Abortion advocates have become obsessed, literally, with Roe v. Wade. Like the paranoid who is obsessed with imagined threats to his well-being lurking around every corner, abortion advocates see threats to Roe v. Wade everywhere.
Abortion advocates would certainly join Senator Ted Kennedy in declaring abortion rights a "core constitutional value," thereby suggesting that it has a firm and solid hold on the allegiance of the American people in the same way, for example, that the core constitutional values of freedom of speech and religion have. Nevertheless, they then treat this core constitutional value as if it were some rare hothouse flower, one that must be protected from any number of imminent threats that will cause it to wilt and die. Dark forces everywhere are out to undermine Roe, forces even more insidious because they hide their true intent under the guise of pursuing apparently benign goals.
The latest embodiment of the dark forces threatening Roe is a group if illegal immigrant women seeking prenatal care for their unborn children.
According to the New York Times, a federal appeals court has ruled that pregnant women who are in the U.S. illegally have no right to prenatal care for their unborn children under Medicaid. However, the court also ruled that should the children of illegal immigrants be born here, they would then be entitled to Medicaid benefits for the first year of their lives.
Lawyers for the illegal immigrants argued that because children born in the United States are citizens (even if their mothers were here illegally), they are entitled to equal protection of the law. Therefore, the lawyers reasoned, such children could argue that it was unconstitutional to deny them prenatal care.
Elizabeth Benjamin, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society which helped argue the case, commented: "What's happening here is that there are little unborn U.S. citizen kids who as a result of this will not get vital prenatal care."
Martha Davies, legal director of the pro-abortion NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund said that "it just ends up harming innocent children and costing more in the long run."
But, too bad for these "innocent children" and "little unborn U.S. citizen kids"--according to Roe v. Wade, they have no right to life at all, much less a right to healthcare. According to the federal appeals court: "If, as Roe v. Wade instructs, a fetus lacks constitutional protection to assure it a right to be born, we see no basis for according it constitutional protection to assure it enhanced prospects of good health after birth."
As callous as this conclusion is towards the children, it is nonetheless what Roe dictates, showing just how badly that decision has distorted our law.
So lawyers for the pregnant women will appeal their case to the Supreme Court, right? Well, probably not--you see, that might threaten Roe.
As the New York Times further reports: "...Legal Aid lawyers said no decision had been made whether to appeal the case, in part because of the danger that such an appeal could allow the Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade."
Well, we mustn't have that. Note that to even "reconsider" Roe, to question Roe, is a "danger." Prenatal care for children? What's that compared to the "danger" of questioning Roe?
Its important to note that the issue is not whether you think illegal immigrants should or should not be eligible for certain government benefits. The point is whether, in considering this and other questions of public policy, protection of Roe v. Wade should be the determining factor that guides our decision making. Should we reject any public policy option, and public good, solely because it may present a threat (however tenuous) to Roe v. Wade?
Legislation to ban partial birth abortion was overwhelmingly supported by the American people and enacted into law in thirty states. Nevertheless, abortion advocates convinced a pro-abortion majority of the Supreme Court that such a ban, on one very specific and very gruesome procedure, must not be allowed as it would threaten Roe. So the Court ruled that Roe requires that abortionists be allowed to partially deliver children before killing them.
Realizing that partial-birth abortion had brought the nation to the brink of legal infanticide, Congress proposed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. It simply says that a fully born infant who survives an abortion attempt is to be given the same care as any other fully born human infant. The National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL) characterized this bill as "another anti-choice assault" on "the basic tenets of Roe v. Wade." But of course! Reason enough to kill this bill. So now our law must hold, in the name of protecting Roe, that a whole class of fully born human beings can be left to die. Just providing basic care for these children might somehow undermine Roe, and we mustn't have that, even at the cost of their lives and our own humanity.
Congress also proposed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which, for the first time in federal law, recognized the unborn child as the second victim in a violent assault against the mother. In granting this recognition, the bill also gave women the right to seek justice for criminal assaults that result in the injury or death of their unborn children.
Women who lost their children to such assaults testified before Congress on the need to pass this law.
But abortion advocates dismissed their pleas. Even though the bill explicitly exempted abortion, abortion advocates opposed it as yet another assault on Roe. Should women have the right to pursue legal recourse against those who assault them and kill their unborn children? Of course not--not if granting women this right might in anyway threaten Roe!
And on and on. Even the Supreme Court's recent "medical marijuana" decision has been seen as a threat to Roe. One law professor characterized that decision, in which the Supreme Court held that under current federal law there was no medical exception to use marijuana, as "especially chilling for abortion rights" and one that provides "a virtual road map for eviscerating Roe v. Wade."
Never mind the convoluted reasoning that went into arriving at this conclusion. The point remains that Roe, for abortion advocates, has now become the legal alpha and omega for judging the worthiness of all public policy--even, apparently, our policy on controlled drugs!
Once upon a time, support for Roe v. Wade meant support for abortion. Of course, it still means that. But today it also means allowing certain forms of infanticide, limiting the rights of pregnant women who are victims of violent assault, and questioning whether some women should receive prenatal benefits.
So go ahead--try to enact policies to protect fully born infants, or provide prenatal care, or giving additional protection to pregnant women who are victims of assault, or even prevent marijuana abuse-- just make sure there is no conceivable way doing so will be a threat to Roe.
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