I ran across an interesting op-ed about abortion posted on the “National Review” yesterday, citing Democrat Colorado House Speaker Julie McCluskie. A short snippet from that op-ed follows:
“Colorado Democrats are touting a new reason why the state’s taxpayers should pay for low-income women’s abortions. Not only would it support “equity and fairness in health care,” they say, but aborting more babies is good fiscal policy, too.”
“A birth is more expensive than an abortion,” Colorado House Speaker Julie McCluskie said at a committee hearing this week, touting a legislative fiscal analysis that claims taxpayer-funded abortions could save the state a half million dollars or more annually.”
Ms. McCluskey’s logic is as stunning as it is evil. And, sadly, it’s aimed at something we’re all concerned with right now – our purses and wallets and the plight of the poor among us. If we are to accept that grisly logic it would then follow that the solutions to many of our societal problems could easily be solved by eliminating huge swaths of our population. We could “humanely” euthanize our elderly, our chronically infirm, Downs Syndrome children and adults, or those suffering from incurable diseases.
Ms. McCluskey makes it all seem to easy and so cost effective. As Bob Dylan put it in 1983, “In order to deal in this game, got to make the queen disappear. It’s done with a flick of the wrist.”
The problem with twisted logic the illuminati peddle is that it hits its intended target is some targeted sweet spot. The people of France and Iceland, for example, have almost eliminated Downs Syndrome with campaigns aimed at expectant mothers touting the virtue of aborting Downs children. Dylan’s “flick of the wrist” has been replaced by a simple snip of the surgical scissors.
That twisted logic has been around for a long time. In 1924, for example, eugenics was all the rage. The Commonwealth of Virgina had passed a law that legalized he involuntary sterilization of Virgina citizens deemed to be “feeble minded.” One of the early targets of the law was a seventeen-year-old woman named Carrie Buck, who had been involuntarily sterilized under the Virginia law. By the time she was twenty-one, her case had made it to the Supreme Court. The decision in the case was monumentally important. Was the forced sterilization of Carrie Buck legal?
In one of the most infamous Supreme Court decisions in our history, the high court upheld the Virginia statute that had legalized involuntary sterilization. Justice Olliver Wendell Holmes, one of the most respected justices who has ever held a Supreme Court seat, ratified the decision with these now infamous words:
“We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. […] Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”
As terrible as the Buck versus Bell decision was, it can’t compare with the 1857 Dred Scott decision. Dred Scott, the plaintiff, sued for his freedom from slavery, claiming that his owner had sent him to a state where slavery had been outlawed and that by rights he should be liberated. His case made it to the Supreme Court, in a stunning seven to two decision, ruled, with only justices McLean Curtis dissenting, that Scott was not Constitutionally entitled to his freedom. When all was said and done, the high court had done Dred Scott a grave injustice. The majority decision was framed in what I believe was a mind-boggling display of corrupt legal language:
In a more recent case, Kelo v. New London (2005), the high court ruled that the plaintiff, Suzette Kelo, was not entitled to Constitutional protection under the fifth amendment. The city of New London and a private contractor (Pfizer) had made an eminent domain claim on her property. Up until this case, the takings clause of the Constitution had always held that government could only take privately owned property to build a road or some other project like power lines that would benefit the entire community. In the Kelo case, Pfizer wanted Suzette Kelo’s property to develop a business and profit. from it.
It was a bad decision on judicial, and moral grounds.
This brings me back to the Colorado decision to codify abortion and have Colorado’s citizens pay for abortions. The twisted logic of cost savings used by the Colorado legislature and moral bankruptcy at the heart of the legislation beggar belief.
I’ve been pro-life my entire adult life. I’ve done the things pro-lifers like me can legally do. I’ve carried a sign that read “Abortion stops a beating heart.” I’ve been whacked around cursed, and spit on. I’ve joined with thousands of other pro-lifers at the annual “March for Life” in Washington, D.C. I’ve debated this issue on college campuses in New Jersey as member of an organization called “The Center for Bioethical Reform.” I’m proud of the things I’ve done to advance the cause of life. I believe the things I’ve done comport well with sound reasoning and logic, as well as sound morality.
I understand that the politicians and judges are increasingly antagonistic to pro-lifers like me, but I will continue to speak out against abortion. I owe it to my conscience, and I owe it to those who have spoken out in the public square. I’m thinking now of Mother Teresa, one of those I consider to be a hero.
In 1994, she addressed the National Prayer breakfast. Her words, some of which follow, were powerful and prophetic. They cry out for your attention and consideration. I’ll close this essay with them:
“But I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself.”
“And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another? How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.”
By abortion, the mother does not learn to love but kills even her own child to solve her problems.”
“And, by abortion, the father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. That father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion.”
“Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.”
“Many people are very, very concerned with the children of India, with the children of Africa where quite a few die of hunger, and so on. Many people are also concerned about all the violence in this great country of the United States. These concerns are very good. But often these same people are not concerned with the millions who are being killed by the deliberate decision of their own mothers. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today – abortion which brings people to such blindness.”