This is, purportedly, a nation of laws. Not men. Or womyn.
It’s this fact – the idea that we are governed by laws arrived at at least indirectly by the consent of the majority of The People – that makes civilization possible.
So those of us who oppose legalized infanticide – whether we’re single-issue activists or just quiet, personal pro-lifers – have to work within the law to change the system. And bit by bit, it’s been working; slowly. The number of abortions is dropping, as the ubiquity of ultrasound starts to show people that that “lump of tissue” in actually a human being. Maybe not a competely functional human being, yet – but as a parent of two teenagers, I’m here to tell you they’re not “viable” until they can get a job – but a human being nonetheless.
Still, the medical fact is that once a “fetus” gets past 22-23 weeks, science can save ’em, and after 30 weeks they have a better-than-fighting chance – as long as they can get out of the damn womb.
Or so we hope. Because it seems to some on the left, “birth” is no guarantee of being called “human”.
You could say that it was a breakdown in the laws that govern our society that led to the Kermit Gosnell charnel house in Philadelphia. The fact that Gosnell’s abortion mill avoided inspections for nearly two decades indicates an administrative breakdown.
But administration in a regulation-heavy place like Philadelphia doesn’t break down by accident. The pro-infanticide lobby is powerful, and doesn’t brook interference with their civic sacrament. And so if an administrative body has to break down somewhere, it’s not a huge leap to figure that the regulation of abortion mills is the path of least resistance.
Beyond that, though – it’s just a little bit nauseating how little respect for “the law” some of the pro-infanticide camp actually have.
PZ Myers is, by traffic, Minnesota’s top leftyblogger. And criticizing him takes commitment; he draws a huge audience of the kind of readers who make Democratic Underground and the Daily Kos’ comment sections such pressure-cookers of dissociation, and some of them have waaaaay too much time on their hands, and love spending it bombing heretics’ comment sections.
But I love a challenge. And being hated has always nourished me.
Myers’ lede: “abortions don’t kill people, people do“:
I have been receiving lots of triumphant mail from anti-choice people claiming vindication, that abortion is wrong, and demanding to know how I can possibly support abortion rights after hearing about the case of Dr Kermit Gosnell. Gosnell ran an abortion mill in Philadelphia, and was a hack who maimed and killed women while doing abortions on demand, for a substantial fee. He was unqualified, uncertified in obstetrics and gynecology, and his facility was unmonitored and relatively uninspected. He gave untrained, inexperienced staff critical jobs in the surgery — he allowed a 15 year old high school student to handle anesthesia. He killed a patient by overdosing her on drugs, and is also charged with killing 7 babies in late-term abortions.
Gosnell is precisely the kind of butcher the pro-choice movement opposes.
All true, and well and good. Of course, the reasons the clinic got left unregulated, in a city where you can’t run a hot dog cart or a braiding shop without swarms of inspectors inspecting your droppings, will need to be sorted through; they’re likely inextricable from the politics of abortion.
…what [Gosnell] represents is the kind of back-alley deadly hackery that the anti-choice movement would have as the only possible recourse, if they had their way. If anything, the Gosnell case is an argument for legal abortion.
A hack being allowed to practice his bloody incompetent craft in a city that is both among the most pro-abortion and high-regulation (usually) cities in the country is “an argument for legal abortion” in the same sense that Jared Loughner’s legal purchase of a Glock supports legalized suicide; both are non-sequiturs.
Still, it’s a defense of the existing law, whether you agree with that law or not (and from Roe V. Wade on down, I don’t).
Still, on all of this, people can agree to disagree – however angrily and emotionally.
But when people try to put abortion above the law?
He has also been charged with the murders of seven babies, and there I have to disagree. There has to be a difference in degree, or the mothers of those infants would also have to be charged as collaborators (they were all willing volunteers for this medical procedure, and they knew the result would be termination of their pregnancy).
Now, let’s make sure we’re clear on the terms here: Gosnell is accused of “terminating” seven “pregnancies” after the “fetuses” had completely exited the mother, and – even under the most radically proscriptive definition of “when does life begin”, which with some pro-death types seems to be “when all ten of the baby’s toes exit the birth canal” – become “human”.
What Myers seems to be saying here is that the “law” governing when life begins, such as it is, shouldn’t count; that human life shouldn’t begin until everyone who wants a crack at “terminating” it has taken a shot at it, long after it’s actually born. How long do you wait before you consider life, life? Until the little nipper is a year old? (Oops – someone beat me to that one).
