Gonzales v. Carhart; Virginia Tech v. Cho Seung-Hui; and Everybody v. Bush

The juxtaposition of various news bits this week really has us scratching our heads.

First, consider this bit from the NY Times a day after the mass murder in Blacksburg:

Our hearts and the hearts of all Americans go out to the victims and their families. Sympathy was not enough at the time of Columbine, and eight years later it is not enough. What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss.

Within hours of the shooting, anti-gun advocates were already firing away on their keyboards, eager to make this incident a political talking point target for proposing more gun control laws. We've even read folks who are saying its high time we shoot down (repeal) the supposedly "ambiguous" Second Amendment so that the federal government will be uninhibited in passing any and all gun regulations.

Second, also just hours after the shooting, the Supreme Court handed down their decision regarding partial birth abortion in Gonzales v. Carhart. Justice Ginsburg's dissent sums up accurately the media and liberals' reaction to the ruling:

"[T]his way of thinking reflects ancient notions of women's place in the family and under the Constitution--ideas that have long since been discredited."

The majority's opinion "cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away a right declared again and again by this court, and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives."

The conservative majority "tolerates, indeed applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases" by doctor's groups, including gyncecologists.

Third, there's the ever present war. One editor of a Pennsylvania newspaper had this to say:

What would you call a place where Virginia Tech-like orgies of violence happen every day? Iraq. So, where's the daily outcry? The shock? The horror? The huge newspaper headlines?

We all mourn the victims at Virginia Tech. As we should. Why don't we all mourn the Iraqi victims of George Bush's war? Are we numb to the numbers? When a car bomb kills 40 are they somehow less human than the 32 in Blacksburg?
Because it's a war? But we started the war. Before we did that, it was a stable, if brutal dictatorship.
Is it because people would have died anyway, because of Saddam's brutality? But now it's on us. They're dying because of what we did. Often times dozens if not hundreds a day, because we decided to go to war in a country we didn't understand. Not because we had to fight, but because we wanted to. . . .
And the blood on all of our hands.

Now for the head scratching. WE DO NOT understand how, in the same breath, people can be so adamant about prohibiting, restricting, or straight up eliminating a freedom to bear arms that is clearly enumerated in the text of the Constitution, while at the same time turn a blind eye to the clearly defined rights guaranteed to all persons (born or unborn) in America in pursuit of a woman's right to choose an abortion - a right that is not mentioned in the Constitution and is created only under the guise of the ever-elusive right to privacy.

If Congress wants to regulate the use of guns, because they think that public policy demands it, many on the Left couldn't be happier. But if Congress decides to regulate the unnecessary killing of unborn babies, because they think public policy demands it, that same Left couldn't be more irate.

Furthermore, WE DO NOT understand how people can be so upset about some deaths, yet so flippant about others. Consider:

• 33 brutal deaths at VA Tech
• 3,300 plus dead in Iraq
• 130,000 annual deaths from partial birth abortions (10% of the estimated 1.3 million abortions performed every year are 2nd trimester "partial birth abortions")
  

The NY Times described the Tech shootings as "carnage" and "unbearable."

If you want to read about unbearable carnage, keep reading.

The following are excerpts from Justice Kennedy's opinion in Gonzales v. Carhart.

Sometimes, in the midst of academic and constitutional debates on public policy and individual rights in the abstract, it's good to stop and consider what the conduct that we're discussing actually entails. The Court describes it in rather graphic detail - if this doesn't make you cringe, or bring tears to your eyes, then you've obviously been watching too many of NBC's Cho videos:

After sufficient dilation the surgical operation can commence. The woman is placed under general anesthesia or conscious sedation. The doctor, often guided by ultrasound, inserts grasping forceps through the woman's cervix and into the uterus to grab the fetus. The doctor grips a fetal part with the forceps and pulls it back through the cervix and vagina, continuing to pull even after meeting resistance from the cervix. The friction causes the fetus to tear apart. For example, a leg might be ripped off the fetus as it is pulled through the cervix and out of the woman. The process of evacuating the fetus piece by piece continues until it has been completely removed. A doctor may make 10 to 15 passes with the forceps to evacuate the fetus in its entirety, though sometimes removal is completed with fewer passes. Once the fetus has been evacuated, [*23] the placenta and any remaining fetal material are suctioned or scraped out of the uterus. The doctor examines the different parts to ensure the entire fetal body has been removed. See, e.g., Nat. Abortion Federation, supra, at 465; Planned Parenthood, supra, at 962.

The court goes on to describe one nurse's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the partial birth abortion procedure:

"'Dr. Haskell went in with forceps and grabbed the baby's legs and pulled them down into the birth canal. Then he delivered the baby's body and the arms -- everything but the head. The doctor kept the head right inside the uterus . . . .

"'The baby's little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his little feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors in the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked out, like a startle reaction, like a flinch, like a baby does [*28] when he thinks he is going to fall.

"'The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening, and sucked the baby's brains out. Now the baby went completely limp . . . .

"'He cut the umbilical cord and delivered the placenta. He threw the baby in a pan, along with the placenta and the instruments he had just used.'" Ibid.

Dr. Haskell's approach is not the only method of killing the fetus once its head lodges in the cervix, and "the process has evolved" since his presentation. Planned Parenthood, 320 F. Supp. 2d, at 965. Another doctor, for example, squeezes the skull after it has been pierced "so that enough brain tissue exudes to allow the head to pass through." App. in No. 05-380, at 41; see also Carhart, supra, at 866-867, 874. Still other physicians reach into the cervix with their forceps and crush the fetus' skull. Carhart, supra, at 858, 881. Others continue to pull the fetus out of the woman until it disarticulates at the neck, in effect decapitating it. These doctors then grasp the head with forceps, crush it, and remove it. Id., at 864, 878; see also Planned Parenthood, supra, at 965. [*29]

Cho was evil.

Is allowing the above described procedures any better?

The blood truly is on our hands.