Blogs For Victory

A Wall Street Journal editorial via Catholics in the Public Square lays it out:

Miss Jessen is an exquisite example of what antiabortion advocates call a “survivor.” Well into her third trimester of pregnancy, Gianna’s biological mother was injected with a saline solution intended to induce a chemical abortion at a Los Angeles County abortion center. Eighteen hours later, and precious minutes before the abortionist’s arrival, Gianna emerged. Premature and with severe injuries that resulted in cerebral palsy. But alive.

Had the abortionist been present at her birth, Gianna would have been killed, perhaps by suffocation. As it was, a startled nurse called an ambulance, and Gianna was rushed to a nearby hospital, where, weighing just two pounds, she was placed in an incubator, then, months later, in foster care.

Gianna survived then, and thrives now, because, as she told me recently with a laugh, “I guess I don’t die easy.” Which is what the abortionist might have thought as he signed his victim’s birth certificate. Gianna’s medical records state that she was “born during saline abortion.”

As an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama twice opposed legislation to define as “persons” babies who survive late-term abortions. Babies like Gianna. Mr. Obama said in a speech on the Illinois Senate floor that he could not accept that babies wholly emerged from their mother’s wombs are “persons,” and thus deserving of equal protection under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

A federal version on the same legislation passed the Senate unanimously and with the support of all but 15 members of the House. Gianna was present when President Bush signed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act in 2002.

When I asked Gianna to reflect on Mr. Obama’s candidacy, she paused, then said, “I really hope the American people will have their eyes wide open and choose to be discerning. . . . He is extreme, extreme, extreme.”

“Extreme” may not be the impression the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have bought Mr. Obama’s autobiography have been left with. In “The Audacity of Hope,” Mr. Obama’s presidential manifesto, he calls abortion “undeniably difficult,” “a very difficult issue,” “never a good thing” and “a wrenching moral issue.”

He laments his party’s “litmus test” for “orthodoxy” on abortion and other issues, and even admits, “I do not presume to know the answer to that question.” That question being the moral status of the fetus, who he nonetheless concedes has “moral weight.”

Those statements are seriously made but, alas, cannot be taken at all seriously. Mr. Obama has compiled a 100% lifetime “pro-choice” voting record, including votes against any and all restrictions on late-term abortions and parental involvement in teenagers’ abortions.

OBama is, indeed, extreme on the issue of abortion – but the real problem is that this extremism is entirely mainstream in the Democratic party. The article goes on to note that Obama has pledged to sign the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act“, a monstrous bit of pro-death legislation which would undo no only the federal ban on late-term abortions, but also the various common-sense regulations placed on abortion at the State level over the years. This is pro-abortion fanaticism in action, and Obama is hip deep in it.

I cannot take at face value anyone’s claims to care about people if they can’t care about the most helpless amongst us – there is a cold hearted indifference to suffering in the actions of those who work to protect abortion; from those who just use honey-coated words to cover up what it really is, to those who actually seek to ensure that more abortions are peformed. Obama talks a great game about helping the helpless, but when the real helpless have arrived in front of him, he’s slammed the door in their faces, more interested in garnering pro-abortion donations and pro-abortion political support for his blinding ambition to be President of the United States. Abortion is wicked; evil to the core – only the rankest sort of ignorance and cowardice can excuse any support for it; there is just never, ever a valid reason for seeking the termination of an unborn human life.

While many issues will be discussed during this campaign and while abortion won’t register with more than 5% or so as the most vital issue of the election, the central issue or our time has been, is and will be the abortion issue. As long as we permit this barbaric and inhuman practice – a veritible human sacrifice on the altar of the secular god “Selfishness” – just that long will we remain a nation divided against itself, and unsure of its place in the world. Just as we were riven by the stresses of trying to reconcile chattel slavery with our sublime Declaration of Independence so, too, are we riven by the attempts to reconcile cold blooded murder with the right to life our Founders fought and died for. This terrible poison, abortion, must end – and we will not end it by electing as President a man who will talk a lot about how sad abortion is, but who will in practical terms do all he can to advance the cause of abortion in the United States.

In the end, if one has any sense of the sanctity of human life – all life, even that unborn – then John McCain is the only possible candidate for 2008. A man of unscotchable pro-life record and a clear view of the value of life (probably built up by his inhuman treatment at the hands of the North Vietnamese), who is pledged to appoint judges who understand that the US Constitution isn’t a plaything for the latest liberal fads.