8mm
Posted on 09/17/2008 4:08:31 PM PDT by wagglebee
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Catholic attorney Douglas Kmiec, who claims to be pro-life, is continuing his defense of presidential candidate Barack Obama's pro-abortion position. In a new piece, Kmiec says he would have voted for a bill to protect newborns who survive botched abortions, but he can understand why Obama didn't.
The debate comes on the heels of a new television ad running in battleground states that features a woman who survived a late-term abortion criticizing Obama for opposing the bill for medical care for infants who survive like her.
In the article, Kmiec says he would have voted for the Illinois bill to protect born-alive infants had he been in the legislature, but he does not fault Obama for voting against it.
Kmiec's root defense of Obama is that the bill would have required doctors to take heroic measures to save pre-viable infants who had been delivered.
"Medical ethics does not require so called 'heroic' care at either end of life, and neither does Catholic teaching," Kmiec writes.
Since most of the babies protected under the law would be before viability in age, Kmiec agrees with Obama that the bill would be "very likely unconstitutional in most of its applications."
Ramesh Ponnuru, a writer with National Review Online, says, "None of this is true."
"First of all, it bears repeating that the Illinois bill was always very similar to the federal born-alive statute and, when Obama killed it in committee, nearly identical to it," he explains. "That law has never been held unconstitutional. I am not aware of any pro-abortion groups that have even tried to advance the claim."
He also says the bill does not work the way Kmiec describes.
"The House Judiciary Committee's report on the federal bill took some pains to address this very point," he says. "Medical care could be refused to a pre-viable infant, as it could be to a viable infant or, indeed, to anyone at all, if in the judgment of a doctor that care would not achieve anything. It could simply not be withheld from the pre-viable infant on the ground that this being is not a person recognized by the law."
Kmiec argues, further, that it is somehow novel for the law to define live birth in a way that includes pre-viable infants.
"Not true," Ponnuru writes. "Many states define born-alive infants in the same way and provides the same protections to them."
"Kmiec, in the linked piece, repeatedly accuses Obama's critics of dishonesty and bad faith," Ponnuru concludes. "I will not respond in kind. I will say only that Kmiec gets nearly everything wrong, and in a way that makes Obama (and himself) look better."
Spot on!
Kmeic needs a visit from Archbishop Chaput and to make a good confession....
They WERE lawyers.
I wish these people would just be honest about Obama: he’s a guy without moral benchmarks, just living on ideologies. Grew up a muslim nursed on anti-American marxism, then turned to black liberation theology because it took place in a church. He’s a-religious and a-moral.
One would think that killing a baby outside of the womb under any conditions would be considered murder ? This is what was happening in this case.This is a totally sad commentary on how low we humans have sunk.Animal rights activists were all upset about the baby seal kill in Canada. Where are they when
it comes to human children ?
Kmiec's ego, wounded by the thunderous chorus of criticism he's rightly received from Catholics and the wider Pro-Life community, is in control and his once clear grasp of right and wrong is a muddy mess.
Kmiec is in a dark place and is in dire need of prayer.
The Catholic Church can not afford to allow its leaders to keep defending such condemnable sin.
It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.
Luke 17:2
No CATHOLIC Ambulance chasers.
You must be a lawyer......otherwise, you’d see the object of the joke as most do. Obviously, they were lawyers, not much chance of getting to where they are without being lawyers. Yet, the perception/near-fact/generalization is that most lawyers are not what you’d call truly desirable elements of society. You use them when you have to - like toilet paper. It doesn’t mean you have to stick up for them or their ‘integrity’.
C’mon, what’s that supposed to mean? No CATHOLIC ambulance chasers? As to professions and relation to religion and transgressions, I could name a couple of big ones but I won’t. I’m not here to insult Catholicism. I was merely pointing out that the fact that a scumbag lawyer that has a religious connection associated with Catholicism doesn’t mean a thing. He is a scumbag to start with. Gussying it up with religion doesn’t make him pure.
By making statements like this, Doug Kmieck is complicit with abortion.
He should be warned by his bishop and denied communion until he publicly repents.
This man was among the best at dissecting and outlining, then explaining how utterly evil Roe v Wade was. Not just the untold acts of murder Roe has caused, but what it has wrought on the culture at large.
The contrast between Kmiec now and Kmiec before Congress in 1996 is beyond amazing.
An excerpt w link:
“…I briefly outline how abortion injures our law and culture well beyond the killing of unborn or partially-born children, including the denigration of women, the weakening of the family, the disfiguring of constitutional free speech and federalism, and fundamentally, the separation of law from the foundational first principles of our Nation.”
http://judiciary.house.gov/legacy/2187.htm
Pro-Life PING
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This is not the justification that Obama gave at the time and since. He actually said that the mother shouldn’t be put through more grief after her decision to kill her child.
Forked tongue. Even the devil can quote Scripture. Kmiec has no authority to preach Catholic teaching.
Agree. This man is a heretic who is on the verge of being excommunicated.
I heard he was denied communion recently.
Liar.
Kmiec is a disgrace. And I’d be happy to say that to his face at a time and place of his choosing.
My apologies... I meant kmiec. Sorry WB.
LLS
I bet it's not money.
But something bad has happened to brother Kmiec, that's for sure.
Pray for him, that he escapes the snares of the evil one.
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