An article in USA Today July 23 entitled, "Abortion fight is 'enduring divide,'" began like this:

    During confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK, asked whether she believed court rulings on abortion had ended the national controversy.

    In a departure from the oblique answers that marked the hearings, Sotomayor paused, then answered bluntly: "No."

    The incendiary debate over abortion rights endures and can be jarring, as when abortion opponents interrupted at several points the Senate Judiciary Committee session with Sotomayor. The controversy has boiled up in other ways in the days since then.

    Thursday, a day after President Obama's prime-time pitch for an overhaul of the health care system, Americans United for Life and other abortion opponents accelerated their resistance to Democratic proposals. A day earlier, abortion rights supporters presented members of Congress with a report, tied to the killing of KS abortion doctor George Tiller in May, documenting harassment, threats and physical assaults on physicians who provide abortions.

    Nearly 4 decades after the Supreme Court made abortion legal nationwide and nearly 2 decades after the justices reaffirmed the right, the political saliency of abortion persists.

    "The enduring divide represents the reality that there are fundamental religious differences on the issue of abortion that do not exist on, say, campaign finance or even on health care," says Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which issued the report Wednesday about threats at clinics that provide abortions....

To relegate the debate over abortion as one of "religious differences" is to say it is esoteric and unsolvable.

But this is a legal debate, a constitutional debate, a scientific debate, as Northup full knows unless she is totally ignorant, which I don't think she is.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Harry Blackmun, when writing for the majority in the Roe v. Wade decision, wrote this:

    The appellee... argue that the fetus is a "person" within the language and meaning of the 14th Amendment.... If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment.

35 years ago one could not watch human fertilization under a microscope or view early preborn life with 3D and 4D ultrasound. Were personhood to be an issue before the US Supreme Court today, as Blackmun stated, the other side's argument would "collapse."

I'm quite certain Northrup knows all this and is just jive talking. I spotlight this so pro-lifers can stop pro-aborts in their tracks when the attempt this deflection.

[HT: proofreader Laura Loo; attribution for photo of pro-lifers and pro-aborts protesting outside the Sotomayor hearings: USA Today]

Source: JillStanek.com
Publish Date: July 24, 2009
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The IFRL is the largest grassroots pro-life organization in Illinois. A non-profit organization, that serves as the state coordinating body for local pro-life chapters representing thousands of Illinois citizens working to restore respect for all human life in our society. The IFRL is composed of people of different political persuasions, various faiths and diverse economic, social and ethnic backgrounds. Since 1973 the Illinois Federation for Right to Life has been working to end abortion and restore legal protection to those members of the human family who are threatened by abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. Diverse though we are, we hold one common belief - that every human being has an inalienable right to life that is precious and must be protected. IFRL is dedicated to restoring the right to life to the unborn, and protection for the disabled and the elderly.   Click here to learn more about the IFRL.