A couple of days ago, it was reported that a newborn baby was found alive in a
Trash Can in a Phoenix middle school. The healthy baby boy’s mother was a 14-year old girl who delivered the baby in the bathroom of an administration building and—being young, confused, and frightened—abandoned the baby in a panic. Reports on the event stated that “due to the abandonment of the baby in a life threatening situation, investigators will do a possible child abuse report and submit it to the Maricopa County Attorney's Office for review.”
This is not the first time we’ve heard of this sort of thing.
A
quick search finds multiple recent tales of women trashing their newborn babies, often resulting in the death of the child. Here’s
one in which the baby survived, and here’s
another, the baby was also found in time and survived. These mothers were not scared teens. They were both 24 years old. Tragically, in
another story, a woman attending her high-school prom left the dance, delivered her baby in a bathroom, and then trashed it. This time the baby died, yet at the time the article was, the mother was not charged.
So in the middle of the election cycle, a young woman named Gianna Jessen, who is a member of a 527 group called BornAliveTruth.org, is challenging Obama to define
when a baby has rights and to support legislation that would protect babies born alive after abortion attempts.
Her story is very unusual. She started her life as abortion that failed. Her mother tried to abort her, but she was born alive. Luckily for her, the abortionist was not in the clinic when she was born, because if he had been, he would have terminated her life by smothering her, or letting her die of exposure—and this would have been legal under current law, because the aborted fetus has no rights. She was fortunate. The attending nurse called an ambulance and she received treatment and obviously survived.
A transcript of the advertisement her group is running reads:
“Can you imagine not giving babies their basic human rights, no matter how they
entered our world? My name is Gianna Jessen, born 31 years ago after a failed
abortion. I’m a survivor, as are many others…but if Barack Obama had his way, I
wouldn’t be here. Four times, Barack Obama voted to oppose a law to protect
babies left to die after a failed abortion. Senator Obama, please support born
alive infant protections. I’m living proof these babies have a right to live.”
These issues may seem unrelated to the current election cycle, but they are not. It is well recognized that the next president will very likely appoint one or more Supreme Court justices, which is why McCain’s selection of a very pro-Life VP (Palin) energized the conservative base: it was confirmation that he was committed to selecting strict ‘constitutionalist’ judges that very well might overturn Roe v. Wade.
McCain was asked about this when
he was a guest on the ABC program, The View. In a brief but telling exchange between McCain and the women co-hosts, his response about wanting to appoint constitutionalist judges was
challenged by Whoopi Goldberg:
Goldberg: “I don’t want to misinterpret what you are saying; did you say you
want strict constitutionalists?”
McCain: “I want people who interpret
the
constitution the way our founding fathers intended them to do.”
Goldberg: “Do
I have to worry about being returned to slavery because
certain things in the
constitution had to be changed?”
Goldberg: “That’s
an excellent point,
Whoopi, {loud audience applause for Goldberg} I thank
you.
Goldberg: "I got scared!"
Co-host Joy Behar: “She saw herself back on the plantation! Don’t worry, honey, we’ll take care of you, us white folk we’ll take care of you!” Co-host Sherri Shepherd hid her head in apparent embarrassment.
Did anyone else notice the obviously patronistic statement made by the liberal Behar?! Thank goodness that nice white liberal is going to "take care" of the poor little black girl! But no comments have ever been uttered: Liberals get away with racist remarks all the time! and isn't this the CORE of the liberal Democrat belief? "Don't worry, we good Whites are gonna take care of you poor, downtrodden Blacks!"
This discussion takes us away from the topic of abortion, but cuts to the heart of the real matter: human rights. And it also highlights a common misconception held by many Blacks and perpetuated by either ignorant or devious Black leaders (such as Reverend Wright and Barack Obama), that the Founding Fathers were racists who institutionalized and perpetuated slavery when they wrote the constitution.
This distortion of history is convenient to leaders who want Blacks to see themselves as victims and want them to hate and oppose their government. It also becomes evident from the patronistic attitudes of liberals--like Sherri Behar--who subconciously believe that Blacks are not capable of taking care of themselves and need "us whites" to "take care of you".
When I was a teacher in an inner-urban, mostly Black school in Florida, one of my students was shocked to find out that there had been Black slaves throughout the continent. She said: “I thought it was white Americans that invented slavery!” And when I tried to disabuse her of this misconception, she furiously accused me of trying to “re-write history”.
But this could not be further from the truth. In fact, the Founding Father’s opposition to Slavery was one of the main reasons for desiring a separation from Great Britain.
“The historical fact is that slavery was not the product of, nor was it an evil introduced by the Founders; slavery was introduced in America nearly two centuries before the Founders. In fact, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay noted that there had been few serious efforts to dismantle the institution of slavery prior to the Founding Fathers. …one of the reasons given by Thomas Jefferson for the separation from Great Britain was a desire to rid America of the evil of slavery imposed on them by the British.”
Thomas Jefferson was not the only Founder who opposed slavery.
“In 1774, Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush founded America's first
antislavery society; John Jay was president of a similar society in New York.
