ABORTION IS ILLEGAL

AgapePress
February 28, 2003
http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/2/282003rck.asp
Actually, Abortion is Already Illegal
By R. Cort Kirkwood

Finally, the pro-life movement triumphed over legal despotism. The U.S. Supreme Court declared that the Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, a federal law used to fight organized crime, does not prohibit pro-life protests at abortuaries. Organized crime means the Mafia, not Operation Rescue, but lower courts agreed with the pro-aborts that demonstrators were "racketeers." It was utter legal nonsense, of course, but so is 1973's Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion in all 50 states. Women, the court's sophists opined, have a "right" to murder the unborn. Ever since then, pro-lifers have failed to overturn the legal abomination in court, or by amendment to the U.S. Constitution, or by urging presidents to appoint judicial enemies of Roe to federal courts. Courts routinely strike down laws restricting abortion.

Yet we don't need laws regulating abortion, and we don't need a constitutional amendment. We don't need pro-life justices. Unenforced laws already forbid abortion.

State Laws Real pro-lifers believe life begins at conception and that abortion is first-degree murder; that is, the premeditated killing of a human being. If abortion is premeditated murder, then all 50 states already forbid it, for every state in the union forbids murder. Problem is, our courts have muddled the "legal definition" of human life to permit abortion, which is why they occur at a rate of some 3,000 per day.

Still, the question is why pro-lifers fight for laws, such as those requiring parental consent, which are intended to slow the killing. If they believe abortion is first-degree murder, then parental consent laws merely require a parent's permission for a minor to murder her child.

Likewise for "informed-consent" laws, which require doctors to explain a baby's gestational stage, and the potential dangers to the mother, before an abortion. The Supreme Court recently "approved" such a law in Indiana, termed one of the "most restrictive in the nation." In truth, the law "restricts" nothing; it does not abolish abortion or stop just one abortion. If the pro-lifers are right, that abortion is murder; the doctor is simply explaining the danger of murdering the child.

The Federal Constitution On the other hand, pro-lifers could hoist the liberals on their own legal petard. They could argue the liberal (and wrong) interpretation of the Constitution's 14th Amendment to end abortion. Perhaps some pro-life lawyer has tried it, but in any event many criminal defendants and civil plaintiffs have won cases by arguing that life, liberty, and property were taken without "due process," or that someone denied them "equal protection" of the law. Liberals have used the 14th to foist their unconstitutional agenda upon the American people. If human life beings at conception, a consistent interpretation of the 14th would forbid abortion everywhere. But again, why invoke it? If abortion is murder, the 50 states prohibit it.

Defining Life Pro-lifers must settle on a strategy to stop abortion, but that strategy does not turn on the tactic of piling new laws on top of existing laws. Pro-lifers must press for enforcing those laws. But only one thing would allow that, and only by undermining the Roe decision: the state must define life as beginning at conception. If a law is needed, that is it. The clinics would close, debate would end, protests would cease. Abortion would be recognized for what it is: murder in the first degree.

 R. Cort Kirkwood is a syndicated columnist and managing editor of the Daily News-Record in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He can be contacted at kirkwood@shentel.net.