The strawman that the left has thrown up as the smokescreen – “so you want to put poor black women in jail” – needs to be slapped down, by the way. If they agreed to a late term abortion – which, barbaric as it is, is legal, sickening as it is to admit – then it’s not an issue. If the doctor killed the “fetus” after it was born, without the mother’s consent, or while the mother’s capacity was diminished from pain, drugs and fatigue, then it’s not an issue. If the mother saw a fully delivered fetus and, with full mental faculties, said “go ahead and kill it off”, and the laws does in fact say a delivered “fetus” is protected by the law, then what do you call it?
Or “the law is the law” only count when it protects infanticide?
My daughter was born @ 3lbs 3oz and delivered two weeks early. She was breach and delivered through c-section. She’s a happy, healthy senior in high school now.
Unviable my ass.
It is entirely appropriate that this monster be shut down and charged with serious crimes against women. …The most shocking news is that this guy has been chopping up poor women since 1979.
Not a word about the hundreds of babies that were brutally, and torturously murdered….’cause they are just fleshy lumps of cellular material.
As I’ve said, I’m tempted to send PZ a crate of bananas for being such an amusing and clever little chimp, but upon further consideration I realize that would only guarantee he’d crap on the carpet.
Now I think it’d be way more fun to toss just one in among PZ and his fellow simians and watch them tear each other to pieces fighting over it.
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Bill Gleason thinks stalking is “cute” as well? He must. *shrug*
Gleason is sitting in that sweet endowed Twitter chair at the UofM. Some might think that’s a waste, but don’t forget; it keeps him away from the students.
I call that a WIN.
“But administration in a regulation-heavy place like Philadelphia doesn’t break down by accident.”
One can only marvel at how hard it must have been for the administrators, clinicians, bureaucrats and others to walk past the scene of the accident for so long without seeing anything. It speaks to the powers of ignorance which makes so many useful idiots in a very dark and sordid celebration of “choice.”
Meyers has quite the posse of commenters over at his place. Few were clever enough to notice that Meyers’ point — that, to be consistent, the mothers of the murdered children should be prosecuted — failed the test of intent. I take it that Meyers is a bit dim when it comes to questions of morality.
Most of the commenters, like Meyers, blame the pro-life movement for Gosnell’s abatoir. It must be really, really, really hard to do that since the women who paid for the procedures, the health officials who greenlighted Gosnell’s practice, and of course Gosnell himself were all objectively pro-choice.
I take it that Meyers is a bit dim when it comes to questions of morality.
Some of that tantalizingly dry astronomer wit…it’s like touching the tip of your tongue to a 9V battery.
Curious…
[Removed by blog owner. Sorry, Swiftee – I’ll email you offline]
Rede my bleg…..
Was flipping around the channels last night. Caught part of Hannity. Or was it O’Reilly? Al Sharpton was on with…was it Romney? (only had it on for a minute). The Republican noted to Al Sharpton that if it wasn’t for Planned Parenthood, there would be almost twice as many African-Americans living in the US than there are now. For the first time ever, I think I saw Al flinch and not respond.
I think that number sounds high. A quick internet search does not give up-to-date numbers, but a black Catholic web site says everyday, 1452 African-American children are aborted.
Even if you are pro-choice, or indifferent to abortion, there are some things that should cause you to think about what is going on.
I’m going to take a quick break from my busy work day to point out that while PZ Myers is wrong, I’d like to keep his family out of it.
Sound like a plan?
I’m not an astronomer, Swiftee, I am a telescope operator.
Astronomers do research and publish their findings. I manage hardware & software to optimize data collection for astronomers. I’m more of an engineer-type.
I could surround my house with all the defensiveness Myers uses in his article. He’s clearly been staggered by the combination of race and abortion politics in the case. Imagine if a white doctor had been caught botching abortions for poor, black women. Would there be a field day in the MSM or what? Myers has to trot out the “Just imagine how much worse it would be if abortions were illegal” argument without providing any documentation for how much worse it would be. It’s just a priori true–if you’re a lefty, anyway. And then he dismisses the possibility that the seven fetuses killed were at all viable. It may or may not be true. But he doesn’t even want to consider the possibility.
