Abortion Distortions

Biden’s SOTU address advised the DNP’s  2024 Campaign cudgel, Abortion.

Even the Wall Street Journal celebrated with a page one photo of exuberant supporters and a headline proclaiming, “France Adds Right to Abortion to Constitution.”  As French president Macron has seen his popularity decline, he took a page from the American democrat playbook and pledged to enshrine abortion as an “irreversible right” in their constitution. This, a couple of days before an angry, if not slightly bewildered, Joe Biden made a show of chastising the Supreme Court Justices for overturning Rowe v Wade in a televised address and threatened them by suggesting the power of the female electorate will come back to bite them, vowing to once again enshrine abortion rights as the law of the land. What tasteless grandstanding from an impotent old man that didn’t belong in a State of the Union address, a performance that amounted to nothing more than a re-election speech chock full of lies and manipulation of the facts. He is supposed to be an elder statesman, not a shell of a man full of bravado and vitriol. And there you have his entire campaign in a nutshell:  abortion rights and Trump is a threat to democracy. Period. Full stop. But I digress. Back to the French, whose prime minister Gabriel Attal referenced the US as well, stating: “The freedom to have an abortion remains under threat; our rights are inherently threatened, inherently fragile. Talk to American women.”  Now, hold on a minute, Gabe. Freedom implies an unfettered ability to do whatever you want, and that’s not what the French have done here. There are restrictions in place much greater than most states in America currently allow. So, referencing America without a footnote describing individual states' rights is disingenuous. We have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but nowhere does there exist a right to kill the unborn. That is an allowance contrived by man not endowed unto us by the creator. So enough of that commandeering of language to make it seem that the righteous are being denied.  The United States is a constitutional Republic, and in our founding, the states were allowed to govern themselves within the framework of the Constitution. Thus, the decision to overturn Rowe was not an abortion ban. Rather, it corrected a flawed legal decision and turned the issue over to the states to enact their laws concerning abortion. Witness the labyrinth of gun laws that differ from state to state even though there exists an amendment to the constitution that should make that much easier to interpret. But no, despite having a concealed carry permit in Pennsylvania, the result will be an arrest for illegally possessing a firearm should the unlucky permit holder take the wrong exit and end up in New Jersey. Such is true for abortion laws as well. And pro-choice women in America continually show their arrogance by seeking access to abortion at any time during the pregnancy, right up to the moment of birth, a barbaric practice that flies in the face of both science and ethics. What difference would it be in development between aborting five minutes before birth versus five minutes after?  Are we not condoning infanticide? The “bundle of cells” argument put forth by the intellectually lazy is simply preposterous as these simpletons chant their bumper sticker slogans and blissfully ignore the facts. And this is supposed to be the party of science.  Only when it suits them. But the French may have gotten this right. Although abortion is now enshrined in their constitution, it is restricted to 14 weeks, a respectable compromise taking into account that studies show the fetus can feel pain at 20 weeks and that a vast majority of the public is most comfortable restricting the procedure to the first trimester. And that includes the US. Although the radical fringe exists on both ends of the spectrum from Ralph Northam’s callous suggestion that as a distressed newborn lies on the table, a discussion may be undertaken on whether to institute life-saving measures…..or not……..to the other end where the religious right believes in the sanctity of life at conception, a view that includes a freezer full of in vitro fertilized ovum, the fact remains that most Americans support abortion restriction at 14-16 weeks. The extremists on both sides will object,  but admittedly, one extreme involves infanticide, while the other is a belief in when life begins. To which extreme would you ethically want your margin of error? The only way forward is compromise. Listen to the majority and avoid the extremes. And with the world in turmoil, let’s not choose a president based on the abortion issue alone.  The Wall Street Journal article was, therefore, disappointing in that it leaned in on the constitutional right to abortion without emphasizing France’s moderation in restricting the procedure to 14 weeks. And that is something we should consider emulating here. The Republicans should support such compromise and remove abortion as a self-destructive campaign issue. The democrat's response will be telling. Will they agree with the majority of Americans and compromise, or will they continue to support the most radical fringe of their party and keep the issue alive as a partisan campaign cudgel?