Abortion goes before the court

As I write this, a momentous court hearing is underway.

A federal appeals court will hear arguments Wednesday in a potentially groundbreaking case that — for the first time, according to attorneys — addresses the question of whether an abortion terminates a human being’s life.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit in St. Louis will consider a 2005 South Dakota law that requires abortionists to tell women that their abortion will terminate the life of a living human being.

The judges will hear Planned Parenthood’s claim that a “statute designed to protect the rights, interests and health of pregnant women violates the abortion doctors’ right of free speech,” said attorney Harold J. Cassidy, who is representing pro-life pregnancy help centers which have joined the state as defendants in the case.

“Planned Parenthood has argued that the harm to the rights of these pregnant women was outweighed by the alleged harm to the interests of the abortion doctors,” he said.

The 2005 modification to the informed consent law holds that an abortion ends “the life of a whole, separate, unique, living human being,” and that a mother-child relationship, which exists “during the entire period of gestation,” is terminated by an abortion.

The legislation requires doctors to inform women of this, in writing and in person two hours before an abortion, and also to disclose the medical risks of the procedure, including the possibility that it could lead to depression and an increased risk of suicidal thoughts.

A lawsuit brought by Planned Parenthood prompted a lower court to temporarily suspend the law.

The lower court said the legislation infringes doctors’ First Amendment rights by requiring them to promote the state’s ideology on an “unsettled medical, philosophical, theological, and scientific issue, that is, whether a fetus is a human being.”

I went through all this here. But as I said before…

The state of South Dakota did not determine when human life begins. It’s settled and always has been, not by decree or edict or finding…or “viewpoint”. The blastocyst, the earliest form of life of any animal, is of the species of that animal. Planned Parenthood and all the other abortion activists can argue incessantly — and they do — about the ‘personhood of the fetus.’ But you can’t change the natural fact that human life from its conception is of the species Homo sapiens.

It’s not religious, philosophical, theological, metaphysical or ideological. It’s a fact of life.

Furthermore, the CNSNews article linked here points out the argument that abortion activists don’t even belong in today’s court appeal.

The Family Research Council last month filed a friend-of-the-court brief, challenging the standing of Planned Parenthood, as abortion providers, to challenge the law. It argued that “the interests of abortionists do not align with those of women.”

“Someone who has a financial stake in performing abortions should not be allowed to represent women in a case challenging women’s right-to-know laws,” said Jordan Lorence, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, which filed the brief on behalf of the FRC.

“Because an abortionist may earn a profit from women who abort their pre-born children, Planned Parenthood should be disqualified from representing the interests of women,” he said.

Planned Parenthood claims to staunchly defend a woman’s right to choose, but they are fiercely fighting to prevent a woman’s right to know. Try to engage them on that one, with the ground rule of intellectual honesty.