Legal Q&A

 

Laws protecting newborns vs. laws allowing abortion:  a legal contradiction? 

It is a complete contradiction, both legally and morally, to protect newborns while failing to protect the unborn.  The same reasons which protect newborns should also protect the unborn.  Why?  Because the differences are not physically or morally significant.  Regardless of size, age, developmental stage, or location - there is no justification for killing a human being.  This is a logical conclusion, especially in cases of late-term abortions where the aborted child is biologically identical to the premature or newborn child.

 

Any civilized society is obligated to remove such legal contradictions, with the 'benefit of the doubt' given toward promoting life and safety rather than promoting death and extermination.  Even criminals in our courts are given the benefit of the doubt, where juries are told to acquit the accused if there is reasonable doubt.  Current pro-choice claims used against the unborn - that the unborn child is not worthy of protection because they don’t possess personhood, are not a sentient being, are not aware of their surroundings, etc... all remain unproven, yet are used in our courts to make and keep abortion legal.  Without any scientific proof for these pro-choice claims, shouldn’t the benefit of the doubt be given to protect human life?

 

Commenting on this contradiction between killing an unborn child while simultaneously saving a premature child - both of the same age - abortionist John Szenes said:  "You have to become a bit schizophrenic. In one room, you encourage the patient that the slight irregularity in the fetal heart is not important, that she is going to have a fine, healthy baby. Then, in the next room you assure another woman, on whom you just did a saline abortion, that it is a good thing that the heartbeat is already irregular....she has nothing to worry about, she will NOT have a live baby.”

 

"We know that its killing, but the state permits killing under certain circumstances"  (Dr. Neville Sender, abortionist)

 

Laws protecting the unborn vs. laws allowing abortion: a legal contradiction?

Fetal Homicide Law:  Laws legalizing abortion contradict our laws protecting newborns, premature children, and unborn children killed by violent acts against pregnant women (fetal homicide).    

 

Maternal Drug Abuse Laws:  Laws legalizing abortion contradict laws protecting unborn children from drug exposure (fetal/child abuse).     

 

Unborn children should and must be protected from any intentional act which might bring harm.  What kind of society would callously allow pregnant women to abuse drugs, while knowingly injuring the unborn child?  Or turn a blind eye to a man who intentionally causes a miscarriage by physically abusing a pregnant woman?  Astonishingly, some pro-choice advocates want to eliminate laws which hold adults, both women AND men, accountable for injuring an unborn child.  This is a very distorted sense of "rights".  Do adults really have a right to injure an unborn child with impunity – much less dismember and kill an unborn child? 

 

Why should an unwilling woman be forced to carry an unborn child for 9 months?

The question is improperly phrased and needs to be rephrased: "Does anyone have an unconditional right to a certain lifestyle?" In EVERY civilization known to mankind, the answer has always been "No". Our 'rights' have ALWAYS been governed by the effect on others - especially if harmful to others. This is why we have laws on driving, smoking, drinking alcohol, taking drugs, and the list goes on... Is it really an inconvenience to live and act in such a way as to preserve the safety of those around us? Are we really being "forced" to drive within the speed limits? Are we really being "forced" to avoid drinking while driving or "forced" to smoke in designated areas so others won't be harmed?  Or is using the word “forced” a matter of manipulative and political semantics?

 

Who has greater rights?  The unborn child or the pregnant woman?

It is not a question of who has greater rights overall but whether the right to live (the unborn) should supersede the right to not be pregnant (the woman). In the history of mankind, the right to life has been the most basic right of all and has superceded all other rights.   The role of law is always to give the more fundamental right the greater priority.  Using speed limits as an example, the right for someone to drive at high speed is superseded by the right for others to not be injured or killed.  One must "give up" their "freedom to speed” in order for others to live in safety.

 

The right to life must supersede all other "rights': the right to not be pregnant, to not be inconvenienced, to not have to care for a baby, etc...   Without this order - with the right to life at the very top - how can we justify the right of any child to live on, regardless of age?  If a parent decides they don't want their teenager anymore, what right to life would that teenager have? In fact, if any of our parents can decide to take our life away, where would society be? Without the most fundamental right to life, above all else, none of us are guaranteed to live to see another day.

 

Does current law allow abortions up to the point of birth and for any reason?

Yes, current law allows for abortions right up to the moment before birth - for ANY reason - such as emotional distress. In the landmark Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton cases - both decided on the same day in 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion must be permitted for any reason a woman chooses until the child becomes viable; after viability, an abortion must still be permitted if an abortion doctor deems the abortion necessary to protect a woman's "health" defined by the Court as "all factors--physical, EMOTIONAL, psychological, familial, and the woman's age--relevant to the well-being of the patient."

