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Roe v. Wade and the will to evil

The World Trade Center lit up recently in celebration of the passage of a new New York abortion law. As reported, it does indeed legalize abortion up until birth. The definition of "health," of course, is completely loose, and the abortionist gets to decide what counts. Other states, including Massachusetts, Virginia, and Vermont, are seeing a push from Democrat lawmakers to pass similar laws.

It's good to see my pro-life friends once more having the opportunity to point out the extremism of the pro-aborts. And if you had any doubt, bang on cue, here's an article that says the NY law still isn't radical enough, since the transparent excuse of "health" still has to be used in order to carry out a late-term abortion. Awww. The poor people who want to kill babies late in pregnancy have to check a phony box before doing so. Tsk tsk.

The publicity that this law is receiving may help to open some eyes.

What pro-lifers are not saying much, though, is this: This is the regime of Roe v. Wade. We may be nervous about saying it, lest we sound ho-hum about what New York just did. We don't want to sound like we are speaking like the pro-aborts: "This law doesn't change much. It encodes Roe in case the conservatives on SCOTUS overturn Roe."

Well, we should be so lucky as to have SCOTUS overturn Roe. I fear that isn't going to happen, at least not if "overturn" means what any pro-lifer means by that.

But the fact of the matter is that, with a few notable exceptions, the New York law replaced an obsolete dead letter, a pre-Roe law that remained on the books, with a law that enshrines the radical pro-abortion mandate of Roe.

A couple of qualifications are in order. The biggest one is this, which I just learned about while in the midst of drafting this post: The new law actively struck from the books a previous requirement, which may or may not have been enforced, that another doctor be on hand after twenty weeks to take charge of and care for the interests of any child born alive at the time of an abortion.

The permission for a nurse practitioner to perform an abortion is also probably new, even in New York State. And then there is this: The careful attempt to remove abortion from every place where it appeared in the criminal code removes a tool for prosecuting a person who injures a pregnant woman and kills her unborn child--a boyfriend who beats his pregnant girlfriend and kills the child, for example. Well, we have to be consistent, you know! Allowing prosecution for killing a wanted unborn child while harming the mother, outside of an abortion clinic, looks inconsistent, as if we think the unborn child might have some sort of right to protection. We can't have that!

From the perspective of legal climate, such a recent legislative act also plausibly means that no child who survives a late-term abortion will be protected if actively murdered outside the womb. It would be a bold prosecutor who would try to prosecute for infanticide perpetrated upon an aborted child in such a political and legal climate, even though technically post-birth infanticide remains illegal. (Consider this case from 2006 in Florida. The child was smothered by being zipped into a plastic biohazard bag, but the prosecutor thought, in essence, that he couldn't prosecute because the child was aborted and then smothered before "viability.") It is virtually certain that neglecting a surviving child in need of assistance in such circumstances, even minimal breathing assistance, would not result in prosecution in the New York regime. Recent comments by Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia, which is debating a similar bill to New York's, make it clear that this is no idle speculation. (This news from Europe is relevant as well.) Northam's comments also make clear that it is urgent that both houses of Congress pass a meaningful Born-Alive Infant Protection Act, meaning one that actually contains penalties rather than being an empty gesture. (Go, Ben Sasse!)

We must also remember that any federal law that was modeled after the New York law would indeed change matters quite a bit in many states that have wangled some protections and regulations despite the stranglehold of Roe--waiting periods, parental consent, requirement for two doctors independently to sign off on late-term abortions, enhanced informed consent laws, etc. The only reason that the New York law makes so little difference to the legal status quo is because New York already had a love affair with abortion and had none of those regulations in place. This is worth mentioning because for decades now the left has been trying to pass something called the Freedom of Choice Act at the federal level, covering it with the lie that it merely encodes Roe v. Wade.

Other than that, though, the permission of abortion up until birth with only a fake "health" requirement is...well...that's Roe v. Wade, and always has been. But while the New York law did not change the situation a great deal legally in that state, it does represent something: It represents the will to evil. It represents a celebratory embrace of the most radical aspects of what Roe imposed upon the nation all those years ago.

Those of us who have been pro-lifers for decades have been trying to tell people over and over again about what Roe and Doe really meant. We have been trying to counter the lies about what "health" means, about the alleged "need" for abortion. This is another opportunity to do so, and valued as such.

