Steamboat Pilot & Today

Emotional brainwashing, or the play on one's emotions to alter or affect one's perception or reality, is hard at work again. The question is by whom?

In reading a letter to the editor recently, I must assign the guilt to the uninformed die-hard abortion groupies who just follow the emotional trail left so expertly by those who know better. Playing on the fear that a rational law prohibiting an irrational procedure will erode a constitutionally protected procedure is not only wrong but founded on ignorance.

Regardless of my beliefs on abortion, the medical termination of an unwanted pregnancy is protected by the Supreme Court decision of Roe vs. Wade. However, it is not only prudent but also morally necessary that we as a well-educated society scrutinize any medical procedure as to its appropriateness to achieve the desired end result. Abortion finds its very legal roots in the fact that the fetus is considered unviable and therefore not protected under the umbrella of constitutionally guaranteed rights.

This allows for the medical termination and removal of all fetal tissue as a choice of the mother, given this tissue is located within her body. However, a partial-birth abortion steps outside this legal safe haven and encroaches dangerously close to infantile genocide, so close that most specialists can see no distinction. First and foremost, the infant is viable with normal medical and human care. Second, the death of the infant occurs after the majority of the infant has been delivered. Third, the sole purpose of partial-birth abortion is to kill an otherwise viable living infant so as to prevent the presence of an unwanted child.

A matter of inches separates two different legal worlds -- constitutionally protected or constitutionally void. The federal law recently signed by President Bush is designed to protect this fragile infant of his or her rights, rights he or she acquired when becoming a viable human being.

The author of the letter last week stated that this law is unconstitutional because it does not include a clause offering exception when the mother's life is in danger. I would challenge this woman to submit one case in which the life of the mother was spared because of a partial-birth abortion procedure. This procedure requires several days of preparation as the cervix is slowly dilated using medication. Next, the mother is subjected to the trauma of having the infant turned in the womb through external manipulation, not a comfortable or easy procedure. Finally, the infant is delivered breech, which any mother who has delivered breech will testify is much worse than normal delivery. At the moment when the baby is within inches of acquiring all of his or her constitutional rights, a suction tube is inserted into the base of the head and the contents of the skull are removed.

At this moment in time, the death of this infant in no way protects the health of the mother. If the mother's health is the issue, the infant should be removed quickly and as normally as possible to minimize the physical stress, and most often a C-section would be less stressful. But if the mother is unable to survive the stress of a simple C-section, then definitely a normal birth would be less stressful than a breech, especially a delayed breech for the purpose of terminating the infant before he or she can be fully delivered. I challenge anyone to present a case study in which it was medically determined that if the infant had been born alive during a partial-birth abortion procedure that the physical health of the mother would have been compromised.

Have we reached a point in history where we are so fearful of losing a constitutionally guaranteed right that we are willing to sacrifice viable infants before the gods of reproductive freedom? Have we become the moral equivalent to those in some other countries who just deliver the infant and then either leave it to die or worse, inject it with saline to terminate its life within hours of leaving his or her mother's womb? While they say justice is blind, have we as a nation become so blind that we can no longer determine what is just?