Posted on 04/02/2013 6:37:23 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It’s a deeply felt conviction among liberals that they are the caring party. It’s not too much to say that liberals are quite confident that they are nicer, more moral people than conservatives.
It must require truly titanic powers of denial for the “moral” and “compassionate” party to maintain its position on abortion — a position that leads them into some macabre rationalizations. Consciences among the morally superior party are agreeably quiescent.
But recent headlines have not been similarly cooperative. In Florida the legislature is considering a variant of the “Born Alive Infants Protection Act,” which would require that abortionists provide medical assistance to infants who are “accidentally” born alive and kicking during an abortion. (Then–state senator Barack Obama vociferously opposed similar legislation in Illinois.)
Ms. Alisa LaPolt Snow, representing the Florida Alliance of Planned Parenthood Affiliates, testified against the bill. Florida representative Jim Boyd, apparently unsure that he had understood her correctly, asked:
“So, um, it is just really hard for me to even ask you this question because I’m almost in disbelief. If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?”
Ms. Snow responded that her organization “believes that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.” In short, as The Weekly Standard summarized, Florida Planned Parenthood is in favor of “post-birth abortion.” This is consistent with the position of the president of the United States and most members of the caring party.
Ms. Snow was asked why she didn’t support simply transporting a breathing, moving infant to a hospital where he or she would have the best chance of survival. Snow developed a sudden concern for ambulance convenience: “Those situations where it is in a rural health-care setting, the hospital is 45 minutes or an hour away, that’s the closest trauma center or emergency room. You know there’s just some logistical issues involved that we have some concerns about.” Really? Logistical concerns?
So if a baby is brought to a rural clinic suffering from, say, meningitis, and the nearest trauma center is 45 minutes away, does Planned Parenthood have “concerns” about the “logistical issues” involved? Or does Planned Parenthood stand for the principle that when a woman chooses abortion, she is entitled to a dead baby?
Snow’s testimony comes at an inopportune moment for the deniers — the “abortion rights” absolutists who hotly deny that infants are ever born alive during botched abortions — because in Philadelphia, an abortionist is on trial.
Dr. Kermit Gosnell is on trial for murder in the deaths of one woman and seven second-trimester babies. The 41-year-old woman had sought an abortion and was given an overdose of narcotics at Gosnell’s clinic. The seven babies were all born alive, according to the indictment. Gosnell then used scissors to “snip” their spinal columns. One of his assistants, who has pled guilty to third-degree murder, said that such “snippings” were “routine” for late-term abortions — so there were probably many more than seven.
Gosnell wasn’t at all particular about gestational age. An ultrasound technician recorded the age of one baby as 29.4 weeks, or about 7.5 months. In Pennsylvania, abortions are not permitted beyond 24 weeks (and the survival rate is above 85 percent for babies born at 27 weeks). In one case, a nurse testified that a baby cried after being born. Gosnell snipped his neck and told the nurse that there was nothing to worry about. The baby was placed in a basin on a counter. Another large baby was disposed of in a shoe box, but he was too large and his feet dangled over the sides. In another case, Gosnell allegedly joked with a nurse that a baby was so big “he could have walked to the bus stop.”
Gosnell seems to be a particularly freakish “provider.” He kept fetal feet in jars in an office prosecutors described as a “house of horrors.” (Pictures are on the Internet, but beware, they are graphic.)
Senator Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), who engaged in an unwise colloquy with then-senator Rick Santorum about when infants deserve to be treated as people, spoke for many of the caring elite when she said that life begins when “you take the baby home from the hospital.”
Some day, our descendants will look back at this and ask how we could have tamely accepted such barbarism. A special obloquy will attach to the Orwellians who call it compassion.
— Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist.
“Some day, our descendants will look back at this and ask how we could have tamely accepted such barbarism. A special obloquy will attach to the Orwellians who call it compassion. “
This is an object lesson. In roughly 40 years, a populace can be dumbed down to the point of being unable and/or unwilling to consider even basic facts.