I hope next week he makes the case for the government to provide pharmaceutical grade heroin for addicts to shoot up so there aren’t any unfortunate overdoses. Just imagine how much worse it would be if junkies had to go on the street to buy their own s###.
f it wasn’t for Planned Parenthood, there would be almost twice as many African-Americans living in the US than there are now
Somewhere Margaret Sanger is smiling in satisfaction at a Eugenics job well done. I hope she’s waiting tables at an all black soul food joint somewhere very warm.
I’m not an astronomer, Swiftee, I am a telescope operator.
In other words, you are a doer, not a dreamer.
Somewhere Margaret Sanger is smiling in satisfaction at a Eugenics job well done.
Spot on, Kermit. That’s the essence of it. And to golfdoc’s point, Myers knows that very well, which is why he is at such pains to deny the obvious.
I work with some of the most intelligent people in the world. Most of them are so intelligent it’s bloody amazing. Narrow focus, though.
Chuck Says: “Was flipping around the channels last night. Caught part of Hannity. Or was it O’Reilly? Al Sharpton was on with…was it Romney? (only had it on for a minute). The Republican noted to Al Sharpton that if it wasn’t for Planned Parenthood, there would be almost twice as many African-Americans living in the US than there are now. For the first time ever, I think I saw Al flinch and not respond.”
I did watch part of the show Chuck, it was Hannity, and the dabaters were Sharpton the perennial race baiter, and Rick Santorum. The Rev had the look of someone that had just been smashed in the face with a 2 x 4 as he contemplated the extent of the barbarity that has taken place in the short time since R v W.
It seems liberals want to everything “for the children” except when they are ripping them out of the womb and throwing their dead bodies in the trash. But there is a pattern here.
http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm/h/2833-peta-kills-animals—-and-its-a-felony
http://www.thisistrue.com/peta.html
http://www.petakillsanimals.com/petaTrial2.cfm
PETA does the exact same thing.
while PZ Myers is wrong, I’d like to keep his family out of it.
Why? He doesn’t. PZ Myers is a flippin’ waste of human flesh and the world needs that information so it can FACTCHECK him.
The race thing….I have heard both liberals and conservatives (but never the church-going conservatives) say out loud that they are fine with abortion because they don’t want the entire nation to look like North Mpls or Detroit. I think they mean that unwanted black babies will grow up to be gang bangers and welfare queens. To me, they are saying the solution to the inner city problems is extermination of the unwanteds. Like putting out rat poison.
I am one of the biggest critics of people having kids when they can’t afford them nor can care for them. But this isn’t the solution to that. It would be like saying you are against illegeal immigration, so to solve that, we will instutute the death penalty for being here illegeally.
Why? He doesn’t.
I know.
I shoot for better than that.
With certainty we’ll never know what the unwanted babies (black, orange, purple, or otherwise) would have become if the flame of life is extinguished before they’re born. The Gosnells of our world are merely a symptom of the cancer that is abortion on demand!
I shoot for better than that.
Oh! Vitriolic Rhetoric ™ on SITD once again rears its ugly head. This climate of hate in the discussion of a womyn’s right to choose death cannot be tolerated!!!
Like putting out rat poison.
Exactly. As I’ve said, the Democrat party has succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the KKK. The only difference between the two (besides effectiveness) is that the Democrat’s pointy hats are made of tin-foil, and their crosses are lit with high efficiency LEDs.
PZ Myers is a flippin’ waste of human flesh and the world needs that information so it can FACTCHECK him.
And yet we are called upon to love him, Swiftee.
What a crazy world. I’ll take it over the soulless utopias of Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris.
And yet we are called upon to love him, Swiftee.
Meh, with all I got to “discuss” with The Big Man, scraggin’ on P.O.S. like PZ Myers is peanuts, and well worth the extra penance.
Just an aside. I have two U of MN degrees, including one from UMM, where Myers teaches. Every fund rasing call from the U is answered “Talk to me when you fire Myers for violating the tolerance and diversity part of the Mission Statement. No luck so far.
I have two U of MN degrees
No doubt money well spent. Perhaps Swiftee will be assigned a U of MN degree program as his “extra penance”.
Yeah, donlokk, UMM Chancellor Johnson said “behaviors that discriminate against or harass individuals or groups on the basis of their religious beliefs are reprehensible”, yet she refused to so much as rebuke Meyers.
Hello!
Words have meaning, Chancellor Johnson!
their crosses are lit with high efficiency LEDs
That would be curly CFL’s. Don’t go dissing the mighty LED’s!