EWTN's "The World Over" to analyze partial-birth abortion decision

By Michael Gaynor

WATCH!

Time: Friday, April 27, 2007, 8 P.M. EST

Network: EWTN (Eternal Word Television Network)

Program: "The World Over"

Host: EWTN News Director Raymond Arroyo

Topic: Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold the ban on partial-birth abortion

Guests: Robert Bork , former Supreme Court nominee, and Wendy Long, legal counsel at the Judicial Confirmation Network

On April 18, 2007, the United States Supreme Court , 5 to 4, rejected challenges to the constitutionality of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, passed by Congress and signed by President George W. Bush in 2003.

The Act prohibits a doctor from performing a partial birth abortion unless the pregnant woman's life is in danger.

In performing a partial-birth abortion (also know as intact dilation and evacuation), an abortionist dilates a mother's cervix, extracts the baby's body by the feet until all but the head has emerged, stabs scissors into the head, sucks out the baby's brains, collapses the baby's skull, and delivers the dead baby.

Even the dissenting opinion described this "medical procedure" as "brutal" (while insisting that it is not more brutal than nonintact dilation and evacuation).

President Bush welcomed the decision:

"I am pleased that the Supreme Court upheld a law that prohibits the abhorrent procedure of partial-birth abortion. Today's decision affirms that the Constitution does not stand in the way of the people's representatives enacting laws reflecting the compassion and humanity of America. The partial-birth abortion ban, which an overwhelming bipartisan majority in Congress passed and I signed into law, represents a commitment to building a culture of life in America.

"The Supreme Court's decision is an affirmation of the progress we have made over the past six years in protecting human dignity and upholding the sanctity of life. We will continue to work for the day when every child is welcomed in life and protected in law."

But others, including comedienne Rosie O'Donnell and University of Chicago Law Professor Geoffrey Stone, charged that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Anthony Kennedy and Samuel Alito, Catholics all, had violated so-called "separation of church and state" and imposed a personal religious belief upon America.

Professor Stone:

"What, then, explains this decision? Here is a painfully awkward observation: All five justices in the majority in Gonzales are Catholic. The four justices who are either Protestant or Jewish all voted in accord with settled precedent. It is mortifying to have to point this out. But it is too obvious, and too telling, to ignore. Ultimately, the five justices in the majority all fell back on a common argument to justify their position. There is, they say, a compelling moral reason for the result in Gonzales. Because the intact D & E seems to resemble infanticide it is 'immoral' and may be prohibited even without a clear statutory exception to protect the health of the woman.

"By making this judgment, these justices have failed to respect the fundamental difference between religious belief and morality. To be sure, this can be an elusive distinction, but in a society that values the separation of church and state, it is fundamental."

Judge Bork and Mrs. Long understand that the limited function of justice and judges is fundamental under the United States Constitution.

Mrs. Long's Judicial Confirmation Network puts it this way:

"We believe that the proper role of a judge or justice is to interpret the law and the Constitution — not make up the law and deprive [we] the people of the right to govern ourselves.

"We believe that a judge or a justice should not use the power of the court to impose his or her personal or political agenda on the people."

Mrs. Long deftly dismissed the ridiculous rants of frustrated pro-abortion advocates by focusing on what partial-birth abortion (aka intact dilation and extraction) involves: "Did anyone seriously think that the Constitution requires us to let abortionists vacuum the brains of late-term unborn children out of their skulls? What is remarkable is not the Court's holding today, but the fact that anyone would think such a barbaric procedure, opposed by overwhelming majorities of Americans, is something the Constitution puts off limits for the people to decide through their elected representatives."

In a July 26, 2005 Bench Memo posted at National Review Online, Mrs. Long explained that Catholics do not have a problem being faithful to both the United States Constitution and their religion and posed a still pertinent question as the title of her memo: "Are Senate Democrats Anti-Catholic Bigots?"

Mrs. Long:

"...Liberal pressure groups and Democratic senators...have long sought to impose a litmus test for federal judges, and especially Supreme Court justices. Men and women of Christian, particularly Catholic, faith need not apply.

"...

"Let's put aside the fact — and it is a fact — that no one can conjure up even a hypothetical scenario under which the United States Constitution contravenes the teaching of the Catholic Church. It has not happened yet in our country's history, and it's not going to happen in the future."

Mrs. Long even explained why: "[J]udges cannot make policy — pro-Catholic, anti-Catholic, or otherwise....Judges can't make the laws governing abortion, marriage, or anything else. All they can do is apply them. Accordingly, ...a Supreme Court justice's personal, political, or religious views cannot be used as the basis to decide a case."

The ones who are NOT faithful to the Constitution are the ones who twist it to suit their own agenda.

As Mrs. Long wrote:

"The religious inquisition...is really a smokescreen for the liberal litmus test about issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. Along with Senators Kennedy, Kerry, Schumer, and others, Senator Durbin treats judges like policymakers who wear black robes and are appointed for life. Like all liberals, they fundamentally misapprehend the role of the judge under our Constitution: to be a neutral umpire, applying the laws as written by the elected representatives of the people.

"Because liberals can't win popular support for their policy agenda — things like mandating abortion on demand for any reason through all nine months of pregnancy, forcing states to redefine marriage, and erasing God permanently and completely from the public square — they force it on people through the courts. And they are afraid that Justices who are people of religious faith can't be pressured into ruling from the bench in favor of their liberal policies."

The recent attacks on the Justices who voted to uphold the constitutionality of the federal partial-birth abortion ban are more pressure from frustrated judicial activists who fear that judicial activists coups will be undone.

The majority opinion in Gonzales is faithful to the Constitution as well as respectful of Congressional prerogatives , not an arbitrary imposition of Catholic teaching.

Roe v. Wade, which proclaimed a constitutional right to abortion, and Everson v. Board of Education, which read the First Amendment as "erect[ing] a wall between church and state" that "must be kept high and impregnable," are examples of judicial activist legislating from the bench that judicial activists fear (hopefully correctly) are in peril of being corrected.

© Michael Gaynor