Pictured is President Obama pulling the string at the back of Steven’s neck which triggers his toy voicebox that says “I love abortion in every form.” Roe v. Wade was in itself a horror of a decision, based on social engineering, “pro-choice politics” and judicial activism. In other words, pretty much everything except law, precedent and the Constitution. But it’s the murderous progeny of Roe that have resulted in helpless living beings being slaughtered wholesale in the name of “a woman’s choice.”
Standing alone, Roe is bad science and worse law, but the cases which grew out of it are much worse, and Medal recipient John Paul Stevens played a major role in giving the assembly-line murders constitutional cover. The freedom, indeed the God-given right of life, was not of any concern to Stevens and four of his Supreme Court colleagues.
Obama attempted to humanize this inhuman jurist with little tidbits like “At his vacation home in Florida, he was John from Arlington, better known for his world-class bridge game than his world-changing judicial opinions.” Cute, huh? Good old John. He was just doing his job. No evil intent whatsoever. Just a friendly old guy who puts his imprimatur on death warrants for millions of nearly-born babies.
The award itself contains the words: “ . . . his commitment to the noble vision of our nation’s founders.” I’m not sure which Founder’s ghostly screams I’m hearing. Could be Jefferson. Could be Washington. Could be Madison. But I’m hearing “that’s a goddam lie, we never envisioned the vicious and violent death of babies ready to emerge from the womb.”
Good old Justice John wrote the majority opinion in the 2000 case which said that a woman’s choice includes choosing a doctor who will hasten the birthing cycle so that the live baby can emerge, feet first, ready to have its brain entered by surgical scissors and scalpels in a barbarous procedure known as “dilation and extraction,” aka partial-birth abortion. From the time he was a back bench Illinois legislator, Barack Obama has agreed with that position.
Stevens opined that the anti-partial-birth abortion law at issue in Stenberg v. Carhart was indistinguishable from the “legal” procedure “dilation and evacuation” an equally barbarous form of murdering a baby in the womb at a slightly earlier stage of the healthy pregnancy. Therefore, Stevens said, it would be impossible for a good doctor to know whether he was performing a lawful procedure or a medical murder. God forbid we should put MD assassins at risk, and partial-birth abortion was approved by the high court. The calmness and ordinariness with which the opinion describes the various forms of baby murder that must be allowed is reminiscent of Adolf Eichmann calmly describing the methods he used to kill Jews at the extermination camps.
Stevens cited all the various and despicable forms of baby-murder which were allowable in order to show that partial-birth abortion was just another form of medical treatment. Stevens concluded that the dismemberment of a living human being, partially removed by the doctor from the mother’s womb in order to kill it, is “a question of the liberty protected by the 14th Amendment as recognized in the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade.”
Finally, in 2007, Stevens found himself joining in a baby-murder opinion again, this time the minority opinion. He joined Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in Gonzales v. Carhart in stating that “In sum, the notion that the Partial-Birth Abortion Act furthers any legitimate government interest is, quite simply, irrational.” Ginsburg also quoted Stevens's concurring majority opinion in the earlier Stenberg case, repeating Stevens’s words that the “state has no interest in protecting a child against a partial-birth abortion." Well, the idea that murdering a living human being during the birth process should be legal is just plain crazy. Living Constitution, millions of murdered babies.
Essentially, Obama placed the ribbon with the Medal of Freedom around Stevens’s neck, celebrating the liberty to slice and dice innocent human lives. If that’s “freedom,” give me tyranny.
38 comments:
Lawhawk
This is a good article.
It amazes me the logic behind partial birth abortion. It is my understanding that Roe v Wade was about the women's right to her body. The child could be killed to essentially evict it from the womb. The argument being that it could not live outside the mother's body.
With what you have described it seens that the child could indeed live outside the woman's body since it has to be killed in order to stop that from happening.
I will never understand the people that support abortion. They talk of freedom and choioce and are essentially robbing the baby of a lifetime of choices.
