Texas Heralds the Inevitable Abolition of Late-Term Abortion

This article first appeared at Red Pill Report, found here.

Abortion advocates and their various political arms like Planned Parenthood sent troops from all around the country to the frontlines in Austin, Texas, where Wendy Davis rallied the pro-abortion base to once again defend their sacred institution. 

To say the least, the protesters didn’t exactly paint the pro-abortion crowd in an appealing light.  Honestly, just how many Americans are you endearing to your cause by having young girls hold signs saying “If I wanted the government in my womb, I’d f*** a Senator,” or chanting “Hail Satan!” over a group of people singing Amazing Grace?  Even the UK Church of Satan took offense to the latter, denouncing invocations of their Dark Lord’s name for such “diabolical” purposes. 

These protesters did, however, serve the intended purpose-- for a brief moment.

Their attendance outwardly presented widespread opposition to restrictive abortion laws for the news cameras, but more importantly, the spectacle deterred focus from what abortion advocates were actually arguing to preserve in Texas.  Keeping the argument vaguely about “choice” or “women’s rights” is a necessity, because the orchestrators of the pro-abortion agenda know what would happen if broad swathes of Americans choose to focus on what the debate is really about -- what to do with the life inside a mother’s womb at 20-weeks’ gestation and beyond. 

These pro-abortion advocates’ ethically inarguable position is that such a life can, and should be, legally ended on a mother’s whim.

Not-so-questionable humanity

At 20 weeks, a fetus can hardly be described as an inanimate lump of tissue.

“Ready for your big 20-week ultrasound?” asks writer Sarah Cohen in her piece for women’s website She Knows, titled “Say Hello to Baby.”  “Ultrasound technology has improved a lot since its advent,” she goes on.  “If Baby cooperates, you can see fingers, toes, a spine, and even a little face!  Also, you may be able to see the baby’s anatomy.”

In other words, the baby at 20-weeks’ gestation looks a lot like a human, right down to gender identity.  According to noted abortion champion Michelle Goldberg, this can be “problematic” for the pro-abortion cause because “once a fetus has gestated to five or six months, most people, whatever their politics, can see its inherent human value.”  And for some crazy reason, “most people, whatever their politics,” have an innate aversion to killing living things with “inherent human value.”

The problem, which she recognizes, is that the argument that this “human value” should be legally snuffed out by a woman’s “choice” offers pretty thin gruel for most Americans. 

“No pain? No problem!”

As the argument goes: “Fetuses don’t feel pain” at 20 weeks, and therefore the moral issue is overstated, because the fetus can’t feel its termination or the forceful extraction from its mother’s womb.

It’s important that this argument be understood in the proper context.  Admittedly, this argument has recently been a response to Republicans having cited studies, in the wake of the Gosnell case, showing that fetuses do feel pain at 22 weeks, which led to consideration of the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act in the House, for example.  Pro-abortion advocates suggest that these studies are false, and that fetuses don’t feel pain until later in pregnancy. 

Studies exist to suggest that both arguments could be scientifically correct. (Here and here, for example.)  But the more pressing question is, what is each argument’s end? 

The pro-life argument is that if fetuses at 20-weeks’ gestation may feel pain, it is morally reprehensible to subject them to such pain as would be involved in the abortion process.  (Morally reprehensible beyond stopping its heart and forcibly extracting it, that is.)  This is a sound argument, and indeed, it is understandably so in nearly any estimation. 

The pro-abortion argument, however, is that if a fetus cannot feel pain, it is worthy of legal termination if a woman so “chooses,” for whatever reason.  For this to be true, we would have to assume that feeling pain is the singular metric that signifies a life worthy of existence, which is a wholly false assertion by any reasonable estimation.  Sensory receptors required for touch and pain are no more required for a person to be deemed worthy of life than the sense of smell, taste, sight, or hearing.

And indeed, if elements of sensory perception are convincing metrics suggesting human life, fetuses at 20 weeks are hardly devoid of such elements. His or her brain is rapidly developing the nerve centers dedicated to the senses by this point, responding to a pronounced changes in lighting, the sounds in the environment, and even the taste of amniotic fluid.

Too few to matter

So we can determine that most Americans would recognize that babies at 20 weeks’ gestation are small humans -- if they were to focus on what, exactly, is inside a mother’s womb by that point of a pregnancy.  And we’ve established that whether or not a fetus feels pain should be rather inconsequential, unless you’re making an unreasonable rebuttal to a silence a reasonable argument.  Why, then, do abortion advocates argue that late-term abortions should be legal? 

They just don’t happen that often -- only 1.5% of abortions are late-term, abortion advocates often claim. 

It sounds so casual to say “only 1.5%,” but it is worth noting, again and again, that with over one million abortions per annum in America, this is more than 15,000 babies that will never exist on this Earth because abortionists brutally confiscated their bodies from a mother’s natural sanctuary.  Again, if it can be reasonably assumed that a fetus at 20 weeks has “inherent human value,” destroying that value is tantamount to murder.  And for context, consider that this small percentage alone is roughly on par with annual murder levels in America in recent years. 

This “1.5%” is hardly insignificant by practical measures.

The protections of Roe v. Wade

For years, Roe v. Wade has been thought to protect the institution of abortion, the legal refuge of its supporters.  But in an interesting twist of fate, Roe v. Wade now serves as protection for states like Texas in curtailing abortion.

Without question, in my opinion, Roe v. Wade was an example (if not the example) of unconstitutional judicial activism, which I argue in detail here, and my opinion aligns closely with that of Justice White who wrote the dissenting opinion: “The Court simply fashion[ed] and announce[d] a new Constitutional right for pregnant women.”   But the decision does leave considerable power with the states to do precisely what Texas is now doing in terms of late-term abortion.  After the first trimester, states can reasonably define a point of assumed “viability” and protect the “potential life” in the womb by “proscribing abortion,” so long as the proscription does not directly endanger the life of the mother.

