Posted on 06/28/2011 11:56:26 AM PDT by GonzoII
Federal judge: life begins at conception
by Kathleen Gilbert
Tue Jun 28 1:04 PM EST
INDIANAPOLIS, June 28, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Planned Parenthood’s request to block a provision of an Indiana law that requires doctors to tell women who are seeking abortions that “human physical life begins when a human ovum is fertilized by a human sperm,” was denied by U.S. District Judge Tanya Walton Pratt last week.
“Plaintiffs contend that in the context of abortion, the meaning of these words, both individually and in combination, represent a plethora of opinions and beliefs about life and its inception. The Court respectfully disagrees,” wrote Pratt.
“When read together, the language crafted by the legislature in this provision supports a finding that the mandated statement refers exclusively to a growing organism that is a member of the Homo sapiens species.”
The judge disagreed with Planned Parenthood’s suggestion that the phrasing was “misleading.”
“Here, the mandated statement states only a biological fact relating to the development of the living organism; therefore, it may be reasonably read to provide accurate, non-misleading information to the patient,” the court wrote. “Under Indiana law, a physician must disclose the facts and risks of a treatment which a reasonably prudent physician would be expected to disclose under like circumstances, and which a reasonable person would want to know.”
Planned Parenthood of Indiana (PPIN) had also sought an injunction against another part of the same law, House Enrolled Act (HEA) 1210, which barred federal Medicaid funds from going to the abortion provider. Pratt granted that request, noting that the Obama administration had threatened to gut the state’s entire Medicaid allotment to save PPIN’s portion.
Tom Brejcha, president and chief counsel of the Thomas More Society, praised the judge for upholding scientific fact, but said that they would continue to ensure that the measure defunding Planned Parenthood goes into effect.
“While this is a significant partial victory for Life, we will press on to ensure that the full law will go into effect to defund Planned Parenthood in Indiana,” Brejcha said. “We stand ready to defend Life in other states as they plan to defund Planned Parenthood and require doctors to tell women that life begins at conception.”
Copyright © 2010 LifeSiteNews.com, Inc. All rights reserved.
Of course, he knew it. That's why he found a "penumbra of an emanation" in the constitution. Basically a shadow of a ghost of a right to privacy. Pretty poor reasoning for such a "bright" man. He answered to God already for it, that we know.
Codifying immoral, unconstitutional, lawless "laws" that say you can kill innocent persons is the latter, not the former.
"No State shall deprive any person of life without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.""No person shall be deprived of life without due process of law."
Sign me up!!!
Of course not. But to get around the 5th A and Due Process Clause of the 14th A, the Courts have defined a person as one who has been born or is in the process of being born.
The odd thing about Roe v. Wade, is that while the majority opinion says that is is unsure as to when life begins for the purposes of constituional protection, it then goes on to itself make this conclusion by constructing the trimester framework. A framework plucked out of thin air that had all the hallmarks of a piece of legislation without a preamble to it.
Later, embarrassed by this opinion, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, they dropped the trimester famework, but still went onto hold what it called the essential holding in Roe- that denies the right of constitutional protection until post-viability.
And don't forget the hundreds of millions of mothers and fathers of those doomed unborn. They are the walking wounded - most totally unaware that they are.
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
And the right to privacy is real. It's not some "emanation" or "penumbra." The Fourth Amendment even clearly enumerates it.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
The right to privacy has limits, as the Fourth Amendment makes clear. And, it most certainly does not trump the supreme right, the right to live. You can't kill Grandma just because you did it in private, hiding in a closet.
The arguments over privacy have always been a silly distraction, at best, from what should be the laser-like focus of pro-lifers.
Personhood is the key to stopping this ongoing holocaust, before it has completely destroyed this free republic.
You are correct that the right to privacy - though not expressed exactly in that way in the constitution - does exist. Also, as you said, those rights are governed by higher laws. Blackmun, himself, said that the Roe decision was based upon an emanation of a penumbra within this right to privacy. So, although he admitted that there was no such expressed right to abortion, he decided it was contained within the right to privacy.
It’s a law, created by the legislature and signed by the governor.
Roe v Wade was decided based on the limited knowledge and technology at the time. Today we have such advanced tech that the development of the baby can be seen within weeks of conception. That will be hard to dispute.
However Justice Ginsburg who has in the past expressed objections to the way Roe v Wade was decided will find a penumbra within a penumbra of the Constitution to allow abortion.
There are two aspects to the issue, and they've been blended together for so long that this ruling is like a breath of fresh air in a stuffy room. There is the beginning of the physical human body, and then there is the entry of the soul into the body.
Atheists and agnostics and communists and Leftists are stuck with the first aspect alone - the beginning of the physical body alone. Ironically, these shiftless lying bastards and bitches have invoked spiritual arguments to avoid the obvious, which the judge just nailed: the physical human body begins at conception, by definitions, because nothing but innate growth takes place after that, not any addiction of new biological material. So at the physical level, that's that - legally. And if that's all you recognize for abortion, then conception is it.