Great article Lawhawk........You hit the nail on the head with the dispassionate recounting (in legal terms) of dismembering human life. All the "irrational fears" that conservatives have had since 1973 about the slippery slope of abortion turning into infanticide are sure borne true now aren't they? And now these "progressives" can't even bring themselves to condemn gender based abortion...in fact, female gender only abortion. Where is NOW, the "feminists" and all the other idiots demanding "fairness" in outcome?!
This stuff just drives me nuts and is the embodiment of EVERYTHING that is wrong with liberal, leftists, progressive thinking and illogic legalese to justify their evil ways.
Another result of a RINO, Gerald Ford, and his go along, get along horse crap. Though the Goldwater brand of conservatism was only a decade old, Ford blew it. Our guys have failed with Supreme Court nominees, Reagan , O’Connor, Bush I, Souter, these turncoats have done as much damage to the fabric of America as any liberal appointee could. The good news, our guys seem to understand this problem, as proven by Bush II, with Roberts and Alito, Harriet Miers excluded, she could have been a stealth liberal. Partial birth abortion is disgusting.
Patriot, in a way I am glad that the anti-gender-based abortion legislation failed. I don't care for the illusion of fairness when it comes to abortion. Let it remain as ugly as it is. Besides, while the subject may be sour, the irony is delicious. The Dems splutter about a Republican "War on Women," meanwhile they wage their preemptive war in the womb.
Pat Summit is an extremely worthy recipient who richly deserved the honor. A tireless champion of women's athletics, her greatest achievements occured off the court where she set records for graduation rates for her scholor athletes, and became a positive force in their lives. Forced to retire this year due to early onset dementia, she has agreed to be the public face of this terrible desease.
I am fan of neither partial birth abortion, nor Justice John Paul Stevens
The medal for Jan Karski seems to be long overdue - even if TOTUS bungled it thoroughly...
A banner day for the Arlington, VA bridge club. Not so much for freedom or justice.
Stephens is a turd. I have zero respect for his entire career.
As this comment never makes it passed the censors at HuffPo - Humans are the only species on Earth that does not protect their unborn from harm and actively kills them.
For the record, I am Pro-choice within limits of the first trimester. So that being said, advocates for late term abortions except in the most extreme cases, are advocating murder and it is just a short step to advocating infanticide up to the age of majority.
Here's another point for the "special" column:
http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/29/robert-mugabe-un-international-envoy-tourism?cat=world&type=article
and another...
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/301474/president-obama-shuns-lech-walesa-rory-cooper
Zimbabwe probably ranks just above North Korea in terms of popularity with tourists. This farce won't change that.
Still, its a disgrace. Someone(possibly a couple someones) in UNWTO just got a whole lot richer.
Indi: Roe v. Wade was a terrible decision, bootstrapping on the imaginary "right to privacy" in Griswold v. Connecticut. But as terrible as it was, it still left some room for states to regulate or prohibit abortion. It was those subsequent decisions expanding on Roe that inevitably led to pure murder and the near-impossibility of any state prohibiting abortion in any form. Stevens played a major role in that progression, and deserves condemnation for the near-glee he showed in his written opinions protecting this barbaric procedure called partial-birth abortion. Regardless of anything else he may have done in his long life, these decisions should have prevented him from receiving a freedom award.
Patriot: I'm glad you brought up the gender abortion issue. It's really worth an article of its own, but for now suffice it to say that it's another example of the left's neglect of the basic human right to survive. Deny, deny, deny. Those who will even admit such a thing might be happening say it's rare. I'm no big O'Reilly fan, but he got it exactly right when he said "one is too many."
Stan: Bravo for mentioning Harriet Miers. Bush brought us a conservative trio that has reversed some of the Stevens-era bad decision-making. But he did try to put one of his cronies on the court with Miers. The lesson we learned there was that when we have a Republican president, conservatives have the power to prevent that President from making foolish decisions. Miers was a Beltway insider and cocktail hostess who likely would have made Souter look like a conservative. We stopped that nomination cold. The pressure put on the White House by attentive conservatives was nothing short of magnificent. To carry on the "freedom award" thought, "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance."
tryanmax: You got there ahead of me. While the Democrats claim Republicans are waging a war on women, Republicans should be pointing out that for nearly forty years the Democrats have been fighting a war on babies. Abortion is the strategy, gender-based abortion is merely one of the tactics.