In this way the Court created a right to abort a child at any time, even past the point of viability, for "emotional" reasons.

 

Journalist David Savage reported this truth, stating the Supreme Court created an "absolute right to abortion".  He explained: "So long as doctors were willing to perform abortions—and clinics soon opened to do so—the court’s ruling said they could not be restricted from doing so, at least through the first six months of pregnancy." And during the final trimester: "It soon became clear that if a patient's 'emotional well-being' was reason enough to justify an abortion, then ANY abortion could be justified." (David G. Savage. "Roe Ruling: More than Its Author Intended," Los Angeles Times, September 14, 2005).

 

Marvin Oaky, author of Abortion Rites: A Social History of Abortion in America, explained: "[The Supreme] Court ... mandated abortion anywhere without restriction during the first three months of pregnancy, abortion in hospitals without restriction during the next three months, and abortion in hospitals following paperwork during the final three months."

 

Didn't making abortion legal also make it safer for women? 

No.  Before abortion was legalized in 1973, more than 90 percent of all illegal abortions were performed by doctors.  When abortion was illegal, abortionists had to be very careful to avoid infection, uterine lacerations and punctures, etc. since a visit to the emergency room by their patient was an invitation for a police investigation and possible arrest for the abortionist.  The consequences for performing a shoddy abortion, both legal and professional, were very high for the abortionist.  Not anymore. 

With legal abortion today, abortionists are free to operate on an assembly-line basis with much less concern for legal action by authorities and the patient.  When women get hurt today, the abortionist is legally covered under the same laws and insurance rules that covers the risks normally associated with any surgery.  Now, the faster they work, the more money they make.    

(Note:  The above answer was given in-part by former abortionist Dr. Beverly McMillan, the first female abortionist to open a clinic in Mississippi in 1975.   She ceased doing abortions in 1978 when she became convinced that the abortions she was performing were causing everyone involved far more harm than good.) 

According to the CDC, 439 deaths were reported from legal abortions from 1973 to 2006.  In addition, since other terms were allowed and continue to be used as the reported cause for death such as "hemorrhage" and "infection", the actually numbers are much higher. 

Furthermore, post-abortive women suffer from multiple physical disorders.  Infertility, miscarriages, and tubal pregnancies are just a few of the increased risks.  Psychological disorders include depression, post-traumatic stress syndrome, and suicide.

Abortion is never safe for an unborn child and it is often not safe for women. Women who abort increase their risk of breast cancer, pelvic infections which can lead to infertility, miscarriages & stillbirths in subsequent pregnancies, tubal pregnancies (600% increase since abortion was legalized according to the CDC - AP/NY Times 1/27/95), cervical in competency, and damage to the uterus which may necessitate a hysterectomy. Hundreds, if not thousands, of women have already died from so-called safe and legal abortions in the U.S. alone.

Outlawing abortion will mean countless women will die from back-alley abortions.
False.  Overturning Roe v. Wade won't make abortion illegal, but will simply change the venue of the law - from the Supreme Court and back to the people, to enact abortion policy through their own state representatives.  Why shouldn't such an important decision be in the hands of the people? 

As for the claim that countless women will die, it is impossible to calculate the number of maternal deaths from abortion before Roe v. Wade because they were not reported, so any claim regarding the number of maternal deaths from illegal abortions is pure speculation.

 

Is it true that prior to Roe vs. Wade in 1973, there were 5000 - 10,000 deaths per year from illegal abortions? 

Absolutely not.  Dr. Christopher Tietze, pro-choice statistics expert for Planned Parenthood and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), called the widely used claim of 5,000-10,000 deaths per year from illegal abortions (prior to Roe vs. Wade) as “unmitigated nonsense”, especially in light of the CDC's own statistic for 1972 as 39 total deaths in the U.S. from illegal abortions. 

 

Where did the false statistic of 5000 - 10,000 annual deaths from illegal abortions originate?

Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of NARAL Pro-Choice America, admitted to circulating those false numbers about back-alley abortion deaths.  He said, "How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? In NARAL we generally emphasized the drama of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always "5,000-10,000 deaths a year." I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose that others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the 'morality' of our revolution it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics? The overriding concern was to get the (anti-abortion) laws eliminated, and anything within reason that had to be done was permissible."  (Bernard Nathanson, M.D., "Aborting America", 1979).

