Posted on 12/05/2006 1:32:50 PM PST by Caleb1411
Thanks to C-SPAN, a vital public service, I was able to see and hear on Nov. 8 the two hours of oral arguments at the Supreme Court on one of the most persistently passionate controversies in the nation — partial-birth abortion; or, as its medical practitioners call it, intact dilation and extraction.
What fascinated me throughout the debate — and the reactions of the justices — was, as George Orwell put it, the way language can be, and is so often used, "as an instrument which we shape for our own purposes." Only rarely did any participant speak plainly about the procedure.
In his essay "Politics and the English Language," Orwell said, "What is above all needed (in honest speaking) is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way about."
During the two hours, I often heard references to "fetal demise." What they were actually talking about, some of us would say, is the killing of a human being.
That plain intent of abortion slipped in briefly when Solicitor General Paul Clement, speaking for the government, said the important issue is whether this form of abortion "is to be performed in utero or when the child is halfway outside the womb."(A child? Where?)
Justice John Paul Stevens quickly interrupted: "Whether the FETUS is more than halfway out," he corrected the solicitor general.
"Some of the fetuses, I understand in the procedure," Justice Stevens added, "are only 4 or 5 inches long. They're very different from fully formed babies."
Babies had again crawled into the discussion — but not for long. The abortion procedure at issue is D&X, intact dilation and extraction, which removes babies from existence. Years ago, the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was for abortion rights, nonetheless called this D&X procedure, "only minutes
(Excerpt) Read more at jewishworldreview.com ...
We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary. --James D. Nicoll
Excellent quote. My point wasn't that we should speak only pure english, but that adding "fetus" to our vocabulary wasn't done to improve understanding but rather to obscure it.
Nat Hentoff is an important ally to the pro-life movement. Whereas many liberals like to scoff at pro-lifers, calling us religious zealots, Hentoff is an admitted atheist, so his objections can't be dismissed so easily. His is truly a voice in the liberal wilderness!
--Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, ch. XII.
If English ever has to return all the words it has "borrowed" from other languages, we're going to be in a heap of trouble.
No, like I said it was done to quantify it. Under your logic we shouldn't be using words like "kid", "child" "teen", "adult" either.
If only our political opponents were as smart.
Too much sense for the liberal dementia of the subpremes Stephens, Ginsberg, & Breyer. They have an agenda to uphold and prefer to ignore truth or the inalienable right to not be murdered while sequestered in the womb or a petri dish.
I thought fetus was just latin for unborn child, as in fetus adoleo, unborn child sacrifice.
Well history has changed the definition, it happens.
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as I examine my one week old son, it is clear he is not "fully formed" either.
His brain function will continue to develop over the years, he cannot feed himself, he does not have control of his head or limbs.
Does this make him "fair game" for the culture of death?
Maybe in time it will be legal to extinguish the life of a newborn?
Justice Stevens needs to use specific language to explain the difference in "formation" between a newborn, and a child who is moments away from birth.
He also needs to explain where he is getting this information about 4 to 5 inch babies. I think he is full of BS on that one.
Babies that small are usually aborted using different methods.
The "final solution" in "family planning."
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Thanks for your service.
Courts are also a place where reality is supposed to be recognized, and the reality is that while a doctor may use fetus as a technical term for an unborn human, pro-aborts have used it for four decades as a word for a non-human target, and that's why Stevens uses it.
In the case of abortion, the Court could very easily decide that states have some of the same power to regulate it that they have over other medical procedures. It would be possible for a state to require parental notification and informed consent. Bans could be passed on partial-birth abortion and on taking other people’s daughters across state lines to obtain abortions. The states could even require the same safety protocols that other surgical clinics must follow. But the scariest part for the abortion industry isn’t necessarily the extra regulations, but the fact that the judicial firewall would come down, and they would have to argue their case in the public square instead of depending on the “super-duper precedent” of Roe. There is nothing they fear more than having to explain themselves, and the Court could preserve Roe and still require them to do so.That may explain why oral arguments went the way they did in the recent case regarding parental notification in New Hampshire. It was Justice O’Connor’s last abortion case, and Chief Justice Roberts’ first. One striking feature was a long discussion of the exact mechanics of contacting a judge if a pregnant teen needed an emergency abortion and her parents were unavailable or she did not want them notified. How long might it take, the justices and lawyers wondered, to get that vital permission and save her life, health or fertility? Of course, no one would ask that question about an appendectomy; the doctor would simply do the procedure. That would be the reasonable answer in the case of a true emergency abortion as well, but the Justices weren’t discussing reason. They were discussing possible outs that would allow them to preserve the Roe firewall.
For four decades, American liberalism has depended largely on federal courts coming down from the mountain with stone tablets to impose their vision. Now that era may be ending, not with stone tablets imposed from the Right, but with the people making the decisions and writing the tablets.
No wonder they feel like their world’s coming to an end.
LOL!
In a letter to the editor, a local cheerleader for abortion wrote that only the pregnant woman can choose whether "to birth the life inside her." Her mistake--in a followup letter I asked, "Is that human life, or do you figure it’s a fish, or a monkey?"
I got phone calls for days about that letter, every one of them enthusistically positive. Heh-heh!
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