Tennessee: I did mention in the opening that there were indeed some "worthies." Summit is definitely one of them. Thanks for pointing that out.
Bev, but I thought HuffPo was an oasis of tolerance and free expression?
Andrew: I agree. Stevens was one of those jurists who just couldn't bring himself to leave the theoretical arena of the law school. He gleefully played "legal intellectual," theorizing about how many legal/constitutional angels could dance on the head of a pin without ever considering the horrendous human cost his legal theorizing would produce. He was the legal equivalent of Josef Mengele--"let's see what would happen if we did the following experiment"
Bev: Man is the only animal who can actually envision what the lives and contributions of its offspring could be in the future, then decides the offspring aren't entitled to a future of any kind. And only human beings are charged with knowing the difference between right and wrong. Anyone who can't see that partial-birth abortion is wrong deserves to burn brightly in hell.
Bev: That is a principled stand with which I disagree, but also can respect. The real abortion debate takes place around when the fetus becomes a baby--a living human being. I am not an abortion purist either, though I choose to believe that the baby becomes a human being much earlier than the end of the first trimester. The "quickening" is my yardstick, and that comes much earlier than the end of the first trimester. And even using my timetable, I would institute very stringent rules about when abortion could be allowed--rape, incest, or the physical survival of the mother. As I respect but disagree with your position, I also respect but disagree with the purist (Catholic) view that life begins at conception. And even then, my conscience bothers me in that I know there's the strong possibility I'm wrong.
rlaWTX: Obama only needs to walk away from his TelePrompter for a brief second before he starts bumbling. That was proof.
T-Rav: So true. At bridge, you can make the wrong decisions and there's very little at stake. You can say "oops," and all you lost was a game. Not so with decisions about the lives and futures of unborn children.
rlaWTX: Only the UN can exceed the Obama administration for plain damned foolishness. How crazy is it to make Robert Mugabe, mass murderer in is own right, the UN ambassador for tourism? Who in his right mind would want to go to his country, and how is he going to perform his duties when he is so heavily travel-restricted by international agreement that he can barely leave his own capital? Here's your clickable link: UN Taps Mugabe for Tourism Spot.
rlaWTX: Ever since Gerald Ford lost his election bid to Jimmy Carter after declaring in one of the debates that "Poland is not a captive nation," American politicians have regularly gotten the plight, then the success of Poland all wrong. Walesa is a hero by anybody's honest calculation, but he did offend Obama's buddies in the Kremlin. Better to honor violent socialist Dolores Huerta with the Medal of Freedom than to honor a man who truly played a major role in freeing an entire nation from communist domination. Link: Obama ignores Lech Walesa.
Anthony: Now there's a pair of countries the world could do entirely without. Tourism isn't exactly a major industry with either of them. LOL At least Zimbabwe doesn't have nuclear weapons and the near-capacity to deliver them to their "enemies" with long-range ballistics missiles. Unless, of course, there's something the IAEA has missed or failed to report to us on.
And while we're on the subject of big bucks being thrown around by the UN and its affiliates, has everyone noticed that the crook Kofi Annan is back in the news devouring money for anti-American causes?
LawHawk, could you explain a bit more what the "quickening" you refer to is? Because I don't think I've heard of that before. (For the record, I take the 'life begins at conception' position.)
Indi: It's hard not to be too graphic when describing the horror of partial-birth abortion. It is a procedure that the worst violent criminals might recoil at. Ignoring the vicious and inhuman details of the murder itself, I am equally appalled by the direct violation of the Hippocratic Oath that says "first, do no harm." When a baby is about to emerge from the womb in a regular birth, it is dangerous for the feet or buttocks to emerge first. In most births, the head naturally emerges first. If the feet or buttocks present first, most doctors will attempt to prevent the "breech birth" by turning the baby around in the birth canal so the head emerges first. Doctors performing partial birth abortions must first defy nature by making sure the head emerges last. Once the head has emerged, abortion is forbidden in every state and the federal jurisdiction. In order to murder the baby legally, the doctor must place the mother in far more danger than she would experience with a normal birth by turning the baby around in the birth canal so that the feet or buttocks emerge, allowing him to destroy the baby's brain while the head is still inside the mother. How's that for "first, do no harm?"