Spiritually, however, there's the discussion of the soul, and when it enters the physical body. Obviously, many believe the soul enters at conception. But there are ancient teachings from many different religions that this isn't so - that the body has to develop to a certain level of sophistication before it provides a suitable environment for the soul.
As for abortion, in a spiritual sense, the discussion becomes a definition of terms at the most fundamental level - the destruction of the human body without the soul, versus the destruction of the human body containing a soul (and I'm not even getting into the demonic atrocity of killing a late-term baby, or one being born).
Obviously, if the soul enters after conception, at some point in the development of the fetus, the human body before it enters is hardly "neutral" since it is being prepared FOR a soul. So killing it would NOT be "neutral," either.
But killing a fetus WITH a soul, by any definition, is killing a full-fledged human being. And human civilizations can only allow such killing under extremely limited circumstances, lest they condone murder and, eventually, destroy themselves.
It is at the moment of fertilization that the human individual begins existing. Once the ovum is fertilized by the sperm all human chromosomes are present and a unique human life begins. It isn't until about six days later that the embryo starts to implant onto the wall of the uterus, this is called implantation. Within 21-22 days the heart begins beating with blood distinct from the mother's. This is a good link for understanding the development of the human being.
One of the reasons birth control pills have been effective is with a secondary function which causes the uterine wall to become inhospitable to an embryo should the primary function of stopping the release of a ripe egg to be released (ovulation) fails. I look at this as the same thing as an abortion only sooner, the only difference is that the mother doesn't know it even happened.
We will have to do more to convince an ever increasing secular society of the worth and rights of the human life than by using the soul or the timing of the imparting of a soul. I feel this can be accomplished by using biology and an ever increasing respect for the rights of all human life. I dream of the day when abortion will become unthinkable because of this respect. We see the public slowly coming around to this and I think the Pro-Life movement can be thanked for much of that.
I'd like to add a reference work in support.
What does modern science conclude about when human life begins? (Excerpts)
By Dr. John Ankerberg and John Weldon
http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/apologetics/AP0805W3.htm
The complete article is available in
print friendly PDF format at:
http://www.ankerberg.com/Articles/_PDFArchives/apologetics/AP3W0805.pdf
What does modern science conclude about when human life begins?
Many people mistakenly feel that abortion is a “religious” issue. But it is not. It is a scientific issue and, specifically, a biological issue. The scientific authorities on when life begins are biologists. But these are often the last people consulted in seeking an answer to the question. What modern science has concluded is crystal clear: Human life begins at conception. This is a matter of scientific fact, not philosophy, speculation, opinion, conjecture, or theory. Today, the evidence that human life begins at conception is a fact so well documented that no intellectually honest and informed scientist or physician can deny it.
In 1973, the Supreme Court concluded in its Roe v. Wade decision that it did not have to decide the “difficult question” of when life begins. Why? In essence, they said, “It is impossible to say when human life begins.”3 The Court misled the public then, and others continue to mislead the public today.
Anyone familiar with recent Supreme Court history knows that two years before Roe V. Wade, in October 1971, a group of 220 distinguished physicians, scientists, and professors submitted an amicus curiae brief (advice to a court on some legal matter) to the Supreme Court. They showed the Court how modern science had already established that human life is a continuum and that the unborn child from the moment of conception on is a person and must be considered a person, like its mother.4 The brief set as its task “to show how clearly and conclusively modern science—embryology, fetology, genetics, perinatology, all of biology—establishes the humanity of the unborn child.”5 For example,
In its seventh week, [the pre-born child] bears the familiar external features and all the internal organs of the adult.... The brain in configuration is already like the adult brain and sends out impulses that coordinate the function of other organs…. The heart beats sturdily. The stomach produces digestive juices. The liver manufactures blood cells and the kidneys begin to function by extracting uric acid from the child’s blood.... The muscles of the arms and body can already be set in motion. After the eighth week… everything is already present that will be found in the full term baby.6
This brief proved beyond any doubt scientifically that human life begins at conception and that “the unborn is a person within the meaning of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.”7
In fact, prior to Roe v. Wade, nearly every medical and biological textbook assumed or taught that human life begins at conception. That human life begins at conception was an accepted medical fact, but not necessarily a discussed medical fact. This is why many textbooks did not devote a discussion to this issue. But many others did. For example, Mr. Patrick A. Trueman helped prepare a 1975 brief before the Illinois Supreme Court on the unborn child. He noted,
We introduced an affidavit from a professor of medicine detailing 19 textbooks on the subject of embryology used in medical schools today which universally agreed that human life begins at conception… those textbooks agree that is when human life begins. The court didn’t strike that down—the court couldn’t strike that down because there was a logical/biological basis for that law.8
Thus, even though the Supreme Court had been properly informed as to the scientific evidence, they still chose to argue that the evidence was insufficient to show the pre-born child was fully human. In essence, their decision merely reflected social engineering and opinion, not scientific fact. Even during the growing abortion debate in 1970, the editors of the scientific journal California Medicine noted the “curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death.”9
Even 25 years after the abortion revolution that politicized scientific opinion, medical texts today still often assume or affirm that human life begins at conception. For example, Keith L. Moore is professor and chairman of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. His text, The Developing Human: Clinically Oriented Embryology, is widely used in core courses in medical embryology. This text asserts:
The processes by which a child develops from a single cell are miraculous….
