“Abortion rights” – which is to say unrestricted abortion –
figures prominently in U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s utopia.
A bill introduced by Mr. Blumenthal, The Women’s Health Protection Act of 2013, would affirm
unrestricted abortion by making it impossible for states to regulate abortion
providers, chiefly Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the
United States. To Blumenthal watchers, a bill preventing various actors in the
abortion drama, including states and the federal government, from propounding
any rules governing abortion at any stage of the birth process for any reason
would seem to be out of character for Mr. Blumenthal, who spent much of his two
decades as Attorney General in Connecticut suing businesses for having violated
regulations while proposing bills to Connecticut’s General Assembly that would
further hobble a Connecticut economy already gagging on needless regulations.
Only a moral struggle – a battle involving angels of light
and devils of darkness – could justify such a sharp reversal of character.
Mr. Blumenthal carried both the virtues and vices he
nurtured as Attorney General into the U.S. Senate when in 2011 he displaced
U.S. Senator Chris Dodd, who left office after having said he would never
accept a position as a lobbyist and then accepted a position as the chief
lobbyist of the Motion Picture Association of America, demonstrating that if
you stuff a politician’s conscience with enough money, the pillars of his moral
universe will collapse under the weight.
One example of Mr. Blumenthal’s moral rectitude may serve
for many. Following the untimely death of Cecil the Lion, poached in Africa by
an American dentist, Mr. Blumenthal drafted a bill and offered the following
statement: “The hunting and poaching of
endangered species is a reprehensible and repugnant act. The death of this
beloved lion was a preventable tragedy that demonstrates the urgent need to
protect precious – and all too often vulnerable – wildlife. We cannot continue
to allow innocent animals to be threatened by trophy killing – we must ensure
that generations to come can experience and enjoy everything nature has to
offer. I am proud to join my colleagues on this measure that will provide
critical protections to animals across the globe.”
The attentive reader will note that Mr. Blumenthal’s media
release is stuffed with moral gunpowder: “reprehensible and repugnant act…
preventable tragedy… trophy killing… proud to join colleagues.” More than
words, these are ethical shields designed to fend off any defense made by a
“poacher”; we all want to place ourselves on the side of moralizing angels, do
we not? “A tear for Cecil” is itself a
moral argument that overcomes most objections. Mr. Blumenthal has over the
years mastered this useful rhetorical tactic. He may be the best moral
gunslinger in Connecticut.
Abortion on demand – specifically, abortion after the 20th
week of a pregnancy when, scientist tell us, the infant in the womb senses pain
– presents a difficulty for proponents of abortion such as Mr. Blumenthal. A
regulation limiting abortion to the first 20 weeks of a pregnancy, it will be
noted, is not, as abortion extremists would have it, a denial of a “right to
abortion.” It is a regulatory provision that recognizes a developmental process
in which a fetus, passing through an early stage in the pregnancy, becomes at a
later stage before birth what we might justly call, for lack of a better word,
a baby. Pregnant mothers and their doctors frequently refer to fetal life in
the womb beyond 20 weeks as a “baby,” which is more than a term of endearment;
it is an accurate description of life in the womb at that stage of pregnancy.
Ultrasound images do not lie, and a picture of the 20 week old baby is worth a
thousand words.
The ultrasound pictures seriously undermine any argument to
the effect that abortion is not then taking of a human life, which is why
abortion providers make great efforts to purchase the efforts of senators like
Mr. Blumenthal to prevent the passage of laws requiring Planned Parenthood from
being compelled to share ultrasound images with its clients before preforming
an abortion. “It's not what you don't know that kills you,” said Mark Twain,
“it's what you know for sure that ain't true.” Ultrasounds place seeds of doubt
in the minds of Planned Parenthood’s clients. Anyone, including scientists, who
has seen an ultrasound of an unborn baby at 20 weeks knows it ain’t true that
the picture shows a mass of undifferentiated protoplasm.
Videos widely circulated within the past few weeks showing
Planned Parenthood personnel dickering with sting operators pretending to be
clients interested in purchasing baby body parts for scientific purposes may
possibly convince some senators who had seen the videos – though not, of
course, Mr. Blumenthal – that high officials in Planned Parenthood also know
what every mother knows who has carried a baby for 20 weeks or more. Indeed,
the merchants of baby parts use ultrasound so that they may deliver their
product to their purchaser without “crunching” the goods.
This time around, its’s going to be a little difficult for the
dry-eyed Mr. Blumenthal to assume the moral high ground in his defense of
Planned Parenthood officials who, while sipping drinks and munching on salad,
assure clients in the market for baby body parts that they can easily convince
officiating abortionists to re-orient the late term baby in the uterus so that
the corpse might be delivered without “crunching” deliverable body parts. Any
Attorney General worth his pay grade could tell Mr. Blumenthal that this
process violates federal law, if not Mr. Blumenthal’s too tender
conscience.
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