By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
March 15, 2002
“In the Dred Scott decision, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857 put the liberty of a slaveholder over the life of a slave,” Senator Rick Santorum, Republican of Pennsylvania said Wednesday in debate over S.3, the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. “They said right on the floor of this house – that those slaves were not like us – they are property. Now the Supreme Court says the liberty of a mother comes before the life of her child.” Twice before the Congress of the United States passed a bill to ban the procedure and both times it was vetoed by Bill Clinton.
Santorum pointed out that in the Dred Scott decision, the U.S. Supreme court put the “liberty” of the slaveholder over the “life” of the slave, and in Roe vs Wade the Supreme Court put the “liberty” of the mother over the “life” of her unborn child.
In August of 1995 when I was editor of the Reagan Monitor, Ned Fuller, a young attorney in New Mexico, and I cooperated on an article making the same point. We pointed out: “America has been forced to stumble through the moral rubble left behind by the United States Supreme Court's decision in Roe v Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973). This decision was amazingly similar to the United States Supreme Court's decision Dred Scott v Sandford, 60 US 393) in 1857 which declared that ‘slaves are a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who ...had no rights or privileges but such of those who held power and the government might choose to grant them.’ Justice Blackmun wrote in the Roe Vs Wade that unborn children are ‘not included within the definition of 'person' as used in the Fourteenth Amendment.’ This decision, that the unborn are not ‘persons’ as used in the Fourteenth amendment, is the crux of this nation's national debate on abortion.
“If, as the Supreme Court held, slaves and the unborn are not ‘persons’ what are they? They become a form of property. The legal impact of Dred Scott v Sandford, 60 US 393 was to free slave owners to abuse or even kill an unruly slave ‘property’ if they so chose. The legal impact of Roe v Wade, 410 U.S. 113 was to free pregnant women to abuse or even kill an unborn infant if they so choose.” In Wednesday’s debate, Senator Fizgerald of, a Republican from Illinois who replaced a Democrat Senator that voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, said: “We are talking about banning a specific procedure in which a baby is partially delivered, scissors are stuck in the back of the baby's skull, a vacuum suction tube is inserted into the skull, and the baby's brains are sucked out. We are banning this type of abortion only. Can we not agree this is too cruel and inhumane a procedure to allow in the United States?
“…I am struck that several times in the 4-plus years I have been in the Senate, we have on several occasions had debates on the Senate floor and votes in the Senate about banning cruel and inhumane treatment of animals. In fact, I remember several years ago we had a debate over an amendment brought by Senator Torricelli that would prohibit the use of funds in the Interior budget to facilitate the use of steel-jawed traps and neck snares for commerce or recreation in a national wildlife refuge.
“During the debate on this amendment, my friend and colleague from Nevada, Senator Reid, described the amendment to ban steel-jawed traps and neck snares as a ‘no brainer.’ My colleague went on to say: ‘These traps are inhumane. They are designed to slam closed. The result is lacerations, broken bones, joint dislocations, and gangrene.’ In concluding, Senator Reid stated: ‘In this day and age there is no need to resort to inhumane methods of trapping.'” When the C-Span camera panned to Senator Harry Reid, the Democratic Whip who was managing the Democrat side of the Debate Wednesday, he had a shamed look on his face. When the vote came, to his credit, in spite of managing the anti-ban debate for the Democrats, Reid voted to pass the bill that would provide perhaps a little more humane treatment for human babies being killed during an abortion. Thursday’s vote for the 108th Congress Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, S. 3, passed the Senate 64 to 33. This time, after nearly eight years of similar bills being passed in previous Congresses, and being vetoed by President Bill Clinton, President George W. Bush will sign it.
At one point in the debate, Senator Santorum reminded the Senate of a poster created by the Rev. William Wilberforce of Britain whose anti-slavery campaign led to a law banning slavery in Britain in 1833. The picture showed a shackled black slave with the caption: “Am I not a man?” Santorum pointed to a diagram behind him of a baby being killed by scissors in the hands of the abortionist and asked, “Is this not a baby?”
The opposition to cruel and inhuman treatment of unborn babies, as Sen. Barbara Boxer, (D-CA) frequently complains about, has been led for eight years by men, not women, in Congress. Two-thirds of the 15 women Senators yesterday voted in favor of continuing cruelty to those little ones. Only four female Senators, Kay Hutchinson (R-TX), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Elizabeth Dole (NC) and Susan Collins (R-Me), opposed the inhumane procedure. Two-thirds of the men in the Senate voted to prohibit it, perhaps because it makes no logical sense to treat wolves and coyotes with more compassion than their own offspring. Perhaps they are motivated by their masculinity and their urge to protect the helpless.
Nothing illustrates more vividly the destructive impact abortion on demand has had on America’s culture than yesterday’s Senate vote. Women increasingly have chosen unfettered liberty over the life and liberty of their own children. It was sickening to this mother and grandmother to see the coarseness, lack of compassion and downright cruelty the majority of the women senators showed in the Senate debate on “Is this not a baby?”
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com
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