Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Abortion Culture's Freedom to Kill

Ross Douthat's column today on the culture wars compares variations in Democratic group support on questions of gay rights and abortion. He suggests that liberals, especially those under 35, are particularly firm in their opposition to abortion rights. This group conceives of the sanctity to life within the divine context of the inalienable rights as set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Douthat notes that this younger constituency is skeptical of the far-left judicial activism found in such legal inventions as "penubras" and "emanations": "This helps explain why Americans under 35, while more sympathetic to gay marriage than their parents, also tend to be slightly more anti-abortion."

Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue with Douthat. He first cites five year-old survey data - yep, that old! - to indicate patterns of public support for a court nominee committed to upholding Roe v. Wade. Recall, in contrast, the recent Pew survey that found just 46 percent of Americans "supporting legal abortion," and hence logically, Roe v. Wade. I know it's only a blog post, but geez, that's really bad work, unscholarly even.

Also,
Lemieux is aghast with Douthat's implication that there's been "no rollback of Roe's near-absolute guarantee of abortion rights," exclaiming: this is "frankly absurd"! But it's his conclusion itself that's particularly telling of the deathwish abortion extremism on the Democratic-left:

... perhaps some day he'll explain why there's some moral significance to pre-viability abortions that occur during the second as opposed to first trimester, but I'm not holding my breath.
Actually, this notion of "pre-viability's a canard.

The trimester system has long been attacked as an arbritrary, judically-imposed regulatory scheme enabling leftist hostility to life. I mean really, what is viability? Is a fully healthy newborn outside the womb viable? Life begins the moment of fertilization. Support for abortion by Democratic-leftists from President Obama on down is pure barbarity.

Douthat's right: Leftists don't care about freedom. Or, if they do, it's freedom to kill, including killing human infants irrespective of stages of gestational development.

8 comments:

Mark30339 said...

The Alinsky, Obama, Castro, Chavez utopia: Freedom to snuff out inconvenient pregnancies, to cut off annoying seniors who take health care dollars, to intimidate contrary speech and to confiscate property of achievers. The left eyes can see a constitutional penumbra authorizing this somewhere.

R. Stanton Scott said...

So Lemieux' survey is too old, but Douthat's 2003 NYT article isn't?

AmPowerBlog said...

Take it up with Douthat, R.S. Scott. I don't cite Douthat's data at my post, so again you're criticizing things I've not even mentioned. Lemieux's is too old - "it is what it is" - and he's also not too smart, like yourself ...

Dave said...

Human life is cheap these days.

And once Obamacare becomes law, it will become cheaper still, as not only will the innocent unborn continue to be slaughtered, but the elderly and infirm, and any others deemed to be "too expensive" too keep around, based on the opinions of government-schooled, affirmative-action government employees.

After all, we all know how inconvenient the elderly can be.

Old Joe Mengele would have loved to have come of age during these insane times, given the advances in the technology of murder since he was chased away from the railways of NAZI Germany, a place the liberals have apparently decided to revive in earnest.

-Dave

Harrison said...

I read today that in Sweden it is legal to abort your baby based on its sex.

dave in boca said...

After all, we all know how inconvenient the elderly can be.... Old Joe Mengele would have loved to have come of age during these insane times,...Reading Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism recently, I had the same idea that Dave has in his comment...

Abortion/Infanticide leads to Euthanasia of the Old, Unwanted, Powerless, "Different" and finally to ethnic, gender, and other forms of "cleansing" that lead to the Endlosung Mengele and Stalin and other tyrants of the right and left are aiming for.

The left in the USA is becoming increasingly intolerant of dissent and ignorant of or contemptuous of the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights.

R. Stanton Scott said...

Man, you are a piece of work.

Stock Homes said...
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