It is Christmas Day. As we celebrate the Birth of Jesus let us celebrate All Life. Let us honor the littlest among us. Rich Lowry of National Review writes this week in the Washington Times about life, death, and the unborn.
Earlier this year, Congress passed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act partly in reaction to the Peterson case, making it a crime to harm an unborn baby while assaulting the mother. Kate Michelman, president of NARAL, complained that President Bush is doing “everything in his power to restrict a woman’s right to choose.” Right to choose what? To have her baby harmed by an assailant?
Pro-choicers realize that recognizing the legal status of a fetus in any way undermines a crucial philosophical support of the pro-choice position — that a baby in the womb has no rights that we are bound to respect. The Missouri “Unborn Child” law, which is in play in the Stinnett case, says “unborn children have protectable interests in life, health and well-being.” The attitude behind that law is impossible to square with the animating principle of Roe vs. Wade, which protects any abortion, any time.