Guest Post by Pat Buchanan
In its most recent exercise of liberal democracy, the state senate of Massachusetts voted 32-8 to override Gov. Charlie Baker’s veto of what is called the Roe Act.
One day earlier, Monday, the state house had voted to override.
The Roe Act is now law in the Bay State. And what does it say?
Drafted and adopted to protect a woman’s right to an abortion, should Roe vs. Wade be overturned by the Supreme Court, it guarantees 16-year-old girls the right to abort their unborn children, without their parents’ consent, through the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.
At 24 weeks, an unborn baby has a 60% to 70% chance of survival.
But the Roe Act covers this problem as well. If the “mental health” of the teenager is imperiled, she can still get an abortion.
Valerie Richardson of The Washington Times quotes the reaction of the state’s Catholic Action League. This measure “will reduce the age of parental or judicial consent for minors seeking abortions, remove born alive protections for infants who survived abortion, lower the medical criteria for late term abortions, and make abortions more dangerous for women by allowing (midwives) and nurse practitioners to perform them.”
The ACLU, NARAL and Planned Parenthood hailed this as a victory for women’s rights.
Speaking for the Catholic Action League, executive director C. J. Doyle blamed Catholic religious officials and Catholic organizations for their failure to rebuke lawmakers who routinely vote for abortion rights.
“None of the Catholics who voted for this life-ending measure will suffer a word of rebuke from any priest or prelate in Massachusetts. … There will be no articles or editorials critical of them in the Catholic press. No one will be denied Holy Communion. No one will be expelled from the Knights of Columbus.”
This silence, said Doyle, “equals consent.” And given this silence, “no rational person can reasonably be expected to take seriously Catholic opposition to the killing of the unborn in Massachusetts.”
Former New England Patriots’ star, Benjamin Watson, a pro-lifer, described the absurdity of what the legislature did. A teenage girl still needs her parents’ permission to get a Tylenol from the school nurse, but she doesn’t need permission to have an abortion and kill their grandchild.
What the Bay State did, again in an exercise of democracy, raises questions that go beyond normal arguments among Americans on this most divisive of social issues since slavery.
In the 1950s, abortion was regarded as shameful, even criminal, mandating excommunication from the Catholic Church. Abortionists were social outcasts, often prosecuted and punished.
Now, within the span of a lifetime, abortion has been raised, in what was once “God’s Country,” into a constitutional and a human right.
To be accepted as a “progressive” today, it is almost an imperative to support a woman’s right to terminate the life of her unborn child.
Even “devout Catholic” Joe Biden has come around.
He now favors repeal of the Hyde Amendment he had supported in the past, which bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortion except to save the life of the woman or if the pregnancy arises from rape or incest.
Something comparable has happened with homosexuality and same-sex marriage. Also once regarded as shameful, this, too, is now a civil and constitutional right and the LGBT flag flies atop U.S. embassies during Gay Pride Month.
As abortion and homosexuality have become new constitutional rights, the old rights of the First Amendment have taken on new meaning.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” has been interpreted to mean that God, the Bible, the Cross, prayer and Christian symbols all have no place in the schools that educate America’s children.
“Freedom of speech” now protects blasphemy and the burning of the American flag.
“Freedom of the press” now protects dissemination of what used to be criminalized as pornography.
In brief, using democratic methods and means, and normal legal and judicial procedures, what was once immoral and even criminal has come to be officially declared both constitutional and morally correct.
Scores of millions in the “silent majority” may yet embrace the old beliefs about right and wrong and good and evil, and what is pro-American and what is not, but the nation has changed.
And it raises an even broader question.
Can moral truth be altered? Can the killing of unborn children, unjust and immoral in Christian teaching and Natural Law, be made right, and moral, if a legislature uses democratic processes to declare it so?
If right and wrong can be changed by plebiscites and political votes what do we do with those who refuse to go along?
Before we go to war again to defend “American values,” ought we not be told exactly for what values our soldiers are fighting?
For if “democracy” inevitably produces the consequences we see in America today, what is the argument for killing people to persuade them to embrace it?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Nixon’s White House Wars: The Battles That Made and Broke a President and Divided America Forever.”
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Who speaks?
