Molon Labe! (59 page)

The most shocking thing about partial birth abortions is that, according to a leading practitioner, 80% of them are purely
elective
and not needed to save the mothers' life or health. Because of the late stage of pregnancy, she has
already
accepted the risk of carrying to term or near-term and going through delivery, so the argument of health risks is inherently disingenuous. In fact, to perform a partial-birth abortion, the birthing is already in full swing and must be stopped to commit the abortion. This is where
Roe v. Wade
has brought us. A "casual brutality born of nihilism" as Robert Bork described in
Slouching Towards Gomorrah
.

Even the original plaintiff in that case has changed her mind. Elizabeth Campbell is now pro-life.

Aren't you overstating the alleged danger of abortion?

I doubt it. In a superb essay
¹
Jeff Snyder observed that abortion on demand is emblematic of our culture's facility in
not seeing persons
. American Indians were not persons, nor Japanese-Americans during WWII, nor Iraqis, nor unborn children. The goal of the totalitarian State is to
take
, for any reason, simply because the State desires it. The purpose of abortion rights is to
take
the life of a mother's unborn baby, for any reason, simply because she desires it. All the abortion case law about reasons for "health" is hollow legal formalism given that any normal pregnancy involves
some
risk to the mother's health. Being able to terminate the life of one's child is the ultimate in parental power, and the lowest form of irresponsibility.

Snyder made the brilliant point that abortion is the perfect analogue of the ideal relation sought between the state and its subjects (who have happily assented to a role of infantile dependency), and thus abortion rights have logically become
the
litmus test for government leadership.

That is utterly harrowing to contemplate. Pro-choice Libertarians really need to mull that over.

Still, you must admit the entrenched political support for abortion.

Yes, and to me that entrenched —no,
rabid
— support is very curious. Senate confirmation hearings cannot hold their bladder for more than nine seconds before they begin prying from the nominee his position on
Roe v. Wade
. Every other consideration is secondary. A Democratic presidential candidate will get the longest and most earnest applause on any issue by promising to protect abortion on demand. I noticed this back in 2000 watching Al Gore's speeches.

Why
is that? Abortion rights have nothing to do with the economy, or foreign policy, or the environment, or education, or national defense. Why is this puny issue so utterly determinative of political office? Because a politician who has no qualms about allowing mothers to murder their unborn babies simply for convenience's sake will not be queasy about orchestrating, for State purposes, the deaths of other "non-persons," foreign or domestic. Support abortion on demand, especially partial-birth abortions, and
no
killing is unconscionable or too grisly. Political committal to
Roe v. Wade
is sort of like the secret handshake for the — lub of Genocide.

My point is this: we are being conditioned to accept increasingly barbaric practices. It's the conditioning part of all this that deeply concerns me. Nazi Germany went through the same process, whereby extermination of the Jews from 1943-on was made possible by accepting their sterilization in 1933. Very few Germans in 1933 would have agreed with outright genocide. Similarly, Gloria Steinem herself may have been shocked in 1973 with partial birth abortions. Germany, the land of Bach and Schiller, reached genocide in just 10 years down the Nazi path. Forty years of
Roe v. Wade
has gotten us flirting with genocide ourselves.

Genocide? That's a very strong claim.

There was a "philosopher" from Princeton by the name of Peter Singer. He and his fellow bioethnicists declared that a "person" in the legal sense is a human being capable of "sustained consciousness." Meaning, babies, coma victims, and the senile are not "persons" and have no rights. They can be killed. Singer said that you should have up to
one year
to kill your baby. He originally quoted 28 days, but then upped it to a year. As monstrous as this is, such an opinion is a predictable extrapolation from the non-person argument of unborn babies. The philosophical trail of abortion leads to infanticide — just as prolifers warned in the 1970s.

Taking Singer even further, why limit personhood to merely "sustained consciousness"? Why not define personhood as "sustained self-support"? That way we could kill off any children and poverty-prone adults we wished. This is the next logical step from Singer, and it's already being seriously discussed in academic journals.

Euthanasia will be next. Hillary Clinton's Health Reform Task Force made the chilling observation back in 1993 that most of a person's health care costs are incurred in the last six months of life. You can almost hear the future licking of chops over the power to decide which of the elderly are "too costly to maintain" and whose life is "not worth living." Over half of Americans are over sixty. They might beware a
Logan's Run
society on the horizon.

Through legal positivism, people can actually cease to be persons. Attempting to redefine what it means to be a human being is inherently
very
dangerous. Personhood arguments based on sentience or self-support will lead to unexpected and shocking conclusions.

Are there any historical examples of that?

You bet. Nazi Germany's sterilization program came from the United States, by the Germans' own admission. Indiana had been sterilizing "mental defectives" since 1907. By 1934, seventeen states including California had coercive sterilization laws. The eugenics movement was becoming American public policy. The Supreme Court upheld forced sterilizations with Oliver Wendell Holmes decreeing that
"three generations of imbeciles is enough."
A major proponent of all this from 1932-on was Margaret Sanger, an ardent eugenicist who later founded Planned Parenthood. They sort of skipped over this in her website bio. Read her
Birth Control Review
for all sorts of interesting ideas and plans — stuff that sounds like transcripts from the Nazi Wannsee Conference of 1942 where they concocted the Final Solution.

