Abortion Activists Call Saving “Brain Dead” Pregnant Woman’s Baby “Dehumanizing”

Dr. Russell Kirk years ago, in his treatise on the "Conservative Mind," warned of what T. S. Eliot earlier had labeled a "new provincialism--the provinciality of time, imprisoning people in their own little present moments."

America's Founders had no such short-term view of life, of civilization's struggles for individual liberty, or of the great questions of life and its meaning.

They had studied the writings of the world's greatest thinkers and the history of nations. Their great passion was for liberty and of how to achieve and preserve it in this new land on behalf of future generations.

The LifeNews discussion of Katherine Taylor and Lynn Paltrow's RH Reality Check pretzel-twisting of logic in order to justify their Pro Choice views regarding the case in question is a good example of such "provinciality."

A longer view of history, of future benefits of the technology which can sustain the life of a child in the early weeks of a pregnancy even if the mother's life ends, and of what the future might hold for all of humanity were such technological advances utilized in this case--all such discussions are ruled out by the single-issue standard being employed by Taylor and Paltrow.

So consumed by what might be considered a false argument favoring the current right-to-choose vs. right-to-life political forces that they are "imprisoned by their own little present moments," these two never even consider what is surely the unknown potential future benefit of logical consideration of the pros and cons associated with allowing the hospital's position to play itself out.

Were they able to project their thinking into an "ideas-have-consequences" mode, allowing for all possible outcomes, perhaps they could envision a positive future for the family and for that which they choose to call the "fetus."

For instance, could those who choose to argue the woman's "choice" side see into the future 40 years, how would their argument change if, perchance, they could project themselves into the future and view a documentary featuring a story about an outstanding researcher who just announced a revolutionary cure for cancer, along with an accompanying story detailing the researcher's past, which included an extraordinary birth circumstance where his mother had died several weeks before he was delivered successfully?

There’s a line in the story about the husband being afraid the baby will have defects and its life not be worth living. (I don’t know what that would be from. Perhaps from a lack of oxygen during his wife’s medical emergency.)

It sounds to me as though he doesn’t want to risk being saddled with a “defective” baby. Even though there are many people who would step up to the plate and adopt it no matter what, especially since this story has gotten so much press. But if he abandons a sick baby, he’ll catch a lot of sh!t for that, whereas killing it by insisting on carrying out his wife’s theoretical wishes will get him sympathy instead.

And btw . . . a possible C-section at 24 weeks???? That’s pretty damned early. I would think the hospital would want to let it go as long as possible.

Lynn M. Paltrow, JD, Executive Director, founded National Advocates for Pregnant Women in 2001. Ms. Paltrow is a graduate of Cornell University and New York University School of Law. She has worked on numerous cases challenging restrictions on the right to choose abortion as well cases opposing the prosecution and punishment of pregnant women seeking to continue their pregnancies to term. Ms. Paltrow has served as a senior staff attorney at the ACLU's Reproductive Freedom Project, as Director of Special Litigation at the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, and as Vice President for Public Affairs for Planned Parenthood of New York City. Ms. Paltrow conceived of and filed the first affirmative federal civil rights challenge to a hospital policy of searching pregnant women for evidence of drug use and turning that information over to the police. In the case of Ferguson et. al., v. City of Charleston et. al., the United States Supreme Court agreed that such a policy violates the 4th amendment's protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

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