The Unborn Victims of Violence Act makes it a federal offense to murder an unborn baby. Yet, a woman’s right to choose to end a pregnancy...is currently protected by the Constitution.           

           When the first of President Bush’s two Supreme Court nominees, John Roberts, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, there were distant rumblings that the make-up of the court would change and become a first step in the reversal of Roe v Wade. The rhetoric was ramped up soon afterwards when Sam Alito, Bush’s second nominee, was sworn in earlier this year.

            Those rumblings may have been prescient.

            In just this last week alone, three events have occurred that may signal the beginning of the end this national blight that abortion is on our culture.  

            The first was the unanimous 8-0 Supreme Court decision ending 19 years of back and forth rulings equating peaceful protests outside abortion clinics with racketeering. Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) commented, “This is a major victory for the pro-life community and removes a cloud that has been hanging over pro-life demonstrators for years.” The ACLJ represented Operation Rescue, the defendant in one of the racketeering cases brought by the National Organization for Women. Catholic World News reported, “Justice Stephen Breyer, writing today's unanimous decision for the High Court, observed that pro-life demonstrations could not be seen as ‘a freestanding violence offense’ under the terms of the RICO law. He observed that Congress had made a special effort to address blockades at abortion clinics with the Freedom of Access of Clinic Entrances (FACE) law of 1994.” 

            The second took place in South Dakota where the legislature passed a law outlawing abortion in all forms with the sole exception of the life of the mother. Rape, incest and the “health” of the mother were not included as grounds for an abortion. The governor, Mike Rounds, signed the bill into law, saying, “In the history of the world, the true test of a civilization is how well people treat the most vulnerable and most helpless in their society. The sponsors and supporters of this bill believe that abortion is wrong because unborn children are the most vulnerable and most helpless persons in our society. I agree with them.” 

            The law is expected to be challenged in court by Planned Parenthood, which runs the state’s only abortion clinic. It is believed by some that this case will begin a series of court battles ultimately ending up in the Supreme Court where the constitutionality of Roe v Wade may once again take center stage.

            The third event is a Supreme Court review of the constitutionality of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act. This law was passed twice by Congress during Clinton’s presidency. He vetoed it both times. The third time Congress passed it, George W. Bush was in the White House and he signed it into law. It was immediately challenged as an assault on a woman’s right “to choose.”

            The details of a partial birth abortion are well documented. It is a hideous procedure, carried out in the absence of anesthesia. In layman’s terms, the baby is partially delivered, leaving the head in the birth canal. The doctor, using a pair of scissors, opens up a fissure at the base of the baby’s skull, exposing the brain. A stainless steel catheter is then inserted, sucking out the brains and collapsing the skull.

            Ponder this irony: The Unborn Victims of Violence Act makes it a federal offense to murder an unborn baby. Yet, a woman’s right to choose to end a pregnancy by the method described above is currently protected by the Constitution.

            When the Nation of Israel rejected the laws that had originally been given by God, the result was a rapid spiral downward into moral decay. It wasn’t long before Jewish society practiced and justified child sacrifice. The book of Second Kings records: “They caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire.”

            We are there now in our own history. In the clamor over our right to choose, we have lost the ability to discern right from wrong, leaving the most fundamental right; the right to life in the hands of nine Justices.

            May God grant them wisdom in the days ahead. n

Gregory J. Rummo is a syndicated columnist.