What Comes of Denying Humanity?

"I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled ..." -- Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick (1729)

Dr. Kermit Gosnell now has been convicted of murdering three infants who survived his botched attempts to abort (kill) them. So, why was that wrong?

Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, abortion has been legal in America. Since Roe, 55 million children have been aborted -- killed. The only conceivable moral justification for this, is that the fetus is not a human being. So, did it suddenly become one only after it was born so as to render Gosnell's killings murder?

There are three common methods of disposing of the bodies of first-trimester aborted babies:

-- Flushing them down a special garbage disposal

-- Disposing of them as biological waste in special plastic bags

-- Larger aborted babies frequently are sold for research purposes.

So, why not for food? I cannot but wonder what Johnathan Swift would have said about this. In 1729, Swift, after surveying the poverty in Ireland, penned his A Modest Proposal.

"It is a melancholy object to those who walk through this great town or travel in the country, when ... beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four or six children, all in rags and importuning every passenger for an alms. These mothers, instead of being able to work for their honest livelihood, are forced to employ all their time ... to beg sustenance for their helpless infants: who, as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country to fight for the Pretender in Spain."

Swift's bitterly satirical suggestion (which many benighted readers deemed to be a serious proposal!), was to fatten up the Irish babies until they were a year old, then sell the 100,000 who served no useful purpose to Irish landlords -- who already had stripped their Irish tenants of all other possession -- for dinner meat!

"The remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child ... seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled ... especially in winter."

A year ago, an op-ed appeared on this page that caused me to revisit Swift. "Roe v. Wade: This is what 40 years looks like to Planned Parenthood," was a panegyric extolling the Supreme Court's 1973 decision that highlighted the "benefits to women" in being allowed to "make their own personal medical decision."

It argued since Roe, rich women no longer have to travel to New York or Hawaii to have legal abortions. Poor women no longer have to seek abortions in back alleys. Women now are freer to pursue higher education, and obtain better jobs because they can prevent (end) unintended pregnancies. Indeed, each year publicly funded family-planning services prevent 1.94 million unintended pregnancies. (The piece did not specify whether those "unintended pregnancies" were prevented by contraception or abortion).

What I found reminiscent of Swift was its failure to mention how many unborn children are being aborted by Planned Parenthood either nationally or locally! I found this strange, because if abortion is indeed a positive good, why doesn't Planned Parenthood openly tell us the benefits accruing to the aborted fetus? Or at least, the salutary uses to which a fetus might be put?

The undeniable fact is that however much good abortion may do the mother, it is hardly a "blessing" for the aborted -- -murdered -- fetus (baby).

There is, of course, on the abortion issue, a divide between law and morality. Roe says a woman has a right to an abortion. At the same time half the country believes most abortion to be a moral wrong, a grave sin or even murder.

To me, the key issue is: What is the fetus/baby? Is it a human being? Or is it sub-human? Because it shares the DNA of both mother and father, I am forced to conclude it is a human being, separate and apart from its mother, and not just a part of its mother like a kidney or a boil, which only contain the mother's DNA. And because it has DNA of both parents, it cannot be said to be merely a part of its mother -- even while in the womb.

If I am wrong, I would rather face my God having erred on the side of the fetus.

The logical consequence of holding a fetus to be sub-human is that, if it could otherwise be useful to mankind, then treating it as medical waste might squander an otherwise useful resource. Swift might recommend the aborted fetus be canned and sent as food to the starving people of the Sudan. If it is less than human, what is the objection? Would that be any worse than grinding it up in a garbage disposal?

But, of course, if the fetus is indeed a person, such a Swift-ian proposal obviously would be utterly barbaric -- or perhaps "Gosnell-ian."


Posted Online:  May 17, 2013, 11:00 pm - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea

Right to Keep, Bear Arms Pre-existed Constitution

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary for the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." -- Second Amendment

I recently found myself verbally mugged in a parking lot by a liberal friend, incensed by the U.S. Supreme Court's holding in D.C. v Heller. He insisted five of the conservative members ignored "the normal rules of statutory construction," and in effect overruled the court's own prior precedents construing the Second Amendment.

