This is, purportedly, a nation of laws. \u00a0Not men. \u00a0Or womyn.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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. \u00a0And bit by bit, it’s been working; slowly. \u00a0The number of abortions is dropping<\/a>, as the ubiquity of ultrasound starts to show people that that “lump of tissue” in actually a human being. \u00a0Maybe 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Or so we hope. \u00a0Because it seems to some on the left, “birth” is no guarantee of being called “human”.<\/p>\n 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. \u00a0The fact that Gosnell’s abortion mill avoided inspections for nearly two decades indicates an administrative breakdown.<\/p>\n But administration in a regulation-heavy place like Philadelphia doesn’t break down by accident. \u00a0The pro-infanticide lobby is powerful, and doesn’t brook interference with their civic sacrament. \u00a0And so if an administrative body has <\/em>to break down somewhere, it’s not a huge leap to figure that the regulation of abortion mills is the path of least resistance.<\/p>\n Beyond that, though – it’s just a little bit nauseating how little respect for “the law” some of the pro-infanticide camp actually have.<\/p>\n PZ Myers is, by traffic, Minnesota’s top leftyblogger. \u00a0And 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.<\/p>\n But I love a challenge. \u00a0And being hated has always nourished me.<\/p>\n Myers’ lede: “abortions don’t kill people, people do<\/a>“:<\/p>\n 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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n Gosnell is precisely the kind of butcher the pro-choice movement opposes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n All true, and well and good. \u00a0Of 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.<\/p>\n …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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n 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.<\/p>\n Still, it’s a defense of the existing law, <\/em>whether you agree with that law or not (and from Roe V. Wade <\/em>on down, I don’t).<\/p>\n Still, on all of this, people can agree to disagree – however angrily and emotionally.<\/p>\n But when people try to put abortion above the law<\/em>?<\/p>\n 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).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Now, let’s make sure we’re clear on the terms here: \u00a0Gosnell 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<\/a>” – become “human”.<\/p>\n 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 <\/em>after it’s actually born. \u00a0How long do you wait before you consider life, life? \u00a0Until the little nipper is a year old? \u00a0(Oops – someone beat me to that one<\/a>).<\/p>\n 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. \u00a0If they agreed to a late term abortion<\/em> – which, barbaric as it is, is legal, sickening as it is to admit – then it’s not an issue. \u00a0If 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 <\/em>in fact say a delivered “fetus” is protected by the law, then what do <\/em>you call it?<\/p>\n Or “the law is the law” only count when it protects infanticide?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is, purportedly, a nation of laws. \u00a0Not men. \u00a0Or 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17627"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17637,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17627\/revisions\/17637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}