Right to Redress
We’re now facing U.S. states with state constitutional amendments to guard access to abortion, petition drives to do so in more states, and states where pro-abortion sentiment is strong. One approach to legislation or referendums, originating from pro-life feminism, is to take a “right to redress” approach – legal recourse for women subjected to coerced, pressured, or unsafe abortions. David Reardon of the Elliott Institute has some preliminary survey data suggesting this garners a lot of support – especially among women who’ve had abortions.
More details were just put up on the Future Referendum Ideas page of our Peace and Life Referendums website.
Other ideas include a Positive Protection approach and State Tax Conscientious Objection.
What the Parents Suffered
This point is left out of much of the media discussion: the case in which the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that human embryos are human beings to be protected was brought by parents of embryos that had been accidentally but negligently destroyed. They didn’t lose mere property; they were suing for wrongful death.
Wrongful death of their children is what they suffered. The media keeps treating this as an attack on In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) without taking into account the rights of the parents who sued.
Alabama Decision
We quote from the decision (published by The New York Times):
All parties to these cases . . . agree that an unborn child is a genetically unique human being whose life begins at fertilization . . .
The question on which the parties disagree is whether there exists an unwritten exception to that rule for unborn children who are not physically located "in utero" . . .
One latent implication . . . is that, under the defendants' test, even a full-term infant or toddler conceived through IVF and gestated to term in an in vitro environment would not qualify as a "child" or "person," because such a child would both be (1) "unborn" (having never been delivered from a biological womb) and (2) not "in utero." And if such children were not legal "children" or "persons," then their lives would be unprotected by Alabama law.
Our Latest Blog Post
Because this newsletter is now biweekly, we announce two blog posts, which are still published roughly weekly:
Testimony Opposing the End-of-Life Options Act was presented to the Maryland legislature by Tom Taylor to oppose a bill providing for euthanasia in that U.S. state. This bill has been failing in the legislature many years now, but has come close, so there’s still a danger of it passing.
AND
Kate Cox and Stories of Trisomy 18. At the State of the Union speech by President Biden on March 7, Kate Cox will be an honored guest. We can therefore anticipate positive remarks about her abortion of a daughter with Trisomy 18. For the occasion, Sarah Terzo has written two posts challenging such remarks. This week’s is about the actual fate of children with Trisomy 18. Next week’s will cover the reality of what a D & E abortion does.
Quotation of the Week
Colman McCarthy
The Washington Post, April 11, 1992
The kinship between militarism and abortion is strongest in the common seductiveness of the rationalizations that both depend on. Gen. Schwarzkopf does not say he is pro-war. He is for peace through strength. Field-commander [NOW President Patricia] Ireland is not pro-abortion. She is for choice. Left out of the discussion is the calculated taking of life, as if those who advocate a right to an abortion or a right to wage war are exempt from an accountability of violence.