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April 18, 2007

Progress: Gonzales v. Carhart, Planned Parenthood

Partial-birth procedure aborted by SCOTUS

 

 

A great leap forward of principle for human rights took place today as the United States Supreme Court upheld the federal law passed in 2003 banning partial birth abortion.

It is still however a tiny step in the battle for the rights of the unborn and the foundational principle behind the idea of inalienable human rights. Nonetheless, it is an important one; it is one of those Brown V. Board of Education moments that seems at first glance so rare compared with the seemingly endless deluge of Dred Scott and Plessy cases that have preceded it, but its singular authority is sufficient to moot its greater number which was errant.  

One can only hope that SCOTUS has turned a corner. One must also hope that while SCOTUS manages to undo the damage it has wrought in earlier rulings it will also see to it that the proper language is used to exclude itself from further tampering in legislative and policy matters intended by the Founders to be hammered out by Congress and the President solely.

I leave you with a quote from Philip Gourevitch’s best-selling book reporting the horrors of the Rwandan holocaust:

“Race science” was all the rage in Europe in those days, and for students of central Africa the key doctrine was the so-called Hamitic hypothesis, propounded in 1863 by John Hanning Speke, an Englishman who is most famous for “discovering” the great African lake that he christened Victoria and for identifying it as the source of the Nile River. Speke’s anthropological theory, which he made out of whole cloth, was that all culture and civilization in central Africa had been introduced by the taller, sharper-featured people, whom he considered to be a Caucasoid tribe of Ethiopian origin, descended from the biblical King David, and therefore a superior race to the native Negroids”.

Unfortunately, the dehumanizing of people not only includes methods of separation by race (which was one reason for Planned Parenthood founder and eugenicist Margaret Sanger's support for abortion), but also by age, gender, and countless other excuses for the cruelest of abuse that inevitably follows. Gourevitch’s recounting of 19th Century Rwandan history as what ultimately laid the foundation of reasoning beneath the genocide that would later take place is a pattern exemplified throughout history as one of dehumanization and slaughter, dehumanization and slaughter, dehumanization and slaughter. What the U.S. Supreme Court did today was to rehumanize, at least in part, those who would be slaughtered in the cruelest fashion. While this is but a tiny movement forward, it certainly is hoped that the seismic effect it produces underground will reap a far fuller realization consistent with the direction of its progress.

 

Related:

ACLJ comments and resources

National Right to Life

 

 

Posted by Martin at April 18, 2007 01:14 PM

Comments

I think I've mentioned this to you before, but I worked with for a large law firm in Memphis Tennessee. One of the associates I worked for was the attorney for Planned Parenthood. In my youthful ignorance, I wrote a letter to the editor of the major local paper expressing my views against abortion.

The next day she wanted my head on a platter, me fired. Fortunately for me I also worked for the main partner of the firm, whose father was the founder of the firm, Walter P. Armstrong. He didn't agree with abortion either, or he just liked me, I don't know which.

He refused to fire me, told me I didn't have to work of Planned Parenthood matters, but could swap work with another employee. I'll never forget that. I needed the job as my hubby was in medical school and we needed my salary.

On this Supreme Court decision, I was surprised at the lack of reporting on it. As you say, this is major, a huge step forward. Of course the MSM would have spent more time on it, had the decision gone the other way.

Posted by: Debbie at April 19, 2007 09:40 PM

Sounds like some harrowing moments there for you. Actually, a relative of mine was a well-known lawyer in Memphis before his retirement, but he was nestled safely behind the walls of the legal division of an MNC safely out of the way of most lefty-political simpletons.

Just wait, 60 Minutes is digging around for hanger-stories even now...

Posted by: Martin at April 20, 2007 02:18 AM

ah yes progress on the horizon Martin!
TGIF my friend..lol!

Posted by: Angel at April 20, 2007 03:16 PM