We can “fight” all we want, but the reality is, for those under 40, the fight is over.
Liberalism is in conflict with our human nature. This has nothing (directly) to do with religion. It’s about what we are as humans.
Modern liberalism is atheistic materialism.
Remember those? . . . infant orphanges? . . . they don't exist in the U.S. anymore . . . I was an orphan given up at birth and later adopted . . . but that was in the 40s . . .
It's just plain sick that this is even being argued. Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick!
I wonder just how freakish he is, as he was at it for quite some time before his indictment and trial. I mean, what kind of doctor decides to specialize in abortion?
Senator Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.), who engaged in an unwise colloquy with then-senator Rick Santorum about when infants deserve to be treated as people, spoke for many of the caring elite when she said that life begins when “you take the baby home from the hospital.”
And our tax dollars subsidize this industry of death. Correction - MURDER!
How long before we start with wholesale euthanasia for the elderly? Can't have them monopolizing all that expensive health care when they're no longer of any use to society, and Medicare is broke.
I agree. It makes my blood boil!
I don't take a back seat to anyone in my loathing of democrats, liberals, and abortions. However, most members of the "caring party" are not in favor of “post-birth abortions.” The federal "Born-Alive Act" was passed in the U.S. Senate with no dissenting votes. Even among the liberal dregs who populate politics, Obama stands out in his compassion for "women's rights," and his lack thereof for the rights of infants.
Abortion was the beginning. The value of life in our society is based on who is able to currently vote, how they will vote, and their age. Anyone over 65 is next on the radar for euthanasia.
We'll see, the left always follows the path of first outraging the public with the impossible, and then whittling at them until resistance and revulsion weaken and are muted.
Already that vote is more than a decade old, I personally doubt that the left has drawn a line in the sand and made the 2002 vote an absolute and permanent position.
Yep...the party of compassion and science is neither.
As with most of their convoluted positions, the left finds itself having to inoke particularly creative reasoning to justify them, particularly when plain-old obvious common-sense is firmly on the other side.
In the days before Jill Stanek alerted the world, babies who miraculously survived the “surgeon’s” scissors would be put on a shelf and allowed to die. Using that methodology rather than a more overt one, such as snipping the spinal cord, is, to me, a distinction without a difference.
I’d love to pose some questions to the Planned Parenthood apologists. What would happen if the “born-alive” infant was erroneously placed in the nursery by some harried nurse? After an hour, if the doctor and or the “mother” discovered the “error,” would it be okay to terminate the pregnancy at that point? What about after a day? A week? A year?
Clearly, the slippery slope doesn’t work in favor of the baby-killers. What Santorum did so effectively in his famous debate with Boxer was to work the slippery slope backwards, i.e., if the baby is completely out of the mother, does it then have Constitutional rights? How about if a toe remains in the mother? a foot, a leg, etc. Any normal (i.e., non-liberal) person hearing this argument would come to the inescapable conclusion that if the kid emerges intact from the mother, he or she is very much an American citizen, and thereby protected by the Constitution. For them to argue that if the baby still has a toe inside the mother, he remains fair game for the abortionist’s sharp instruments goes against all measures of common sense, to say nothing of morality.
I’m pretty sure (but not positive) that the 2002 vote in favor of protecting infants who manage to evade the abortionist was made primarily because even liberals as glib as the Clintons cannot parse their words enough to justify the murder of a living, breathing United States’ citizen.
In time the democrats will create growth among their politicians and replace many of the 2002 ones with politicians who need no growth on the issue.
In 2012 the republicans ran a candidate who came out against the party’s pro-life platform, and ran pro-choice ads in several states.
The natural order of things for the last 50 years, is that the democrats openly move left, while the republicans move left under the language of libertarianism.
It’s an absolute tribute to conservatives that we fight so hard to preserve the lives of people who mostly would grow up to vote Democrat.
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