On the way home from COSTCO today I was listening to Rush whom I often find funny. And he didn't fail to give me a laugh when he said Obama's plan was to get him to retire. How is that, you ask? Well, Rush has said he'll be on the air until everyone in the country agrees with him and Obama, he said, is helping him reach that goal. But what got me ticked off was his response to a caller who asked if he needed to support Constitutional Amendments to end abortion and homosexual marriage to be a conservative. Rush basically said, no, both those issues are states' rights matters and England didn't have an abortion controversy because the people voted on it. (I'm not sure that's true since they have an active pro-life movement there.)
I'll only address abortion here, something I've been fighting since 1972.
NO, RUSH, ABORTION IS NOT A STATES' RIGHTS ISSUE! (Am I talking loud enough?) IT'S A HUMAN/CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE!
Even Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun knew that when he wrote Roe v. Wade. Blackmun said "the unborn have never been recognized in the law as persons in the whole sense." But he also said, "The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a 'person' within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well-known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, [410 U.S. 113, 157] for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment."
The personhood of the preborn should be self evident. If they are human genetically, they're persons. And they are. No woman ever gave birth to a cantaloupe.
The pro-life movement is the modern civil rights movement. The only difference between blacks fighting for their natural rights and the preborn is their visibility. The media showed the fire hoses, dogs, and billy clubs being used against blacks who marched for their rights. The instruments of violence used against the babies, the suction machines, knives, and poisonous chemicals, are hidden by a complicit media who don't want the truth to be shown. But just as slavery ended so will the violence against the babies. It must. And while we fight for legal recognition by a Personhood Amendment to the Constitution, we also must continue to do everything we can to save those "being led to the slaughter" by sidewalk counseling, education (including those graphic pictures), and compassionate assistance to women in crisis.
Get it right, Rush! This is not a states' right issue. Voters can't make abortion right by a majority vote any more than they could make slavery right by majority rule. And those who want women to have a "choice" are no different than those who supported the "right to choose" for slaveowners and slavetraders.
Excellent! I think the only difference between how it is now and if it was returned to the states is we have one huge battle now and then we would 50 smaller battles. Saying "states rights" is an excuse not to say what it really is: a moral issue of right and wrong.
ReplyDeleteI think that you may have written about these happenings before in your blog.
ReplyDeletePlease check out this link. I could use your support.
http://livingwaterinanemptydesert.blogspot.com/2010/02/time-for-justice-time-for-healing.html
Amen! And this is why I have warned people not to blindly follow leaders in both the conservative and liberal movements who may be intentionally oblivious to human rights and Catholic teaching.
ReplyDeleteAlso, speaking of "states' rights" -- in the Civil War, the South used that for slavery! Indeed, should the South (or even the North and West) repeat that fatal mistake again with "states' rights for abortion?" I don't think so!
The baby in the womb is a living person protected by the U.S. Constitution. If it not a person, when does it become a person? The answer has to be at the beginning of human life otherwise any other date in purely arbitrary.To play it safe personhood must begin at conception. Tony
ReplyDeleteYou can't go around expecting all your friends to be as smart and as informed as you are, much less to be as principled are you are--otherwise you'll be ineffectively alone. Probably in the back of his tired old head, Rush realized that if put to a vote in each state, abortion would be illegal most places and the number of them would plummet. In the meantime, that confused and tentative conservative Rush was addressing might help out on some other project (of less immediacy and moral weight) like fiscal reform. If government simply stopped funding abortion, indirectly or otherwise, there'd be far fewer. It'd be wonderful to stop abortion now, but it is good to save a single child.
ReplyDeleteI believe the issue of abortion needs to go back to the Supreme Court. There are now states that have passed fetal homicide laws. For instance, a drunk driver may be charged with manslaughter if he causes the death of an unborn baby.
ReplyDeleteHowever, that baby may be aborted/murdered if the same woman decided she did not want the child.
These two rulings are in conflict, and need to be resolved in the courts. I wish the pro-life movement would file the challenge.
You've got a point, Finecrown. We always need to take people where they are. But Rush's response was still wrong. He could have told the man he'd be welcome in the party without supporting every single item in the platform, but then articulate the reason pro-life people want a Constitutional Amendment. To promote the postion that it should go back to the states is to agree that whether the baby in the womb should live or die is up to a popular vote in the states. That is completely wrong. I have grown to expect more from Rush because I thought he understood the issue better.
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