Human development is a continuous process that begins when an ovum from a female is fertilized by a sperm from a male. Growth and differentiation transform the zygote, a single cell... into a multicellular adult human being.10
The reference to the “miraculous processes in a purely secular text is not surprising. Even a single strand of DNA from a human cell contains information equivalent to a library of 1,000 volumes. The complexity of the zygote itself according to Dr. Hymie Gordon, chief geneticist at the Mayo Clinic, “is so great that it is beyond our comprehension.”11 In a short nine months’ time, one fertilized ovum grows into 6,000 million cells that become a living, breathing person.
Further, medical dictionaries and encyclopedias all affirm that the embryo is human. Among many we could cite are Dorland’s Illustrated Medical Dictionary, Tuber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, and the Encyclopedia and Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing and Allied Health, which defines the embryo as “the human young from the time of fertilization of the ovum until the beginning of the third month.”12
In 1981, the United States Congress conducted hearings to answer the question, “When does human life begin?” A group of internationally known scientists appeared before a Senate judiciary subcommittee.13 The U.S. Congress was told by Harvard University Medical School’s Professor Micheline Matthews-Roth, “In biology and in medicine, it is an accepted fact that the life of any individual organism reproducing by sexual reproduction begins at conception....”14
Dr. Watson A. Bowes, Jr., of the University of Colorado Medical School, testified that “the beginning of a single human life is from a biological point of view a simple and straightforward matter—the beginning is conception. This straightforward biological fact should not be distorted to serve sociological, political or economic goals.”15
Dr. Alfred Bongiovanni of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School noted: “The standard medical texts have long taught that human life begins at conception.”16
He added: “I am no more prepared to say that these early stages represent an incomplete human being than I would be to say that the child prior to the dramatic effects of puberty... is not a human being. This is human life at every stage albeit incomplete until late adolescence.”17
Dr. McCarthy De Mere, who is a practicing physician as well as a law professor at the University of Tennessee, testified: “The exact moment of the beginning [of] personhood and of the human body is at the moment of conception.”18
World-famous geneticist Dr. Jerome Lejeune, professor of fundamental genetics at the University of Descarte, Paris, France, declared, “each individual has a very unique beginning, the moment of its conception.”19
Dr. Lejeune also emphasized: “The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical contention, it is plain experimental evidence.”20
The chairman of the Department of Medical Genetics at the Mayo Clinic, Professor Hymie Gordon, testified, “By all the criteria of modern molecular biology, life is present from the moment of conception.”21
He further emphasized: “now we can say, unequivocally, that the question of when life begins… is an established scientific fact…. It is an established fact that all life, including human life, begins at the moment of conception.”22
At that time the U.S. Senate proposed Senate Bill 158, called the “Human Life Bill.” These hearings, which lasted eight days, involving 57 witnesses, were conducted by Senator John East. This Senate report concluded:
Physicians, biologists, and other scientists agree that conception marks the beginning of the life of a human being—a being that is alive and is a member of the human species. There is overwhelming agreement on this point in countless medical, biological, and scientific writings.23
In 1981, only a single scientist disagreed with the majority’s conclusion, and he did so on philosophical rather than scientific grounds. In fact, abortion advocates, although invited to do so, failed to produce even one expert witness who would specifically testify that life begins at any other point than conception.24
Many other biologists and scientists agree that life begins at conception. All agree that there is no point of time or interval of time between conception and birth when the unborn is anything but human.
Professor Roth of Harvard University Medical School has emphasized, “It is incorrect to say that the biological data cannot be decisive…. It is scientifically correct to say that an individual human life begins at conception, when the egg and sperm join to form the zygote, and that this developing human always is a member of our species in all stages of its life.”25
In conclusion, we agree with pioneer medical researcher, Landrum B. Shettles, M.D., Ph.D., that, “There is one fact that no one can deny; human beings begin at conception.”26
Again, let us stress that this is not a matter of religion, it is solely a matter of science. Scientists of every religious view and no religious view—agnostic, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, Christian, Hindu, etc.—all agree that life begins at conception. This explains why, for example, the International Code of Medical Ethics asserts: “A doctor must always bear in mind the importance of preserving human life from the time of conception until death.”27
This is also why the Declaration of Geneva holds physicians to the following: “I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time of conception; even under threat, I will not use my medical knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity.”28 These statements can be found in the World Medical Association Bulletin for April 1949 (vol.1, p. 22) and January 1950 (vol. 2, p. 5). In 1970, the World Medical Association again reaffirmed the Declaration of Geneva.29
What difference does it make that human life begins at conception? The difference is this: If human life begins at conception, then abortion is the killing of a human life.
To deny this fact is scientifically impossible.30
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All that science, reason and logic do is show that abortion is almost certainly killing.
“It WAS legislated that the language be included. The judgement is that the language is accurate and not misleading.”
Sweet!
SITREP - L’Chaim!
lol--Slight edit so as to not offer liberals any possibility of misinterpreting or misunderstanding.
great info, brother, thanks..
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