He specifically objected to the Heller court's holding that "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed," was an individual right.

He argued the court utterly and erroneously ignored the first clause of the amendment which states "A well regulated Militia, [is] necessary for the security of a free State."

I tried to argue Heller was the most thorough and carefully written opinion the court had ever handed down construing the amendment, and that the case had its underpinnings not in "the normal rules of statutory construction" (a legal device of last resort), but rather the "historical experience" of the English people, including the American colonists, in 1789 and before.

Excerpts from Heller illustrate my points.

The court first noted the phrase "the right of the people" appears three times in the Bill of Rights. It is found in the First, Second and Fourth Amendments, with a similar phrase in the Ninth Amendment. In the court's words, "Nowhere else in the Constitution does a 'right' attributed to 'the people' refer to anything other than an individual right."

The court then looked at history: "the "militia" in colonial America consisted of a subset of 'the people' -- those who were male, able bodied and within a certain age range."

The court pointed out, "the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment's ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty."

The point being, if they were expected to bring the weapons "they possessed at home," they must have had a right to possess the weapons they were bringing.

It then said, "Reading the Second Amendment as protecting only the right to 'keep and bear Arms' in an organized militia therefore fits poorly with the operative clause's description of the holder of that right as 'the people.' We start therefore with a strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans."

The court moved from parsing words about the individual's right to keep and bear arms and looked at early state constitutions.

"Between 1789 and 1820, nine States adopted Second Amendment analogues. Four of them -- Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, and Missouri -- referred to the right of the people to 'bear arms in defence of themselves and the State.' Another three States -- Mississippi, Connecticut, and Alabama -- used the even more individualistic phrasing that each citizen has the 'right to bear arms in defence of himself and the State.

"It is clear from those formulations that 'bear arms' did not refer only to carrying a weapon in an organized military unit."

The court then looked to the historical background that preceded the Second Amendment, and one of its own early pronouncements.

"This meaning is strongly confirmed by the historical background of the Second Amendment. We look to this because it has always been widely understood that the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it 'shall not be infringed.' As we said in United States v. Cruikshank (1876), '[t]his is not a right granted by the Constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence. The Second amendment declares that it shall not be infringed.'"

The Court examined what the English people -- including American colonists -- believed their rights to be before our Constitution was adopted in 1789.

"By the time of the founding, the right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects. ... Blackstone, whose works, we have said, 'constituted the preeminent authority on English law for the founding generation,'... cited the arms provision of the [English] Bill of Rights as one of the fundamental rights of Englishmen. ..." It was, he said, 'the natural right of resistance and self-preservation,' ... and 'the right of having and using arms for self-preservation and defence,' ... Thus, the right secured in 1689 [in the English Bill of Rights] as a result of the Stuarts' abuses was by the time of the founding understood to be an individual right protecting against both public and private violence."

"And, of course, what the Stuarts had tried to do to their political enemies, George III had tried to do to the colonists. In the tumultuous decades of the 1760s and 1770s, the Crown began to disarm inhabitants of the most rebellious areas. That provoked polemical reactions by Americans invoking their rights as Englishmen to keep arms. A New York article of April 1769 said that '[i]t is a natural right which the people have reserved to themselves, confirmed by the [English] Bill of Rights, to keep arms for their own defence.' ... They understood the right to enable individuals to defend themselves. ... Americans understood the 'right of self-preservation' as permitting a citizen to 'repe[l] force by force' when 'the intervention of society in his behalf, may be too late to prevent an injury.'"

Heller's underpinnings are primarily found in the historical experience of the English people, including their American colonists -- not in "rules of statutory construction." These people believed they had a historical right to keep and bear arms for their own defense.The Second Amendment says "right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed." You can't infringe a right unless it already exists.

The bottom line, in the words of the Heller majority, is this:

"If ... the Second Amendment right is no more than the right to keep and use weapons as a member of an organized militia, [and] the organized militia is the sole institutional beneficiary of the Second Amendment's guarantee -- it does not assure the existence of a 'citizens' militia' as a safeguard against [governmental] tyranny. ...

