “because she is free to do as she wishes with her own body.”

One day, please God, when the stranglehold on public opinion in the United States has been released by the extremists for whom abortion is the center of their political and moral life, our nation will, in my judgment, look back on what we have been doing to innocent human beings within their mothers as a crime no less heinous than what was approved by the Supreme Court in the “Dred Scott Case” in the 19th century, and no less heinous than what was perpetrated by Hitler and Stalin in the 20th. There is nothing at all complicated about the utter wrongness of abortion, and making it all seem complicated mitigates that wrongness not at all. On the contrary, it intensifies it.

Do me a favor. Look at the photograph again. Look and decide with honesty and decency what the Lord expects of you and me as the horror of “legalized” abortion continues to erode the honor of our nation. Look, and do not absolve yourself if you refuse to act.
Edward Cardinal Egan
Archbishop of New York

Well, I see that Mr. Obama has characterized the truth that he supports allowing live-birth abortion victims to be neglected to death as “despicable lies”.  He’s used this tactic before, and it’s wearing a little thin. The fact remains that he led the fight in Illinois against protecting the most vulnerable of our live citizens, a position that was not taken by a single member of the United States Senate when an identical bill was passed unanimously and which takes him beyond even NARAL, making his the most extreme anti-life position ever taken by a major candidate for any office in this country.

That he would continue to lie about his own record is understandable, because it is a position that is as repugnant and repulsive as almost any imaginable.

Everybody please read Mona Charen’s Deniers for Obama.

Here’s the money quote:

Barack Obama is a charming and intelligent man. But there is no other way to interpret his position on BAIPA than this: A woman who chooses an abortion is entitled to a dead child no matter what. That is an abortion extremist.

*******

Far be it for me to presume to advise Mr. Obama on how to run his campaign, but running on death issues is a loser. I’m not just speaking of the above wacky position, but rather the conscious and concerted effort by Obama to inject abortion as a campaign issue. This tactic has been tried time and time again and it always fails. Pro-abortion candidates are encouraged by polls which show that a majority of voters support a right to abortion under some circumstances. The various caveats to that I will ignore for the moment and just accept the general premise.

What the polls don’t show is that when it comes to the voting booth, the general philosophic acceptance of abortion does not translate into votes for an assertive pro-abortion candidate. The reasons are many. Part of it is that the pro-life vote is far more focused on the issue, far more likely to treat it as a make or break decider.

And part of it is simply that most voters feel extremely uncomfortable with candidates promoting death, whether they agree with the “right” or not. This reality is not limited to abortion or party. Republicans have made he same mistake over and over themselves by assuming that general public support for the death penalty will translate into votes for a pro-death penalty candidate. I remember several losing campagns in New York along these lines. Mario Cuomo stated right out that he would not enforce a death penalty in New York even if one passed. People disagreed with that, but respected him for it, because it was grounded in  morality. And there was just something creepy about running for office proclaiming you will put more people to death than the other guy. That is something I’ve never been fond of George W. Bush for, and I recall Bill Clinton establishing his “moderate” credentials by running back to Arkansas during his first campaign to ensure a criminal would be put to death before the election.

And I truly can’t think of a single pro-life legislator who was thrown out of office on that issue. Despite all the talk of suburban Republican women eagerly protecting their right to choose, it just never happens that way. Sure, the most pro-life guy in the Senate, Rick Santorum, got tossed a couple of years ago, but only after the Democrats cynically recruited the son of the nation’s most revered pro-life Democrat (an admittedly small field, but Bob Casey Senior was a good guy) to run against him.

So keep bringing it up, Obama. Keep reminding us.

I’m Bob Going and I approved these despicable lies.

In an age of wishy-washy wind-checkers, Congressman Henry Hyde stood out by taking stands on issues as bold and as bright as the colors of the flag he loved and served so well.

In the beginning he had many bipartisan allies in his Right to Life cause.  Over the years, many of them, for the sake of political expediency, drifted away.  The sad case of Jesse Jackson comes immediately to mind.

But Hyde stood his ground.  He knew what he believed in, and he fought for his beliefs.  He managed to keep the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding of abortions, virtually intact for decades, despite the shifting sands of politics and public opinion.

According to National Review, the National Right to Life Committee conservatively estimates that the Hyde Amendment prevented over a million abortions in the last thirty years.  That’s a million people walking around today who owe their lives to the tenacity of this one man.

I think it is fair to say that he has justified his life here, and will be welcomed heartily in the next.