When Constitution signer William Livingston heard of the New York society, he,
as Governor of New Jersey, wrote them, offering: ‘I would most ardently wish to
become a member of it [the society in New York] and... I can safely promise them
that neither my tongue, nor my pen, nor purse shall be wanting to promote the
abolition of what to me appears so inconsistent with humanity and
Christianity... May the great and the equal Father of the human race, who has
expressly declared His abhorrence of oppression, and that He is no respecter of persons, succeed a design so laudably calculated to undo the heavy burdens, to
let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke.’”
The Founders struggled to end slavery and had already begun almost immediately after declaring independence from Britain, and years before the ratification of the constitution on December 7, 1787. Pennsylvania and Massachusetts abolished slavery seven years before the constitution was ratified (1780), and just four years later, Connecticut and Rhode Island abolished slavery. Slavery was abolished in New Hampshire in 1792 and in Vermont in 1793. New York took six more years (1799) and New Jersey abolished it 1804—that’s fifty seven years before the start of the civil war.
It could be said that American fought not one but two wars in order to free the slaves. The first was to separate from Britain, which had imposed slavery upon the colonies, and about which George Washington commented: “I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it [slavery].” Eighty five years later, Americans fought the Civil War to finish the job and free the slaves in the South.
Given this historical context, it must be clear to any reasonable historian that the majority of the Founders—and probably the majority of the average citizens—abhorred slavery and had purposely worded the Bill of Rights (“All men are created equal”) and Constitution in such a way as to facilitate the inevitable end of slavery.
Although it is easy to say that Jefferson and others who owned slaves were “hypocrites”, one should keep in mind that slavery was the economic model in existence for centuries before the industrial revolution, and although it was recognized as an abhorrent system, there was no viable solution available until the 19th century. We citizens today find ourselves in a similar moral predicament: we know that our addiction to fossil fuels, internal combustion engines, and consumerist economic models cause damage to the environment, and we all recognize that we should try to find an alternative, but at this time, no practical alternative is available. So while people like Obama and Gore run around lecturing us how we need to get rid of our gas guzzling vehicles, they continue to drive cars and fly in private jets. Some day we will surely solve this problem, but should historians look back at the proponents of alternative energy and call them hypocrites for not having the solution sooner?
The second modern conundrum that parallels the issue of slavery is that of abortion. And it is this issue—and particularly the story of Gianna Jessen—that ties all the previous themes together.
Because, while it is clearly established principal that all humans have equal human rights, proponents of Abortion—cleverly marketed as “Choice”—struggle to deny the human fetus with the status of “human being”. It is this monstrously contradictory opinion that creates our contemporary moral dilemma. After all, current dogma holds that it is a woman’s choice—which is a “private” matter protected by the constitutional right to privacy—to abort a fetus in her body. As long as the fetus is not “human”, as long as it is considered nothing more than “cells”, then it cannot legally be considered “murder” to kill those cells.
The Jessen story destroys this argument. The late-term abortion forced the baby to be born, and the mercy of one nurse saved her life. If the abortionist had finished the job, suffocating the infant, it would have been perfectly legal. Now that she is an adult, she is capable of asking the question that other aborted fetuses cannot: what rights did I have? At what point did I get rights? And who is the inventor of this moral calculus that determines when an infant is human and when it’s “just cells”?
By contrast, if it was alright to kill a healthy baby in an abortion clinic, why is it wrong for a young woman to throw a baby in the trash?
In this, I disagree with conservative talk show hosts who blasted Whoopi Goldberg’s question. It was not foolish or stupid. It was an opportunity squandered by McCain, who—in his desire to pander to women and minorities—did not recognize that he had just been offered a perfect opportunity to differentiate the Republican party from the Democratic party.
His response to Goldberg should have been forceful and unequivocal. The Republican Party wants to select Supreme Court justices that are constitutionalists—that is, judges who will apply the law according to the strictest intent of the Founders. Those Founders abhorred slavery, they clearly recognized the injustice that was wrought by governments and laws that dehumanized people of color and allowed for their inhumane treatment. Those same Founders fought the very first battles toward Black Liberation. They laid the road to liberty and sanctified it with the blood of national sacrifice, and provided the roadmap to liberty in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution. It was the Republican Party that then waged war to finally free the slaves and secure forever the human rights for all people in the United States. It is the Republican Party that has made it their doctrine to spread those rights around the world. And it is the Republican Party that believes that the sanctity of human life cannot be violated—not even in the womb. The Republicans can look Gianna Jessen in the eye and say: in the more perfect union we wish to form, you would have always had the same rights to life and the pursuit of liberty as all the rest of us.
Whoopi, if you really believe in human rights, why can’t you open your heart to giving those rights to the most helpless among us?
Whoopi, it is time that you and people like you see through the lies, and make the same commitment that the Founders made over two hundred years ago, when Supreme Court Justice John Jay wrote:
"neither my tongue, nor my pen, nor purse shall be wanting to promote the
abolition of what to me appears so inconsistent with humanity and Christianity"
Or are your words just hollow?