Far too few Americans are aware of these limitations in Roe v. Wade, and the most glaringly ignorant are pro-abortion zealots. Whether or not the courts will decide to honor the ruling and precedent if any Texas’ legislation comes under judicial review, however, is yet to be seen.

An unwinnable argument

Late-term abortion advocates are losing, and will continue to lose this debate.  The ramparts from which they mount their moral and scientific defense of the practice are easily reduced to rubble in honest debate, which is why they typically avoid honest debate like the plague.  Any legal defense of a state ban on late-term abortion is equally untenable.  So they resort to their time-honored tactic of broadly invoking “choice” to justify late-term abortion, a tactic which Kate Pickert of Time magazine calls “a stance that seems tone-deaf to current reality.”

Late-term abortion lobbyists like Wendy Davis, with her theatrics and her circus troupe in tow, could offer only a temporary distraction from the truth about the unquestionably abhorrent nature of late-term abortion.  Technology and a persistent morality have allowed the terrible truth about late-term abortion to seep into our social conscience, and rightfully, millions of Americans are addressing it at the state level in efforts to end the practice.

Sideshows like the one in Austin, and other such desperate attempts to avert the inevitable, won't do anything to change that.  

William Sullivan can be followed on Twitter.

How Honest of a Cross-Section Is "All-American Muslim?"

Lowe's has now decided that they would pull their advertising from the show "All-American Muslim" on The Learning Channel. The Florida Family Association asked that sponsors pull their ads for the show. Why did Lowe's comply with the request, you ask? A Lowe's representative gave this reason:

The show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding many Islamic believers whose agenda poses a clear and present danger to liberties and traditional values that the majority of Americans cherish.

By making this statement, Michelle Goldberg says in The Daily Beast, it proves that Lowe's "agrees with the idea that Muslims shouldn't be depicted as anything other than terrorists." Now, most of her readers at this point are crying "Harumph!" and have set firmly in place the idea that Lowe's is a racist and hatemongering company. Such is the power of fanatacism.

Other readers, however, might be left to wonder how she is able to write so well when she clearly cannot read. Lowe's does not take issue with the fact that Muslims are portrayed as "ordinary folks." They state quite clearly that they disagree with the fact that the show profiles only those Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks while excluding more devout Muslims. A minor point, I guess, but Lowe's neither denied the existence of ordinary Muslims, nor did they say that the show should not include them. But hey, when your agenda is to stir the pot, why get hung up on truth?

Americans have reason to take issue with "All-American Muslim," and it's not because it portrays everyday, peaceful Muslims. As Robert Spencer clarifies:

In reality, All-American-Muslim purports to be fighting "Islamophobia." That is a claim that the show makes about itself in the beginning of the very first episode. Yet it then goes on to depict Muslims who by their own account aren't observant, and so not reading the texts and teachings that Islamic jihadists use to justify violence -- and so they're not the kind of people who would have given rise to any suspicion of Muslims in the first place. If All-American Muslim had said it was fighting "Islamophobia" and then shown pious, devout Muslims teaching other Muslims that the interpretation of Islam of al-Qaeda and other jihadists was all wrong, we might have had something useful. If they'd shown Muslims fighting against terror, it might have been inspiring.

And if they'd simply have left "Islamophobia" out of it and shown people from a Muslim background living their lives, it might have been an enjoyable show without pretending to deal with larger political and societal issues.

Of course, I disagree with Mr. Spencer that "it might have been an enjoyable show" without the underlying agenda to "fight Islamophobia." "Normal" people are not on reality television, because "normal" people are not fun to watch. Reality stars are crab-fisherman, alligator wranglers, epically dysfunctional housewives, and Snookis.

We all know that some Muslims are "ordinary folks." But they're not any more fun to watch that "ordinary" Christians or Jews. The producers of the show believe it will be watched by people ignorant, yet curious about Islam. The show seeks to give these viewers an incredibly biased and whitewashed impression by showing practioners of Islam that do not necessarily reflect the lifestyle and beliefs of a large number of American Muslims. And that's precisely why people take issue with the show- it dishonestly presents these "ordinary" Muslims as an honest cross-section of American Muslims.

And not only is the show not a an honest cross-section of American Muslims, it's not even an honest cross-section of Muslims in Michigan.

Let's try looking at this study, conducted by The Institute for Policy and Social Understanding, an Islamic advocacy group. In it, you will find an interesting trend. 81% of Muslims in Detroit, Michigan, are in favor of the application of Sharia law in Muslim lands. Yes- 81%.

Now, what does this tell you? Well, it shows that a lot of Muslims think Sharia law is a good thing. Now I will not discount the fact that there are a lot of Muslims, like those in this show, that are are less fundamentally observant of Islamic doctrine and probably don't know what the hell Sharia law is all about. But I guarantee you, that a lot of them are not only observant but devout, go to mosque regularly, and know what Sharia is all about and believe in Islamic hegemony. And Sharia is anything but "All-American."

All we're asking is that if you are going to claim to be showing a holistic picture of Muslims in America, be honest. If you really want people to "learn," do not dishonestly whitewash truth with fiction just to advance a PC agenda.

William Sullivan

UPDATE: Not all the characters depicted in "All-American Muslim" are everday, peaceful Muslims.  Even in The Learning Channel's attempt to whitewash the truth, some of it seeps out. Husham Alhusayni is depicted prevalently as the religious backbone of the families.  The problem?  He openly supports terrorism and the terrorist organization of Hezbollah.  No threat there, though, right?  Read more, written by former Palestinian terrorist Walid Shoebat and Ben Barrack, here.