NEBRASKA TRIES TO PROTECT HELPLESS, SUPREME COURT OVERRULES
by David Sisler
The driver was waiting for the traffic light to turn green so he could continue his journey home to his wife and two small daughters. Seconds before he could accelerate away, a drug-crazed thug pointed a pistol at the man's face and fired three times from point-blank range. The first bullet was fatal, the second and third only amplified the horror of murder.
The young woman was jogging along a well-worn path. It was early morning, the sun not yet scalding the already parched grass. Her morning trek took her along the river and passed an abandon factory. As she rounded the corner a hooded figure tackled her, straddled her chest, and with all of his maddened fury, seized her hair in his fists and crashed her head onto the concrete, splitting her skull, killing her instantly.
The two month old baby girl would not be quiet. Colic and diaper rash and heat and hunger insured that she would be vocal. Her mother, a baby herself, picked up the infant and shook her. The shaking scrambled the little girl's brains and she fell silent and dead.
Crimes of opportunity. Crimes exposing the victims' vulnerability and helplessness. But as The Washington Times editorialized one day before our national celebration of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, "There is no one more vulnerable than the unborn child, and last week the U.S. Supreme Court made these lives more precarious when it struck down Nebraska's ban on partial-birth abortion."
You understand partial-birth abortion, or "Dilation and Extraction" – the baby is partially extracted from the birth canal and killed. Dr. Marvin Haskell, who pioneered this technique of mass murder that would have made the Nazi's Dr. Mengele proud, stated that a doctor sometimes over-dilates the patient and has to hold the baby's head inside the vagina: "The fetus could just fall out. But that's not really the point," syndicated columnist Tony Snow quotes the abortionist. "The point here is you're attempting to do an abortion."
If you don't hold the baby inside its mother's vagina, it will be born, it will live, but the Supreme Court of the United States said, by a 5-4 vote, it is constitutionally permissible to kill that child. The majority, in Stenberg vs. Carhart, declared that the Nebraska law created an "undue burden" on the right to abortion. What about the undue burden on the rights of the child who is inches away from life!
One of the incredible ironies of this court session was the 7-2 vote affirming the Miranda decision which has allowed untold criminals to escape punishment for their crimes. "You have the right to have an attorney present. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you without charge." What about a baby's right to be protected from a doctor who is poised to stab a pair of scissors into her brain?
Nebraska tried to write a law which would protect its unborn citizens. The legislators knew that the court demanded an exception clause, and so they wrote one large enough that the Titanic (another notable disaster) could have sailed through, and still the law was overturned. It agreed to permit partial-birth abortions that were "necessary to save the life of the mother whose life is endangered by a physical disorder, physical illness or physical injury, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself." Not enough the five justices declared. The Supreme Court wants to rewrite its own 1992 Planned Parenthood Vs. Casey decision by adding the life-threatening condition of depression. Even The Washington Post warns, "sometimes the Court seems to be making up the law as it goes along."
Writing a minority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia said that a health-of-the-mother exception actually nullifies any abortion restrictions. "The court must know, as most state legislatures banning this procedure have concluded, that demanding a health exception ... is to give live-birth abortion free rein," he said.
Justice Scalia was not finished in voicing his displeasure with his colleagues Justices Steven Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sandra Day O'Connor, David Souter, and John Paul Stevens. "The notion," he said, "that the Constitution of the United States, designed, among other things, ‘to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, ... and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,' prohibits the states from simply banning this visibly brutal means of eliminating our half-born posterity is quite simply absurd."
Justice Sandra Day O'Conner hints that she will cross the line and vote for a proper partial-birth abortion law. Will someone please write one? Quickly! How many more children must die?
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Published in The Augusta Chronicle 7/08/2000
Copyright 2000 by David Sisler. All Rights Reserved.
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