Lawhawk
As an aside I remember a liberal management professor some 20 yars ago in a general business requirement lecturing us on women in combat. since he was an academic he had to give pros and cons.
The only con he could give was one the military sited. The female gender was more important to procreation than the make gender. Essentially one man if given the opportunity could sire literally thens of thousands of children among many women (biologically speaking). One woman however could only bear at most 30 children and even then the attempt might so weaken here she'd die before being able to reach menopause.
The military's argument was that if we sent 50,000 men to war to be killed this would have little effect on the next generation. If we send 50,000 women however the next generation would be extremely smaller and affect the population. Thus women biologically are more important than men so don't send them to the front line.
What will the next generation go through if we start selectively choosing to keep male babies and abort female ones. There are real potential issues for the next generation if we start doing this. Imagine men outnumbering women 2 to 1 and one third the population unable to get a wife. That in itself may bring a war.
T-Rav: It's a layman's expression for the first time the baby has a distinct heartbeat of its own and begins to move around in the womb. It was the standard used in Roe, but that is not scientific. Mothers generally notice the movement at about thirteen to eighteen weeks (the first trimester). But that's why courts should not involve themselves in these kinds of decisions. Subsequent to Roe, medical science has advanced far beyond the mother's first sensation of movement, and has determined, largely through ultrasound technology, that the quickening actually occurs much earlier than when the mother first feels it. In other words, long before the end of the first trimester.
Oh, poor Kofi Annan, he just couldn't get Assad to stop slaughtering his own people after that big talkin' to he gave him. And he just can't manage to get Putin to stop sending Assad ammunition, so Assad can't keep killing them. But President Obama's gonna give them both a good "what for" real soon - well after this next week's round of golf and fundraisers! Then Assad will stop probably, and probably he'll get free housing and an expense account in Chicago too. I'm sure Axelrod and Rahm would love to host His Royal Highness...
Indi: Even though that is a purely mathematical calculation it can't be refuted even before adding in the human right to live regardless of sex. For men, the "creation" experience is on average two minutes, and he can move on for more (look at the guy who is asking for government money to support his thirty children by multiple mothers). For a woman, the full experience is nine months, followed by years of nurturing. That certainly does seem to indicate that we need more females than males if the human race is to continue to exist. I'm not sure I entirely buy the "warrior" argument, but it certainly isn't a foolish idea. Birth rates were low during WW II for obvious reasons. What if those women who waited patiently at home for their men to return then had two, three or even four children had instead gone into battle and been killed? Would there have been the subsequent baby boom? Maybe, but it certainly wouldn't have been as big.
The current situation in "boy-preferring" nations is going to get very ugly in the future. Too many healthy and hormone-driven young men with too few women to match is a recipe for violence and as you mentioned, even war. Nature has good reason for producing slightly more viable female births than male. And now we're messing with it.
Bev: You just don't understand. The only reason Kofi Annan hasn't been successful in stopping the Syrian slaughter is we haven't given him enough money. Maybe if we just give him a mansion in Hyde Park next door to Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko, and Barack Obama, then furnish him with his own personal jet and a cargo hold full of cash, he can solve the problem overnight.
Well Bev, you make a great point. My philosophy is whenever you are in a situation where clearly the mother and the unborn are in danger, and you are left with the need to make a decision between the two, I would understand that decision fully, especially and importantly moreso if the mother already had other children to worry about. However, over the issue, I do feel that plenty of people go a little too far sometimes in terms of what they accept as pro-life. I mean, earlier this year I made the mistake of answering some ranting individual about the topic of abortion, where he considered what I just said not "pro-life" enough. I mean, if you really want to go that far, that's rediculous. Anyways, as a final side note, I do believe that if the mother's life being endangered by the pregnancy was the proper justification for an abortion, I do feel that you would see a far less frequent occurrence.
