Democrats Pledge Support For Wide Access To Abortion

by Mike Dorning - July 18th, 2007 - Chicago Tribune

The recent 5-4 Supreme Court decision upholding a federal ban on a late-term abortion procedure that opponents call "partial-birth abortion" has increased anxieties among reproductive-rights advocates over the future of constitutional protections for abortion rights. All three of the Democratic campaigns used the forum to signal their determination to appoint Supreme Court nominees who would uphold the 1973 Roe vs. Wade abortion ruling.

The problem that really exists is that no one in the democrat party upholds Roe v. Wade. They actually uphold "Danforth", the perversion of "Roe" that replaced it. As noted in an article by Gregg Easterbrook, "Roe did not grant an unqualified privilege: it held that a woman's claim to make her own medical choices is strong in the first trimester of pregnancy, moderate in the second, and weak in the third, at which point the state acquires a "compelling" interest in the protection of new life. The court's inclination to permit abortion in the first two trimesters and all but ban it in the third was both morally defensible and helpful to physicians and regulators, because the beginning of the third trimester can be objectively determined within a week or so. Whatever one thinks of the legal reasoning in Roe--the opinion is sometimes attacked even by liberal scholars for its shaky use of precedent--its attempts at rights-balancing are a model of conscientious jurisprudence."

What happened was that "Danforth" destroyed that balance for third trimester abortions. Danforth went so far as to prohibit states from drawing clear lines at the third trimester--that is, it forbade states from using the logic of Roe.

It is thus not honest to say that the democrats are defending Roe when they are in fact demanding the right to murder which resulted from Danforth.

It is one more example of the lies that underpin the debate on abortion. There are strong arguments that abortion is wrong in the second trimester, but third trimester abortions are simply murder.

The baby can usually survive outside the womb from week 24 on, the start of the third trimester. Brain waves of third trimester babies indicate it has all the sentience of full term babies. It feels pain and clearly seems to indicate it fears death. It is a baby in all but the legal sense. Roe as modified by Danform is more an indication of the outdated stupidity of our courts than any reasonable claim the baby in the womb should not have the same rigths as a full term baby.

Third trimester abortions are not defended by Roe, but by Danforth. Danforth is the ruling that is truly evil. Danforth is the ruling that allows for a thousand murders to be committed each year under the claim of "constitutional rights". I think it is equally evil for democrats to try and claim that they are merely defending Roe. What they are defending is the right to murder of Danforth and pretending they are defending Roe.