|
>-----------------------------------------------------------
>
>JEFFERSON AND ROE VS. WADE
>
>Edward Smith
>-----------------------------------------------------------
>
> Could it be that one of America's most pre-eminent Founding Fathers,
>Thomas Jefferson, is also the "founding father" of the Right to Life
>Movement? Paragraph 2 of the Declaration of Independence begins, "We hold
>these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they
>are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among
>these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
For Jefferson, the "right to life" was first and foremost, preceding both
liberty and the pursuit — or even the attainment — of happiness. Today
marks the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling, Roe
vs. Wade, and we can anticipate that the demonstrations throughout the
country in support and those in opposition to the decision will surely be
larger and far more venomous than ever.
The original Hippocratic Oath states in part, "I will give no deadly
medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; furthermore, I
will not give to a woman an instrument to produce abortion." And, lest we
forget, Hippocrates was a Greek pagan, who lived nearly four centuries
before the birth of Christ, so he can hardly be conveniently dismissed as a
"right-wing, religious fanatic."
In 1948, the World Medical Association adopted the "Declaration of Geneva,"
which was a modified version of the original Oath, and although the wording
was slightly altered, the spirit of Hippocrates was completely preserved in
the words, "I will maintain the utmost respect for human life from the time
of conception; even under threat, I will not use my medical knowledge
contrary to the laws of humanity."
Margaret Sanger, an ardent advocate for every imaginable form of
contraception and the founding feminist of Planned Parenthood was a Catholic
who became an atheist who said: "Abortion is the wrong way. No matter how
early it is performed, it is taking life." Given such a statement, Margaret
Sanger, if she were alive, would not be invited to speak at any pro-choice
rallies today. Her use of the word "early" is particularly important in this
context because it constitutes a complete refutation of the termination of
pregnancy via the trimester argument, which is for some the cornerstone of
the Roe ruling.
The widely held view that life begins at birth instead of conception is
absolutely absurd because in accepting that point of view requires us to
then conclude that the body of flesh inside the womb — that is alive (what
else can it possibly be since it is) growing and being prepared for its
birth — is indeed (by way of that convoluted logic) definitionally "dead."
Such an example of reverse reasoning is ludicrous and has sustained, for
three decades, a "holocaust" waged upon the most innocent of the innocent
that should be unthinkable for a nation founded on those noble, humanitarian
principles and ideals so eloquently articulated by Jefferson in his
Declaration of Independence.
Sanger, whose cause was to liberate women from the "slavery" of being
"birthing machines," died in 1966, the year following the Supreme Court's
Griswold vs. Connecticut decision that discerned in the text of the
Constitution a previously undiscovered or — as many claim, an invented —
"right to privacy" at least in matters of sexuality that paved the way for
Roe.
Obviously, that rather restricted right to privacy does not extend to
parents who abuse their children, to those who indulge in illegal drugs, or
a vast array of other activities deemed to be unlawful in both public and
private settings.
The Declaration of Independence was followed by the Constitution and the
Bill of Rights. Today, sadly with the Supreme Court's support, we deduce
from the grand majesty of the First Amendment the right to produce and
provide pornography on demand. In the sexually satiated culture that we have
evolved into, the word "vulgar" is virtually devoid of any meaning at all.
By contrast, however, the males of the Founders' generation — with the
exception of their female family members — rarely, if ever (unless perhaps
in a painting), saw a woman's ankle, much less the more intimate areas of
her anatomy.
Clearly, they would be aghast at the graphic sexual imagery so readily
defended and made acceptable and available today as much as the nonviolent,
Noble Prize-winning civil-rights leader, Martin Luther King, would be
appalled by the hedonistic lyrics of "gangsta" rap music and the violent,
predominantly black, self-destructive "hip-hop" culture it has helped spawn.
Therefore, if the misguided but prevailing deducement of the First Amendment
protects the expansive and enormously profitable pornography industry from
governmental censorship, and the subsequent financial ruin that would
immediately ensue if censorship were imposed, certainly a similar such
deducement of Jefferson's famous words protects the right to life of the
unborn. Quite literally, no other conclusion can be drawn. After all, the
Declaration is the "soul" of our society while the Constitution is the body
of laws that governs our behavior as a free people.
Consequently, because of the distorted views of reality that "legitimized"
the horrors of slavery and racial discrimination, and our near-extermination
of the American Indians because they dared to stand in the way of our
determined westward expansion and resist the progress of "civilization," and
so now, for having committed the grave civic "sin" of 30 years of federal
support for abortion, once again, we as a nation, have much for which we
must atone.
In 1896, the Supreme Court in its Plessy vs. Ferguson decision — by an
8-to-1 margin — established the "constitutionality" of the
separate-but-equal Jim Crow laws. The lone dissenting vote was offered by
Justice John Marshall Harlan, who is buried in Washington's famous Rock
Creek Cemetery.
In 1954, 58 years later, the court recognized its earlier error in judgment
and reversed the Plessy ruling — which was the source of so much agony for
so many black Americans — by way of the Brown vs. Board of Education
decision through a 9-to-0 vote. One of the justices who voted for the rare
unanimous ruling was Hugo Black, a former member of the Alabama Ku Klux
Klan, who is buried in Arlington National Cemetery near the gravesite of
Thurgood Marshall, the black NAACP lawyer who won the Brown case and who, in
1967, joined Black as an associate justice on the high court.
The table of ideas must always be plentiful with a fresh supply of food for
thought. Therefore, when referring to slavery, and by implication to his own
life of moral contradiction, in his book, "Notes on the State of Virginia,"
Jefferson said, writing as a lifelong slave owner, "Indeed I tremble for my
country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for
ever."
Edward C. Smith is the director of American studies at American University.
>
_________________________________________________________________
Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail
. |
IncrediMail - Email has finally evolved - Click Here