Look, the reason why I am morally opposed to abortion as a form of purely elective birth control is that any postconception demarcation of personhood is artificial. A 3-month old fetus, 6-month old fetus, partial-birth, before the umbilical cord is cut, or a 12 month baby — it's all artificial, not to mention self-serving. It basically says,
"We can kill you until you grow old enough to physically defend yourself."
And, as any good libertarian will tell you, any law based on an artificial demarcation is inherently flawed, such as the drinking age or the voting age or the age of majority.

So, you really believe that life begins at conception?

Well it certainly can't begin any earlier! (laughs) And, no, it can't begin any later than fertilization. That's not an artificial demarcation, that's the most compelling scientific case. And if libertarians prize science as they claim to, then they should reevaluate their "pro-choice" position.

An ovum or spermatozoon is mere tissue, but a
fertilized
ovum is not. It has 46 human chromosomes, as do you and I. That amount of genetic information has been compared by Nobel Laureate biophysicist Dr. Francis Crick to about 1,000 volumes of the
Encyclopędia Britannica
. The fertilized egg is not an organ
of
the mother, but an
organism
within
its mother — a unique and developing human life with potential, not merely a "potential life."

But recriminalizing abortion would cause a return of the back-alley abortionists, killing thousands of women each year.

As Ann Coulter pointed out years ago in her book
Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right
, that supposition requires women to make good on their threat to: (1) refuse to use birth control, and (2) when they get pregnant, engage in unsafe and illegal abortion procedures — which is a stretch if you think about it. The argument basically threatens a two-tiered irresponsibility on the part of women — political extortion of the blackest hue.

Besides, you asked about my
moral
belief on abortion. I've explained it in some detail. I haven't yet explained what I would propose to
do
about it. Although I believe abortion, as convenient postcoital birth control, to be morally wrong, I would not seek to apply criminal penalties.

But why not, if abortion kills what you believe to be legal persons?

Because, if you think it through, the enforcement apparatus eventually required would be monstrous. For example, the feds would at some point have to test women for pregnancy at all border crossings, just in case they were leaving the country for an abortion. Also, any natural miscarriages —which happen fairly frequently — -would necessarily be investigated as possible homicides. That would be horrific.

Still, wouldn't that allow parties to abortions to go unpunished?

Unpunished criminally, but not unpunished morally.

I don't follow.

Well, I've never met a woman who had, for purely matters of convenience, an abortion who was fully at ease with herself over it. Similarly, I've never heard of an abortionist who seemed genuinely proud of it.

You may be overstating the case there.

Perhaps, but I doubt it. Me thinks the pro-choicers protest too much. It's like the quote
"Nobody speaks of God more than the atheist."
Deep down, I don't believe that even the very strident "pro-choice" activists are truly unconflicted about abortion. I've spoken to many such women who would not have a convenience-based abortion themselves.

We're not talking about a tumor here. Abortion kills a defenseless and developing human life with its own unique DNA, and there is no way around that. Not by calling it a "fetus" and not by calling it a "consciousless non-person." If an abortion must be performed, then how about for some truly compelling reason such as the mother's health, versus
"Damn it, I'm pregnant again!"

What I'm saying is that the moral consequence of abortion affects those involved, even if they would not admit it. The corresponding guilt and grief will have to suffice. In a way, the wrong likely contains its own punishment. As such, it obviates any requirement for criminalization and its attendant enforcement apparatus. For example, one high-profile abortionist in Texas killed herself years ago. I think that after performing several
thousand
abortions, the enormity of it all finally caught up with her.

What if there is no corresponding guilt and grief? What if there is no moral punishment?

Then the pro-choicers and abortionists have nothing to worry about, do they? And thus, nothing to protest about, either. But they
do
worry; they
do
protest. Even the blandest of pro-life statements made from moral, and not political grounds, send them into a frenzy. Why? Because even if abortion on demand is left alone politically, to criticize it on purely moral grounds strikes a nerve. As well it should. The nerve is there for a reason. However pro-choicers try with semantic arguments, the nerve refuses to be anesthetized.

Even though my politics do not threaten abortion, my moral views on abortion will be reviled just as if I had the unilateral power to overturn
Roe v. Wade
. I will not criminalize the issue. I will leave the consequences of abortion to those involved, but I will never gloss over the inherent evil. It is a needless, ugly stain on our nation.

So, abortion is not a political issue for you?

No. As a state governor, what could I
do
about it anyway? Executive and legislative politics will not overturn
Roe v. Wade
. It's been decided as a
judicial
matter, and democratic pressures are quite inert there. To even ask presidential and senatorial candidates their position is fairly pointless. Short of appointing pro-life Supreme Court Justices — which is highly unlikely these days — what could they do about it? To question
congressmen
on the matter is just idiotic, as the House does not confirm Supreme Court nominations.

In short, the whole matter has been overly politicized, and should have probably been left to the States. Such would have greatly depressurized the issue, and with 50 publics and 50 legislatures addressing it we might have discovered a truly wise solution.

But that would mean some states would have outlawed abortion.

Yes, but many would not. If a Phoenix woman had to fly to L.A. for an abortion, then the cost and inconvenience may encourage more responsibility in the future.

Look, I would not criminalize abortion, but I won't excuse it, either. Furthermore, there should not be a single penny of taxpayer money to fund abortions. For "pro-choice" advocates to insist on government funding I find ghastly. 93% of all abortions are publicly funded through Medicaid and other programs, and they're amazed that the pro-lifers are so upset? That their tax dollars are subsidizing elective murder? They've a right to be upset. Abortion must be defunded publicly. At once.

What about drugs, prostitution, and homosexuality? Wouldn't Christians outlaw what libertarians consider victimless crimes?