"For Congress retains plenary authority to organize the militia, which must include the authority to say who will belong to the organized force. ... It guarantees a select militia of the sort the Stuart kings found useful, but not the people's militia that was the concern of the founding generation. "

Posted Online:  May 15, 2013, 11:00 - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea

Forget the Spin - What Citizens United Ruling Really Says

Since Citizens United v. The FCC was decided by the U. S. Supreme Court in 2010, every "liberal" that I have heard speak of the decision has expressed a visceral hatred for the case.

They use words like "infamous" or "deplorable" to describe the holding. Indeed, President Obama led the charge during his 2010 State of the Union Address, "Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign companies -- to spend without limit in our elections.:

In Citizen's United, the court considered the constitutionality of a section of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 that prohibited "corporations and unions from using their general treasury funds to make independent expenditures for speech defined as an 'electioneering communication' or for speech expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate."

The main issue in Citizens United was, can Congress, consistently with the First Amendment, bar corporations (and unions) from engaging in political speech ("electioneering communications" or "speech expressly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate"). Note: Citizens United did not involve "campaign contributions" made to a candidate.

What also must be understood is the decision was not the source of political action committees. They were creatures of the BCRA.

In the words of the court, under BCRAL:

"Corporations and unions are barred from using their general treasury funds for express advocacy or electioneering communications. They may establish, however, a '"separate segregated fund' (known as a political action committee) for these purposes. The moneys received by the segregated fund are limited to donations from stockholders and employees of the corporation or, in the case of unions, members of the union."

Citizens United was a nonprofit corporation. In January 2008, it released a film entitled "Hillary: The Movie." Hilary was a 90-minute documentary about then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, who was a candidate in the Democratic Party's 2008 presidential primarys. It was released in theaters and on DVD, but Citizens United wanted to increase distribution by making it available through video on-demand. Citizens United sued the FCC to void the ban on "independent expenditures" by a corporation under Section 441, as violative of the First Amendment. The Supreme Court's starting point in striking down Section 441, was the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech."

Justice Anthony Kennedy on behalf of the majority wrote:

"The law before us is an outright ban, backed by criminal sanctions. Section 441b makes it a felony for all corporations -- including nonprofit advocacy corporations -- either to expressly advocate the election or defeat of candidates or to broadcast electioneering communications within 30 days of a primary election and 60 days of a general election.

"Thus, the following acts would all be felonies under (section) 441b: The Sierra Club runs an ad, within the crucial phase of 60 days before the general election, that exhorts the public to disapprove of a Congressman who favors logging in national forests; the National Rifle Association publishes a book urging the public to vote for the challenger because the incumbent U. S. Senator supports a handgun ban; and the American Civil Liberties Union creates a Web site telling the public to vote for a Presidential candidate in light of that candidate's defense of free speech. These prohibitions are classic examples of censorship."

And he might have added NARAL could not expend its funds to endorse pro-choice candidates.

Freedom of speech can be exercised by an individual acting alone. But it also can be exercised by two or more individuals acting together. Indeed the same First Amendment which says "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech" recognizes that, when it goes on to say "or of the press, or the right of the people to peaceably to assemble, and petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

People peaceably assemble or associate in many ways. They form political parties. They form partnerships, voluntary associations, corporations, labor unions and churches (some of which are corporations). The First Amendment does not say, "Congress shall make NO law ... abridging the freedom of speech, except in the case of partnerships, voluntary associations, corporations, labor unions and churches."

If a group of people comprising a union has a right to lobby the government to force corporations to pay a higher minimum wage, another group of people who have formed a business corporation, and who will be forced to pay a higher minimum wage, surely has a co-relative right to lobby the government to leave the minimum wage alone.

This is what Justice Kennedy means when he says, "We find no basis (consistently with the First Amendment) for the proposition that, in the context of political speech, the Government may impose restrictionson certain disfavored speakers. Both history and logic lead us to this conclusion."

It is hard to summarize an opinion that runs 57 pages in 800 words. But Citizens United should be read by all Americans. I think you'll like it. (supremecourt.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf).


Posted Online:  May 07, 2013, 11:00 pm - Quad-Cities Online
by John Donald O'Shea

Copyright 2013
John Donald O'Shea