Friday, January 18, 2013

Small Sacrifices

By Mary Gammon


The legitimization of infanticide constitutes a grave threat to the principle of human equality at the heart of civil rights ideals. If the weak and vulnerable members of the human family -- and infants are surely among the weakest and most vulnerable -- can be defined out of the community of 'person'... the constitutional principle of equal protection becomes a sham. -- Law Professor Robert P. George testifying on behalf of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act in 2002
When Roe v. Wade forced unlimited abortion on an unwilling nation forty years ago it robbed Americans of 55 million souls and the right to voice appropriate protective law for them. The mandates of an abortion-extreme president will do more than expand the moral and constitutional lies of Roe v. Wade, it will remove the only voice representing an American consensus on the bounds of a civil society.
Barack Obama preaches the art of compromise, believing he understands the American people better than they understand themselves. He campaigned on unlimited abortion as a constitutional right, saying he could not stand behind any federal or state limits on it unless he had an argument explaining "why it violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those who have no faith at all." While it may be sublime to base one's life on such uncompromising commitments, he says "to base our policy making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing."
Something far more dangerous is our Nation stepping quietly over the threshold of infant viability and even birth into acts of blatant infanticide, then turning over its life and death decisions to a government that sanctions it and a president who defends it.
The primary voice of consensus across the entire spectrum of abortion views -- not particular to any religious group -- are our two federal laws stemming infanticide practices; the Born Alive Infant Protection Act simply calls an infant surviving abortion a person under the law, and the Partial Birth Abortion Ban prohibits a barbaric killing practice of late-term infants.
These two laws do not prohibit abortion in any way. They sit quietly minding their own business, standing guard over small lives in the only way Roe v. Wade permits. Yet Obama insists they are dangerous, unconstitutional and hurtful to women, and he promised to overturn them.
In the case of the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, Obama insists the killing of an infant that might otherwise live is a woman's health decision between her and her doctor, not a matter concerning the whole of the American people. As Illinois senator his idea of protecting these infants was providing them a comfort room to die in, and he held up the moral lie of Roe v. Wade as an admirable example of power that could deny life to those same infants he called "fetuses" after they were born, breathed air, died and were issued death certificates.
Unchallenged, he proceeded to defend partial birth abortion after the Supreme Court just upheld the ban on it in 2007, preferring an alliance with Planned Parenthood to an alliance with the Americans he was campaigning to -- who had just overwhelmingly supported the Supreme Court's decision. When Obama was asked in the 2007 South Carolina primary debate "What is your view on the decision [banning] partial-birth abortion and your reaction to most of the public agreeing with the court's holding?" his answer:
When you talk about a procedure that affects less than 1% of the babies aborted, then naturally people get concerned... but the broader issue here is do women have the right to make this profoundly difficult decision, and I believe they do.
His view of partial birth abortion? The few number of babies "affected" by it in the course of a year were too small a percentage of the million others to notice -- more small sacrifices to the greater good, a necessity in a Democracy. While killing them is a concerning and profoundly difficult thing to do he will not call it wrong.
Where attention should be directed, he says, is on the broader right of abortion, not on the vast majority of the American people who do call it wrong.

Obama went on to castigate the American people for supporting it the ban, promising the Planned Parenthood Action Fund he would sign the Freedom of Choice Act, removing all limits or legal challenges to abortion:
...We don't see America in these decisions -- that's not who we are as a people. ...On this fundamental issue I will not yield, and Planned Parenthood will not yield... There are those who want us to believe otherwise. They want us to believe there's nothing that unites us as Americans -- there's only what divides us. They'll seek out the narrowest and most divisive ground... They will stand in the way of any attempt to find common ground.
He doesn't see America in a Supreme Court decision they supported as a majority, while he does see America in the Roe v. Wade decision that was crammed down their throats by a minority, and that should speak volumes to the American people.
Obama dismissed a majority of Americans -- across the political and religious spectrum -- who disagree with him on a crucial moral point, calling them haters of equality and freedom, seeking out the narrowest and most divisive ground to argue, standing in the way of any attempt to find common ground with him.
It is Obama and a relatively small group of abortion extremists who refuse to find common ground with the American people, because they are too busy groping for some middle ground between right and wrong. In other words, they don't care.
The fact is a great number of Americans do care about infants delivered early and set aside to die, or put through a three day process of killing ending with their head mere inches from birth. They believe it to be wrong.
But their hands are tied by Roe v. Wade -- not the Constitution -- from doing anything more than restrict how those infants are killed.
Allowing the health mandates to remove the last voice of the American people valuing their unborn children sends a damning message to our elderly, handicapped, and children who all know they live in a dual reality culture that values some lives while throwing others out with the garbage.
The Democrat platform forcing Americans to accept the consequences of unlimited abortion directly opposes everything Americans stand for, and the failure by a majority along with the Republican Party to call them out on it is tantamount to national spiritual suicide.
When Robert P. George said allowing infanticide to pass unnoticed meant "the constitutional principle of equal protection becomes a sham" he was speaking directly to this quiet American majority whose hearts are in the right place but whose voices have become complacent at a critical time in history.
Obama asked for an argument against abortion that doesn't impose religious views and meets the need for compromise in a democracy and this is it:
An imperfect world should not require the sacrifice of our young and unborn, who were intended to be cradled in the protective arms of society and the Constitution, not fought over on legislative floors by adults who claim not to recognize a human child when they see one.
This type of regard for human life is destructive to the whole of the American people and should not be expanded through mandates forcing private citizens or businesses to participate in abortion, or any other law propping up the Democrat platform and abortion industry.
As with Roe v. Wade in 1973, we find ourselves again at a crossroads of our own making. We will either stand together on common ground of moral and constitutional principle or fail on the middle ground of ignorance, it is simply up to a majority who have yet to find their voice.

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