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The struggle for life and liberty
A great
moral struggle in the life of our nation has resurfaced in the
last several months, the most disturbing manifestations of which
have been the so-called "right to die" battle raging
in Florida and the passage of a bill in Congress that will ban
partial-birth abortions.
The United States Senate voted
64-34 last week to ban the barbaric and inhumane practice of
partial-birth abortions, confirming the House of Representatives'
282-139 vote earlier this month and sending the bill to President
Bush, who has said he will sign it into law.
The federal law will be the first
ban on any abortion procedure since the practice became legal
in 1973. It's about time. The procedure in question is one of
the most brutal acts heretofore sanctioned by law in this country;
nothing so clearly demonstrates the reality of what abortion
actually is. The testimony of Brenda Pratt Shafer, a nurse who
testified before a congressional subcommittee on partial-birth
abortions in 1996, speaks for itself:
"The doctor delivered the
baby's body and arms, everything but his little head. The baby's
body was moving. His little fingers were clasping and unclasping,
and his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the
scissors in the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked
out, like a startle reaction, like a flinch, like a baby does
when he thinks he is going to fall…The doctor opened the
scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening
and sucked the baby's brain's out. Now the baby went completely
limp."
It is disturbing and baffling
that elected officials such as Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Cali.),
a leading opponent of the bill, cast this debate in terms of
interest-group politics. In Boxer's mind, the partial-birth
abortion debate is simple:
"I see what this is about…this
is about politics," Boxer said in a New York Times interview
last week.
Is this about politics? Is this,
as Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said, all about taking away women's
rights and making them "second-class citizens"? Or
is this about something greater than politics?
Consider the Florida "right
to die" controversy. A court issued an order on Oct. 15
to remove a feeding tube from Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged
woman in Florida who depends on intravenous feeding to stay
alive. The idea behind removing the feeding tube-an action taken
at the behest of her husband but against the will of her family-was
simply to let Schiavo starve to death. This is inhumane; decent
people don't even let stray dogs starve to death. After six
days of judicially-mandated starvation, Florida's legislature
and Gov. Jeb Bush responded to public outcry and stood up to
the courts, passing an emergency bill to reinsert the feeding
tube and save the woman's life.
In a morbidly satirical twist,
Schiavo was denied the administration of last rites during her
six-day ordeal. Her doctors said she could not be given the
bread and wine because she might choke to death.
What is going on here? Do citizens
of this country have a right to die or a right to be protected?
Is this about partisan politics or about basic moral values?
Currently the ACLU is preparing
to fight a court battle to remove Schiavo's feeding tube once
and for all, while numerous abortion-rights groups have filed
suits against the federal government for banning partial-birth
abortions. Most Americans do not agree with these groups, yet
public debate is raging on and the usual litigation is moving
forward.
Sadly, there are those in America
who think that some people's lives and rights should be protected
but that others should be subject to the rulings of activist
judges and the vicissitudes of legislative bodies. We are forced
to conclude that these people consider certain individuals to
be subject to the legal "rights" of others.
Any student of American history
knows that we have tended toward this before, nearly 150 years
ago. There were court orders and rulings in those days that
also had to be ignored or overturned-not for the sake of partisan
politics, but to ensure that this country did not turn away
from its founding principles and, abandoning the precept that
"all men are created equal," become something else
altogether.
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Editorial
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