(Jan. 12) When National Review editor Ramesh Ponnuru in 2006 authored a book describing Democrats as “ The Party of Death” (the book’s title), it was met with outraged howls from that party’s fellow travelers in the establishment media.
On Jan. 11, every Democrat but one in the House of Representatives left no doubt that the moniker is morbidly, sickeningly appropriate.
By a slim 220-210 margin, the House on Wednesday passed the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, with only one Democrat voting in favor. The point of the bill is straightforward and, in any morally-sane universe, would be so uncontroversial as to attract unanimous support.
In those rare, but not negligible number of cases in which a baby outside the womb survives an attempted abortion, the bill would say health-care practitioners have an affirmative duty to provide medical care. This goes beyond a 2002 federal law officially recognizing such babies as “persons,” but which specified no explicit duty to provide care nor provided penalties for failure to do so.
As John McCormack explains in incontrovertible terms (which I won’t rehash here other than to refer readers to his piece ), each of the excuses offered by Democrats for opposing the bills are deeply, howlingly dishonest.
The larger point, though, should not be lost in the Democrats’ obfuscation and in pro-lifers’ detailed refutation thereof. The larger point is that only a perversely, pathologically twisted moral outlook could possibly even seek to make excuses for failing to provide care for any infant born alive. Once the infant is directly breathing air on its own, there remains not even the fig leaf of the argument that it isn’t a fully human person because it is still “part of the woman’s body.” As with every other living, breathing human person, medical personnel are derelict from an absolute duty if they fail to provide care for it or, as some murderous so-called physicians have been proved to do, actually take action outside the womb to snuff out its life. …. [The full column is here.]
