http://inalienable-rights.org/Who%20gets%20to%20say%20when%20life%20begins.htm
Who Gets to Say When Life Begins?
John F. Schmidt
1/10/04
Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark has taken the most extreme
view of abortion in his search for his party's nomination, stating that he
supports allowing a mother to kill her baby up to the moment of birth. His
position, as he was recently quoted as saying to the Manchester Union
Leader, is that "life begins with the mother's decision."
Few, if any, of the presidential aspirants has dared to state their position
so stridently on this vital issue. Yet former general Clark is due no kudos
for his candor. His statement lays bare his lack of understanding of the
spiritual roots of the authority he craves to possess as president. One
would expect more from a Rhodes scholar.
If he is elected president he "will not appoint judges who are pro-life."
Any person he nominates is "not going to have an ideology to advance at the
expense of the law." The law, according to Mr. Clark, consists of "judicial
and established precedent." By erroneously inferring that there are some
without ideology and others with ideology, he seeks to smear anyone whose
decisions might be based on Biblical principles. He fails to inform his
listeners that everybody has an internal set of principles - an "ideology."
Wesley's judicial selections would actually assure that only practicing
atheists sit on the bench. The real issue is whose convictions are going to
rule, the atheists' or the believers'.
The majority of Mr. Clark's potential constituents certainly don't want
imperial judges who will create law from the bench. But the average person
on the street also does not want abortion jammed down his throat by the
judicial system. Polls constantly affirm that a large majority of the
American people do not favor abortion as defined by the Supreme Court. But
the will of the people is of no avail.
The "right" of abortion has its beginning in the Roe v Wade ruling.
Ironically, there was no "judicial precedent" cited to support Roe itself;
nor was the Constitution cited meaningfully. Subsequent rulings have
studiously avoided favorable references prior to Roe, since there are none.
Present-day abortion is supported by rulings made since then, but that
practice amounts to circular reasoning. Court rulings must be founded on the
Constitution, not simply prior court rulings.
Clark also said "I don't believe people whose ideological agenda is to burn
the law or remake it or reshape it should be appointed whether they are from
either side." By that standard he condemns the Roe v. Wade Court decision,
for that is exactly how it came into being. If this inconsistency comes to
light will General Clark repudiate his stand on abortion? I think not.
Mr. Clark's prescription for appointing judges is not high-minded at all: it
is a disguise for a crass method to guarantee that the illegal rulings of
the previous courts won't be overturned, despite the fact that they were
made without the very "judicial precedent" he claims is his basis for
legitimacy.
We want our public officials who represent us - especially Supreme Court
Justices - in those areas we hold most dear. And we are overwhelmingly a
God-fearing people who believe that no person is to be trusted who has no
religious convictions. Such a person in a high position is capable of
unlimited damage to our freedoms and our very lives. We see it occurring
every day before our very eyes. Clark's prescriptions will take us ever
further in the wrong direction.
Human government does not exist to let any person play God, like Mr. Clark's
judges try to do. Instead, its charter is to represent God. Its main job is
to defend the defenseless. A child in the uterus is the most defenseless of
beings. The mother has total authority over it so that she may exercise
total protective care on behalf of it. No greater violation of such an
authoritative trust exists than a mother choosing to kill her child. Lawyers
and public officials of all kinds may go to jail for violating the official
trust given to them by others. Should a transgression of an even more sacred
trust be ignored? Human Government, no matter how flawed, has a solemn
responsibility to protect unborn children; not allow them to be treated
worse than baby seals and snail darter fish. Those children are our
"posterity."
When a mother is tempted to harm her child, she must be held in check by the
Divinely authorized hand of government, acting on behalf of the defenseless
baby. It is the same thing it must do in protecting all life. Our American
government, in particular, has from the beginning embodied a Biblical view
of itself, and the restraints and protections that come with it. Hence it
has protected the innocent and defenseless. That view is under assault, and
"General" Clark is in the vanguard of the barbarians who seek to
disestablish the Judeo-Christian government and replace it with rules made
by men and men alone. But no government can abdicate its basic
responsibility to protect the helpless without abdicating all claims to its
own authority. If it does so, it disestablishes itself.
God alone has the right to say when life begins. And it is everyone's job to
protect the life of the little ones - even from the mother - because they
are made in the Image of God and therefore precious. Clark has thrown his
political career - and that of his oh-so-supportive Democratic party - into
the trashcan of history, because he and they turned their backs on the
defenseless ones they should have fought to protect.
--
Atheism teaches that there is no God, hence no God-given rights. That
ideology coupled with a system that believed in the superiority of the state
at the expense of the individual was murderously synergistic.
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