Make no mistake. There are lawmakers in New York State who knew full-well what they were doing. They desire abortion to be legal until birth for any reason, even the most trivial. They are getting as close to that as possible, even if the fig leaf of a "health" exception for late-term abortions is the politically most feasible way of doing that for right now. They are giddy with excitement about moving closer to that goal--a right to a dead baby (oops, fetus). (See the infamous 1980 quote from abortionist Robert Crist proclaiming exactly that.) What precisely they think about killing a child who survives an abortion I don't want to ponder too much, but I'd guess most of them are on-board at least with leaving the child to gasp out his last breaths without assistance.

It's a rhetorically somewhat difficult moment for legal geek pro-lifers who have been following this for decades. We know that the New York law did mostly just enshrine the worst aspects of Roe. But let's not shy away from saying that. There is a way of saying it without downplaying. Yes, indeed, that's what the New York lawmakers did, and they did it joyfully, gleefully, revealing the will to evil for what it is. Now let's keep telling the world: This is what the abortion regime really is. And let's fight it.

Comments (8)

1. I cant help but conclude the people who support abortion up until the moment of birth, and perhaps even after, would rather my yet to be born daughter be killed than be born. This is immediately personal for me accordingly.

2. Now that straight up infanticide is being advocated for by mainstream Democrats, whats next? Is *choice* really sacrosanct? It seems the choice to kill the baby is the preferred choice, after all. Why think that those who are generally for bigger government, killing babies, and are convinced they know better than everyone else will in the long run let the mom have the final decision to kill her baby or not?

If the mother is mentally impaired and a ward of the state, she can already be forced to have an abortion against her will. If a woman is an adult and is mentally competent, I expect that it will be a long time before she is forced to have an abortion. However, once the baby is born it is a different matter, and I believe that infanticide of various sorts against parents' wishes is already being carried out, though not widely publicized. Belgium has already issued guidelines for child euthanasia. It is not clear that Belgian doctors require parental permission to carry this out.

http://whatswrongwrongwiththeworld.net/2013/12/choice_devours_itself_child_eu.html

http://whatswrongwrongwiththeworld.net/2014/04/choice_devours_itself_belgian.html

On a practical note, if women have a legal right to an abortion right up until the moment of birth, wouldn't this right conflict with the conscience rights of pro-life doctors and nurses in the delivery room? It seems to me, practically speaking, that they would all need to be willing to kill/help kill the baby if the mom asks them to so that she is able to exercise this legal right of hers, so to speak. Might this be a prelude to a new attack on conscience rights? I dont imagine the same people who cheer for the New York law will accept a mom who ended up giving birth to a live baby just because everyone in the vicinity was pro-life. The more I think about this, the more I cant think of any way out other than the banning of third trimester abortion at minimum or the banning of conscience exemptions for pro-life doctors and nurses in the delivery room.

Drink in the mindlessness of pro-abortionists (warning: language): https://youtu.be/nodRd-iGjj4

DR, they'd certainly have to switch crews if the woman suddenly changed her mind and the medical practitioners had qualms of conscience. In practice, I actually don't think women change their minds in the middle of labor very often, if ever. What does happen is that they wait until fairly late to request an abortion. And then pro-aborts whine that this was because they didn't have "access," which is dubious. More often it's because they were in denial. That is how you have these cases where babies are born in public bathroom stalls or in a high school girl's bedroom.

But of course conscience rights always do come under attack in other ways in such a rabid atmosphere. At a minimum, a pro-life ob-gyn will be pressured (if not required in some states) to refer. I don't know what NY state laws are like in that regard.

At a minimum, a pro-life ob-gyn will be pressured (if not required in some states) to refer.

I seem to recall that the EU tried to enforce this on Polish doctors, and got a pretty strong revolt where they said "I won't". I don't know what the outcome was, but I thought it was some kind of "accommodation".

I haven't heard of any US state actually mandating it explicitly, though nearly all medical schools make it extraordinarily hard to get OB training without doing abortions. I have heard of students holding to their guns and refusing and still getting through, though, so I think it is (still) possible - but not necessarily at just any med school. It is certainly very difficult, and you have to be willing to bear outrageous intimidation and persecution, with no guarantee of success. (So much for "choice", and the decision being "between a woman and her doctor".)

California expressly considered a required referral law for doctors. At one point it was voted down. I don't know if it's been revived. Of course, let's not forget at the same time that CA *passed* a law requiring crisis pregnancy centers to provide a phone number where women could find out how to get an abortion. That law was struck down by SCOTUS.

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