 

Abortionist Dr. Bernard Nathanson also admitted:   "The manipulation of the media was crucial, but easy with clever public relations, especially a steady drumfire of press releases disclosing the dubious results of surveys and polls that were in effect self-fulfilling prophecies."   He continued,  "There were perhaps three hundred or so deaths from criminal abortions annually in the United States in the sixties, but NARAL in its press releases claimed to have data that supported a figure of five thousand."  (Bernard N. Nathanson, M.D.,  "The Hand of God",  1996).

 

According to the CDC, 439 deaths were reported from legal abortions from 1973 to 2006.   This is only a fraction of the actual number of deaths since doctors are given the freedom to report the cause of death in many other ways, e.g. "hemorrhage", "infection", or "cardiovascular disorder" rather than "induced abortion".  (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Abortion Surveillance--United States, 2007," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Surveillance Studies, 60, no. SS-01, 2011, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, "Pregnancy-Related Mortality Surveillance--United States, 1991-1999," Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Surveillance Studies 52, no. SS-02, 2003 and Isabelle L. Horon, "Underreporting of Maternal Deaths on Death Certificates and the Magnitude of the Problem of Maternal Mortality," American Journal of Public Health 95, March 2005: 478-82)

 

Also, other countries show that restricting abortion does not cause an increase in maternal deaths but a decrease. Despite its tight abortion restrictions, Ireland has the lowest maternal mortality rate in the world, according to a study by several agencies at the United Nations with a risk of death from maternal causes as 1 in 100,000.  Malta also has substantial abortion limitations and yet has among the lowest maternal death rates world-wide, lower than the United States.  The risk of death from maternal causes in Malta is 8 in 100,000 while in the United States it is 11 in 100,000.  In Cuba, where abortion is freely practiced, the rate of maternal death is 45 in 100,000.  (World Health Organization, "Maternal Mortality in 2005: Estimates Developed by WHO, UNFPA, and The World Bank")

 

Does outlawing abortion mean women will be forced to use coat hangers to perform abortions on themselves?

No.  For anyone to attempt an abortion on themselves is completely reckless and irresponsible - an action not protected by law.  To argue from this standpoint of those who might harm themselves is questionable at best. 

 

Speaking at the Republican Platform Committee in August 1968, Ronald Reagan stated: 

"We must reject the idea that every time a law is broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions."

Should we make crack-cocaine legal and available to the public in order to control its use and protect users from  overdoses?  Laws must never be put In place "to keep people from recklessly injuring themselves" while involved in a blatantly dangerous and foolish activity.  Nor should lawmakers be compelled, by reckless individuals, to put laws in place to avoid reckless self-harming behaviors by those individuals.  The responsibility to avoid harming oneself must ultimately lie with the individual and their own sanity - not the public or the state.    

  

The 'facts' in Roe v. Wade were based on fabrications and lies:
In June 1969, Norma L. McCorvey discovered she was pregnant with her third child.  Her friends advised her to falsely assert she had been gang-raped in order to obtain a legal abortion.  After this scheme failed, she attempted to obtain an illegal abortion, but found the unauthorized site had been closed down by authorities.  McCorvey eventually gave birth before the case was decided.  In 1970, her attorneys Linda Coffee and Sarah Weddington filed suit in a U.S. District Court in Texas on behalf of McCorvey under the alias 'Jane Roe'.  The defendant in the case was Dallas County District Attorney Henry Wade representing the State of Texas.  McCorvey later acknowledged she had lied about having been raped and eventually reversed her position on abortion and challenged the decision but lost her appeal.  
 

“I ran outside and finally, it dawned on me. "Norma," I said to myself, "They're right." I had worked with pregnant women for years. I had been through three pregnancies and deliveries myself. I should have known. Yet something in that poster made me lose my breath. I kept seeing the picture of that tiny, 10-week-old embryo, and I said to myself, that's a baby! It's as if blinders just fell off my eyes and I suddenly understood the truth--that's a baby! I felt "crushed" under the truth of this realization. I had to face up to the awful reality. Abortion wasn't about 'products of conception.' It wasn't about 'missed periods.' It was about children being killed in their mother's wombs. All those years I was wrong. Signing that affidavit, I was wrong. Working in an abortion clinic, I was wrong. No more of this first trimester, second trimester, third trimester stuff. Abortion--at any point--was wrong. It was so clear. Painfully clear.”  (Norma McCorvey (also known as Jane Roe) see full story about what happened to Jane Roe http://www.roenomore.org/normas_story/testimony.htm)