I've had a better outlook by largely avoiding the news this past year, but I've strayed once or twice. (A shame that as a civic-minded person with a civic-minded upbringing has to quit following current events in this day and age to maintain his equilibrium.) Today I strayed into this article. I was taken by the following exchange between a Florida state legislator and a Planned Parenthood lobbyist:
The committee was considering a proposed bill to protect infants born alive during an abortion. A state legislator asked Snow what Planned Parenthood would want to happen to a baby born as a result of a botched abortion.
“We believe that any decision that's made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician,” she replied.
Read her statement again. She apparently believes that a baby who has concededly been born may be killed, with no due process whatsoever, merely on the say-so of the woman, her family, and her physician. The government, in her view, apparently has no authority to say that such an execution would be a crime, such as--oh, I don't know--murder.
I like that. Her statement is either in utter ignorance of the Fourteenth Amendment, which I would have thought is required reading for anyone working in the area of abortion law, or in blatant disregard and utter contempt of said amendment. (Note that bit about all people who are "born" in the US being citizens, presumably citizens with rights to things such as--oh, I don't know--life.) I suppose that a competent lawyer could have countered that since the baby wasn't intended to be born or to survive, this is an impediment to the baby's personhood and that equal protection doesn't apply, but that would simply be making the worse appear the better cause. As for citizenship--well, if the Obama administration can kill American citizens in the U.S. with drone strikes, then I suppose doctors can kill American citizens in the abortion mills.
Of course, the lobbyist's statement may just have been made in ignorance, like the civics teacher in North Carolina who has apparently never heard of the First Amendment. She censored her students and screamed at them if they criticized President Obama they could be arrested. (But of course she thought it was OK to criticize Romney).
Bottom line: When you're dealing people like these, you're dealing with people who are either ignorant, or subversive, or both. And they're out to be in charge. And they elect your president.
