Wagglebee (probably also "sick, twisted, etc) has suggested elsewhere that a truly pro-life POTUS would end the controversy at law by signing an executive order defining 14th Amendment "persons" as including the unborn from conception. The prolem with that is that the next time the US is foolish enough to elect some Muzzie smooching Stalinist anti-American wingnut as POTUS, that Executive Order would be reversed and other near equally evil policies would also become "law" by the same means. The Founding Fathers created Congress for many reasons and a primary one is the enactment of actually constitutional laws and policies. Congress should define the unborn as persons for 14th Amendment purposes. POTUS should sign off on such legislation without reservation and, if necessary, remove fedcourt jurisdiction over abortion as the constitution allows.
You are a better man and a better Christian and a better American than I. My deviation from the highest moral ground arises from my service to pro-lifers as a lawyer. Some certainly agreed with your position and some with mine. What I could never get out of my head is that a lack of authority to approve the murder of any innocent baby in utero works in two directions: against imperfect legislation that does not prohibit every abortion and OTOH against ignoring a substantial number of babies who would be saved by imperfect legislation.
If the babykillers, on the last day of the legislative session, credibly tell the pro-life legislators that a law will be enacted that will prohibit each and every abortion after week thirteen of a pregnancy but be silent as to babies in weeks 1-13 of other pregnancies, voting no means refusing to save the babies that can be saved? Is it not morally acceptable to address the legislature, announcing one's vote for the legislation while vowing to return. as often as necessary to take away the "legal" status of the remaining abortions? Save those who can be saved, always so long as one NEVER concedes the legitimacy of ANY abortion.
We cannot support anesthesia for those about to be aborted or any other law that facilitates abortion by making it seem less hideous. Personally, I join the late Henry Hyde in imagining that the aborted are in heaven, waiting for their champions to arrive and besieging God on behalf of those champions.
I spent my legal career as Teddy Roosevelt's man in the arena, dusty, bloodied but getting up again and again to achieve what could be achieved, however imperfectly. I knew the sting of battle and survived it as did many babies who were never aborted because of the heroic direct action sacrifices of my clients. I have seen you in that arena too and Wagglebee and Dr. Sivana as well.
Sitting idly by is something I will not do. Watching those who never knew you call you sick, twisted, etc. is, as Winston Churchill once observed in another context, something "up with which I shall not put."
I’m not sure that you quite understand my position, though I don’t appreciate what seems like an attempt to gang up on me.
My position is that I will take any and every (morally justified) means possible to save the lives of the unborn. Perfect or imperfect, I will take every option on the table to do it, and that includes what you are proposing. Try for perfection, but if perfection is impossible, save as many lives as I can.
What it seems to me that you’re all saying is that if you can’t have perfection, you will refuse to save any lives at all. What I’m hearing is that if you can’t get a total and immediate ban on abortion, that you will outright reject and fight against any kind of restriction on abortions.
Is that what you’re trying to tell me? Because that’s what it sounds like.
http://www.equalprotectionforposterity.com/
http://www.equalprotectionforposterity.com/the-equal-protection-for-posterity-resolution.html
My preference would obviously be for Congress to pass a law having babies recognized under the 14th Amendment. However, I believe that an executive order would also work. While Obama, et al. might not believe that babies are unborn, they would almost certainly recognize that it is politically untenable to declare so publicly. In other words, the public would "get used" to seeing babies as persons and that would be hard to undo.
In any event, the courts need to be out of it and I've long believed that Blackmun suggested as much in his opinion.
If the babykillers, on the last day of the legislative session, credibly tell the pro-life legislators that a law will be enacted that will prohibit each and every abortion after week thirteen of a pregnancy but be silent as to babies in weeks 1-13 of other pregnancies, voting no means refusing to save the babies that can be saved? Is it not morally acceptable to address the legislature, announcing one's vote for the legislation while vowing to return. as often as necessary to take away the "legal" status of the remaining abortions? Save those who can be saved, always so long as one NEVER concedes the legitimacy of ANY abortion.
In THEORY that sounds fine, in REALITY we are all aware that these laws don't stop abortions because they ALWAYS contain an "and then you can kill the baby" clause a mile wide.