Bush signs fetal crime legislation.
Increasingly, I get the impression that a lot of liberals lean to the left just to have something to crow about. Take today's recent development, for instance. I had a little bit of exposure to this in one of my classes, which focused on issues in law and medicine. I can't say that I'm totally qualified to speak about it, but am confident to at least venture an opinion.
Bush signed the bill today that will make the murder of a pregnant woman and her fetus two crimes instead of one. The first, and most prominent reaction comes from the abortion-rights activists who immediately transmute this bill into sending abortion legislation back into the cave. Their contention is that this bill subversively criminalizes killing a fetus. In conclusion? X-rights activists are (once again) taking advantage of this opportunity to spear right-wing politicians.
First of all, in defense of abortion, when did anybody ever say abortion was condoning the murder of unborn children? Did any of these activists even read Roe v. Wade or its successor, Planned Parenthood v. Casey? Are they aware that the abortion procedure is only lawful if it is carried out within the first trimester of the mother's pregnancy? That the law simply drew a line by saying that the second and third trimesters of a pregnancy are when a fetus may possess the rights of a person? That it still is (and of course should be) a crime if you kill a person?
It's frustrating that such upstarts will ignore the substance and language of the actual bill and instead accuse this bill of being a part of some cloaked conservative agenda. The language of the bill specifically exempts abortion from being within the scope of the crime; essentially saying that it has no practical relationship to the policy that the bill is carrying out. After all, abortion is not founded on the right to kill babies, it is founded on the right to privacy and for a woman to have control over her body before the egg develops into a fetus.
In the spirit of protecting a human's right to choose, how would a bill that criminalizes murdering your born and unborn loved ones contradict the established legal premises of abortion? If somebody murdered a woman who had carried her baby to the second or third trimester, and you had seen the sonogram and picked out the baby's clothes, knew the baby's gender, would you then not say that it had been two murders instead of one?
Liberals should not intentionally frustrate the issues in order to further their own political agenda. In fact, it undermines the credibility of the left-wing movement if they are so trigger-happy with every waking move of conservative politicos.
I consider myself right down the middle -- not exactly conversative, not exactly liberal. I look at the issues as they are and try to apply them in the context of my own life, and of the lives in the people I know. The best way I can make a political decision is to hear varying perspectives. It would not be by attaching myself to one side and decrying it as propaganda without properly considering its substantive merit.
Clearly, Bush is not the sharpest tool in the shed. He has made some bumbling decisions, among a few inspirational words doled out to placate our adolescent nation. Certainly, his fantastic ideas for the Constitution are the most laughable yet. But this does not at all equate to his every move being laced with conservative arsenic. (Pun intended.) If liberals want to be known of as progressive and forward thinkers, they would benefit from applying a bit of logic before mobilizing the picket lines.
Or, it could just be me having sat on my ass all day at work and trying to think of everything else.
posted by Lucy Sloan @ 4:15 PM
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