Pardon me if I’m not dancing in the streets over yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling in Gonzales v. Carhart.
Not that I disagree with the decision. It’s ok as far as it goes, which is not too far.  All it says is that this particular statute, which seeks to ban a medical procedure by which a fully-developed viable unborn child is yanked feet-first through the birth canal until its head is locked in the cervix, whereupon its skull is pierced and brains vacuumed out until, presumably, death occurs, is not UNCONSTITUTIONAL on its face.

It still might be unconstitutional in some cases, of course, and there are other, unbanned, methods available  which would allow for the same result, so what’s the big deal suggests the majority, while the shrill voices of the dissenters (and ALL the candidates for president in the party of Jefferson) are left kicking and screaming like, well, a new-born baby.

Roe v. Wade was fairly new when I was in law school and even the most radical left-wing card-carrying-member-of-the-ACLU law professor wasn’t convinced it was good law, nor good policy.  I remember him explaining the “viability” issue left open by the court.  (You may recall that Roe divided a baby into three trimesters and declared that no regulation could take place for the first trimester, some for the second, and then marked the beginning of the third trimester as when “viability” happens and thus a stronger governmental interest is created).

The Professor pointed out that advances in science and medicine were already moving back the viability time clock and that we could expect future courts to narrow the Roe decision without having to overturn it.

Which shows that prophecy is a difficult business when dealing with a body like the Supreme Court which has the power to make its own rules and public policy as it goes along.

So why not just say what is obvious to nearly everyone: that a fully-developed fetus which unquestionably could survive and thrive outside the womb has every bit as much right to life as nine ladies and gentlemen wearing black robes?

I said fetus there deliberately.

The thing that sent dissenter Justice Ginsburg into apoplexy yesterday?  Justice Kennedy continuously referred to the victim of this grim and ghastly barbarism as an “unborn child”.

And therein appears the very first crack in 34 years in this wall of madness.

A number of years ago a married woman of our acquaintance underwent prenatal testing. She and her husband received the sad news that their daughter would be born blind and deaf. She was strongly urged by medical professionals to abort the child (my word). Her faith would not allow it, and her stubbornness gave her the strength to stand up to the new gods.

But how many women have that strength, and how many men support them? In a previous post, in a footnote comment, I linked to a chilling article by George Neumayr, executive editor of The American Spectator titled The abortion debate that wasn’t in the Seattle Post Intelligencer. The statistics are horrifying.

Most of us know at least one person with Down Syndrome. Most lead fairly normal lives. I seem to recall one teenager starring in a television drama several years ago.

Some experts believe that since 1989, 70% of all conceived Down Syndrome children (my word) have been aborted.

Read the article for the rest. It will make you sick, I hope.

As a lawyer and former judge, I am particularly concerned with the part played in all this by the courts. Under our system of Common Law, causes of action are developed over time not by the legislatures, but by the courts. Trial lawyers push the limits all the time, which is how, without any action taken by elected bodies, suits for Wrongful Birth and Wrongful Life have cowered the already ethically challenged medical profession into not only acquiescing in, but actually promoting the New Eugenics.

A doctor fails to perform prenatal testing, or fails to discover a potential birth defect, or fails to adequately inform the mother (my word) of her “options”, including the RightThatDaresNotSpeakItsName, and the doctor or his insurance company can be on the hook for all the trauma caused the parents, and the support of the child forever. Is it any wonder that doctors use their professional status to urge, even demand, abortion when there is the slightest chance of an “imperfect” child?

The Culture of Life says that every life is a gift from God. The greatest triumph of our humanity has been our care for the weak and the helpless and the hopeless among us. In the Church we call such things works of mercy. Their essence is contained in the Beatitudes.

Will the Culture of Life prevail, or will the attitude of Senator Clinton, who argued that the partial birth abortion law should be defeated because it did not contain an exception for the mother (my word) to abort a disabled child (my word)?

Even if medical science can show us with absolute certainty the physical future of our progeny, by what right does anyone destroy that life?

Our friend gave birth to a baby girl who is, by the way, a perfectly normal high school kid today.

The Judge likes a guy who says what he means and means what he says.

WALLACE: Do you want to overturn Roe vs. Wade?

THOMPSON: I think Roe vs. Wade was bad law and bad medical science. And the way to address that is through good judges. I don’t think the court ought to wake up one day and make new social policy for the country. It’s contrary to what it’s been the past 200 years.

We have a process in this country to do that. Judges shouldn’t be doing that. That’s what happened in that case. I think it was wrong.