The same that spoke this to Israel, it is just as pertinent today. If this is just too long for you to read, jump down to verse 25 and the part of the carcases were torn in the midist of the streets and about the flags of other nations from far. This country is like a big, fat turkey leg ready to be gobbled down.
Isaiah 5: 20-30
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!
Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight!
Woe unto them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink:
Which justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness of the righteous from him!
Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the Lord of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel.
25 Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against his people, and he hath stretched forth his hand against them, and hath smitten them: and the hills did tremble, and their carcases were torn in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
And he will lift up an ensign to the nations from far, and will hiss unto them from the end of the earth: and, behold, they shall come with speed swiftly:
None shall be weary nor stumble among them; none shall slumber nor sleep; neither shall the girdle of their loins be loosed, nor the latchet of their shoes be broken:
Whose arrows are sharp, and all their bows bent, their horses’ hoofs shall be counted like flint, and their wheels like a whirlwind:
Their roaring shall be like a lion, they shall roar like young lions: yea, they shall roar, and lay hold of the prey, and shall carry it away safe, and none shall deliver it.
And in that day they shall roar against them like the roaring of the sea: and if one look unto the land, behold darkness and sorrow, and the light is darkened in the heavens thereof.”
This is what happens when the most amoral and reprehensible of individuals become representatives of the People. And then they will have the gall tell you that Capital punishment is wrong.
Karma is going to be The Devil for those who countenance this sort of horror no matter how important they think they are.
Abortion is murder. I understood that at age eight or thereabouts and didn’t need back-up from the Bible, the pulpit or the blackboard. Common sense provided the obvious conclusion. Or call it Natural Law if you prefer. Would never have lived with a woman who’d had one, wouldn’t now at 74. Unnatural, deracinated creatures and the males who support abortion are much the same.
Abortion was just (earlier this week) legalized where I live, a shame, but there was strong popular resistance. There were no pro-abort demonstrations or marches in our small village; even the recently arrived urban hippies knew better than to strut that shit in front of us bumpkins.
When I saw on PBS the story of Argentina legalizing abortion, there was one bright spot: teenage girls protesting the change and weeping. Youth in America are too far gone, their consciences seared. Their fight for “justice” is to celebrate mentally ill youth “transitioning” and wanting everybody to pretend it’s normal.
My dtr-in-law, about to turn 31, has three children under six years of age. She was active in opposing the legalization. She is the fifth of six children from a modest background and her dad (salt of the earth type) is the 15th of 16 children. Her mom, one of five, married at 15 years of age. All these folk are hard working and consider childen a blessing. Guess they’re not with “the program”others so strongly promote. Strongly doubt my two yr old granddaughter will ever be either no matter how “difficult” life may become. I sometimes wonder if our family lives in a space/time warp, one in which we hope to remain.
There is no such thing as common sense amoung a group or culture of people. You are describing humanism, and humanism always ends in destruction.
Just look at all the cultures down your way that have come and disappeared ususally within about four hundred years.
A question I often ponder is why would have people crossed the land bridge into Alaska, then moved down all the way through the Americas to build Machu Picchu in such thin air or to be on the river banks in deep jungles? Multiple cultures were formed and then destroyed or abandoned. I’m not downplaying the accomplishments of any of them. What pushed these and now even yourself to try to escape something? Self preservation, common sense, or just being unsatisfied?
Common sense will not save anybody but maybe a short while.
I confess to being confused about how “common sense” can be conflated with humanism. A more detailed explanation would be appreciated.
I’m not sure that “escape” is the driving force for some folks to migrate. In my case, curiosity drove me when young; the final move to what I hope will fulfill my desire to have found “my place in the sun” was motivated by the desire to live in a rural setting in a temperate climate to a property with water and arable land but within the limits of a village with a small population and well away from cities. In that sense I suppose it could be considered an “escape”. I lost faith in the USA being able to stop the juggernaut of all the madness and uncertainty that now seems to have possessed it to a degree I hadn’t imagined when I left 23 years ago.
“Common sense” as I conceive it may not save me, but I certainly hope it will serve me and mine well going forward.
There have been approximately 1 million deaths worldwide from the Wuhan virus in 2020 and 42 million aborted baby deaths in the same period. Think about that.
Such hoopla for the Wuhan virus.