obiwan: I know your comment was directed to Bev, but I'm what the legal profession calls an "officious intermeddler." I just wanted to add a couple of thoughts. Note that in one of my comments I limited my abortion exceptions to rape, incest and the physical survival of the mother. Much history since Roe has shown that abortion shortens a woman's life (statistically rather than anecdotally). More importantly and germane to the topic of this article is that partial-birth abortion, if "properly" done, creates a greater danger to the mother's health and life by large numbers than would a simple, normal delivery. Yet abortion advocates continue to talk about reducing the risks at birth by performing partial-birth abortion. That is not just a lie, it's a vile lie. You don't have to be a medical expert to figure out that defying nature by turning a baby the wrong way in the birth canal in order to kill it is more dangerous than simply allowing the baby to emerge normally.
I also specifically said physical survival for a reason. There are almost as many lousy shrinks as there are lousy lawyers these days. One of the most common excuses for an abortion, including partial-birth abortions, is that the mother's emotional health would be harmed by a live delivery. Any hungry psychologist can be paid enough to offer that testimony. And it ignores a fact that has emerged over the years since Roe. A large percentage of women who had abortions, later suffered depression and even crippling guilt as a result of making the decision to take the life of their babies. Post-partum depression doesn't even work as a good excuse, since an equal number of women who had the abortions suffered that very real syndrome as those who chose to deliver their babies alive. The only difference is that those who had the abortions don't have a live baby to neglect while recovering from their depression. That's a sad, but real, medical fact.
Maybe I'm a bastard, but I am not even in favor of abortion in cases of rape or incest. Physical survival is the only exception--if you insist on calling it such--that I accept.
Why am I such a bastard? Well, someone that I once cared about very much and who comprised a very important chapter in my life was the product of a rape. I'm not trying to claim I'm a better person or anything. I'm honestly not sure what claim I'm trying to make except that I can't handle the notion that someone I know is somehow less deserving of life because of the way it started.
I realize that incest carries with it even greater complications, generally speaking, severe disabilities of all manner. But if terminating a pregnancy because of a foreseen disability is unacceptable in other circumstances, why is this excepted?
The argument that I've routinely heard against mine is that it would be cruel to punish the woman by making her carry the child. First of all, I take issue with characterization of the circumstance as a "punishment." Crimes have victims and, in most cases, those victims are affected long after the crime is committed. We are not generally in the habit of calling such lasting effects "punishment." Besides, doesn't such an argument ultimately boil down to one of "mental health"?
Before leaving the subject of punishment, I would point out that civilized societies long ago determined that it is unjust to punish a child for the crimes of his/her parent. If the rationale is that the victim should not be made to carry her attacker's baby, isn't that at least poking at the idea of punishing the child?
I realize it is an understatement to call such circumstances an inconvenience, but for lack of a better term, when else is it okay to kill a person because they are an inconvenience? Generally speaking, it is only allowable to kill a person if they are attempting to kill you.
Which brings me to the final point, why it is acceptable to perform abortion if the woman's physical survival is at risk. Because, at that point, it is a life-or-death situation no matter how you look at it. And the options aren't even one or the other, it is one or both. That makes the decision rather simple, if you ask me.
tryanmax: Your arguments are perfectly valid, and it may surprise you to realize that I actually agree largely with them. I don't believe in "forced" much of anything. The exceptions I would allow would be entirely the choice of the mother. I personally have no problem with a woman carrying a child conceived during a rape to full term and full humanhood. But I'm not (nor could I ever biologically be) the mother, so I'll never have to make that choice. What the woman chooses to do at those very early stages that I've mentioned in several responses here is entirely up to her, and the child born from that unwanted union has every right to survival that any other child has. As for incest, I have pretty much the same attitude. It's up to the mother, not to me. In other words, I wouldn't force an abortion on either of the women, but I also want laws that prevent abortion after the early stages. My particular belief would not work if the person believes that life begins at conception, as many, many people do.
On the other hand, physical survival of the mother and/or the child is one of those horrible decisions that nobody wants to make but sometimes must. Catholic doctrine says the mother must take the risk, though today I doubt that many priests would advise that. Unlike the early-term decisions about rape or incest, the question of physical survival can occur at any stage of pregnancy, and like self-defense or war, the individual must exercise her own conscience.
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