Abortion Notes

Over the last couple of weeks, there has been a flurry of interesting information released on the abortion issue:

1. Governor-Elect Beverly Perdue is reported to be the keynote speaker at an upcoming gathering to be sponsored by a prominent pro-abortion organization.  Guilford County's own Maggie Jeffus will be one of the honorees of the organization.   Boo, hiss. 

2.  At BlackGenocide.org, we learn the following (HT: WorldMagBlog):

Between 1882 and 1968, 3,446 blacks were lynched in the U.S..

 

Now, 1,452 African-American children are killed each day by abortion. That means that today, in the post-Civil Rights era, the number of black Americans killed by other Americans surpasses the total number of lynchings during the Jim Crow era every three days.

3. A couple of articles today detail how the incipient Obama administration is expected to reverse certain pro-life policies at the federal level.  Newsmax reports that items to be considered will be whether federal health plans must pay for abortions; funding for embryonic stem cell research; and also revocation of conscience protections for health care professionals.  The Wall Street Journal reports also predicts a likely move to enable foreign organizations receiving US funds to use them to pay for abortion services; and also indirect support for coercive abortions in China.

 

4. A particularly insightful article by Paul Kengor refers to Obama's "abortion socialism":

 

(H)e perceives abortion as a matter of economic fairness. For Barack Obama, abortion is not merely a Constitutional right; it is a matter of social justice. He believes it is patently unfair that some women struggle to afford an abortion, or cannot purchase the procedure at all. Consequently, the state -- meaning a single federal state -- should seize that right and ensure its equitable distribution to every (female) citizen. This is spreading the wealth -- on the skin of America's unborn.

5. Faced with the prospects of future passage of the Freedom of Choice Act, which Obama supports, Roman Catholic bishops indicate what they would do in the event they were forced to permit abortions to be performed at Catholic hospitals.  They say they will close the hospitals outright rather than sell them to another entity that would allow the abortions to be performed.

 

6. The Mississippi Baptist Convention has staged its own abortion protest.  It has constructed a glass house, measuring 13 x 7, that contains  50 million pennies-- one for each human life taken by abortion in the US since Roe vs. Wade.  The pennies lie six feet deep within that structure, and collectively weigh 156 tons.

 

7. Robert George comments on a document produced by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology that essentially argues against OB-GYN doctors asserting conscience objections on matters related to abortion.  George considers the individuals who comprised the committee that produced this report, and thinks he smells some rats:

 

Those responsible for the report purport to be speaking as physicians and medical professionals. The special authority the report is supposed to have derives from their standing and expertise as physicians and medical professionals, yet at every point that matters, the judgments offered reflect their philosophical, ethical, and political judgments, not any expertise they have by virtue of their training and experience in science and medicine.

At every key point in the report, their judgments are contestable and contested. Indeed they are contested by the very people on whose consciences they seek to impose—the people whom they would, if their report were adopted and made binding, force into line with their philosophical and ethical judgments or drive out of their fields of medical practice. And they are contested, of course, by many others. And in each of these contests a resolution one way or the other cannot be determined by scientific methods; rather the debate is philosophical, ethical, or political.

Lay aside for the moment the question of whose philosophical judgments are right and whose are wrong. My point so far is only that the report is laced with, and dependent upon at every turn, philosophical judgments. The report, in other words, in its driving assumptions, reasoning, and conclusions does not proceed from a basis of moral neutrality. It represents a partisan position among the family of possible positions debated or adopted by people of reason and goodwill in the medical profession and beyond. Indeed, for me, the partisanship of the report is its most striking feature.

 

8. A group called Students for Life has produced an award-winning video that dramatizes the moral choice associated with abortion.  Caution: the content is graphic. (another HT to WMB):

Comments

[bubba]

Yet Obama offers Rick Warren a prominent role at official deification.......um, inauguration.

What exactly are we to make of that?

Just a spot for the Token Evangelical, or....?

Meanwhile, you can almost hear "progressive" heads explode over Warren's selection.

[Joe Guarino]

Bubba, I was flipping the channels last night and could scarcely believe the vitriol from a couple of the talking heads on CNN over this selection-- one male and one female (I don't recall the names). It was amazing. Remember, all that he will be doing is to say a prayer.

I would ordinarily be hopeful that the selection would somehow signal a willingness to compromise on the abortion issue. But of course, any major change would require that Roe vs. Wade be overturned, and it is hard to see Obama appointing Supreme Court Justices likely to do that. So I suspect the selection was tokenism, as you suggest, or perhaps a willingness to work with the "new generation of evangelicals" like Warren who also happen to harbor a subset of certain liberal policy objectives.