THE SECOND HALF OF THE POST (BELOW) IS A CURRENT UPDATE BASED ON REVIEW OF WHAT HAS HAPPENED IN THE PAST THREE AND A HALF YEARS.       

Sept 16, 2008

Ten Most Alarming Aspects of a ‘President Obama’ 4-Years If Coupled to a Filibuster-Proof Democrat Majority in the U.S. Senate & House

1. Increasing Capital Gains Tax from 15% to c. 28% on longer term investments – affecting tens of millions of Americans and small businesses not just “the rich”.
2. Keeping Price of Oil High, hoping for over $100ppb, blocking new offshore drilling, blocking new nuclear plants, forcing ‘going green’ on a fastrack.
3. Continuation of Dismemberment D&E, a form of late-term post-viability abortion not banned, more gruesome than Partial Birth D&X late-term abortion.
4. Implementing Socialized Medicine, emulating Europe and Canada, to the detriment of US healthcare excellence and America’s physicians.
5. Instituting Other New & Expanded Taxes, may bring back the “Carter-years” inflation and economic chaos.
6. Appointing Liberal Supreme & Circuit Court Judges, ensuring America transitions to European-style secular socialism for two generations/50 years.
7. Softening Response To Terrorism, reverting to wait and/or inaction policies, emulating European minimalism.
8. Eroding Military & Defense, impacting morale, transferring major part of budget for armed forces to pay for new entitlements/social programs.
9. Reversing Mid East Democratization Gains, dramatically increasing dangers facing Israel, the Middle East and the western world at large.   
10. Mishandling International Situations, escalating chances of long-term conflicts and armed crises involving countries like Iran, Russia, China, N. Korea.

 If Sen. Obama is elected President of the United States, 2009/2010/2011 will go down in history as a watershed transition period, possibly bringing about the beginning of an accelerated demise of Western civilization – unless Obama/Pelosi/Reid socialism can be turned around in under 30 years.  In any event, the U.S. would be left vastly weakened.  The UK and certain major European nations are current examples of how liberal-socialism of the 50s and 60s impacted them for the long term – they are unable to defend themselves and unwilling to defend others, they lost their key industries, they have abandoned their heritage and faith, they are in secular decline.  Nevertheless, Senator Obama is a European-style internationalist and he wants to take America there.

 MARCH 12, 2012

UPDATED  - THREE AND A HALF YEARS LATER

“10 Most Alarming Aspects if President Obama is Re-elected For a Second Term”

1.  Helping Price/s of Oil & Gasoline Stay High: Opposing most new U.S. domestic and offshore oil & gas production.

2.  Increasing Capital Gains Taxes (double); Implementing Middle Class “Wealth Tax”; & “Selected Corporations” Penal Taxes.

3.  Continuing “Stupak-sandbag” type assurances: i.e. promises, promises, then renege.

4.  Opposing Pro-Life Constituencies – e.g. Catholic bishops, southern Christians, Evangelicals, mothers, ‘women saving infants’.

5.  Locking-in “Socialized Medicine”; impairing number and quality of physicians; further eroding US healthcare excellence.

6.  Setting economic course for Carter-era chaos; and/or probable U.S. max-recession in three to five years.

7.   Decimating U.S. Military & Defense, in order to fund European-model social state and his massive debt burden.

8.   Fostering political/populist aura of envy-anger-divide; to detriment of America’s once-unique culture of inclusion and comity.

9.   Misdirecting America’s foreign relations…particularly vis-à-vis the Middle, Near & Far East.

10.  Eradication of certain constitutional freedoms set by America’s founders; expanding government’s uber-control.

The earlier comments written in September 2008 did not take a genius to perceive.  The wonder is that so many commentators appeared to be surprised by what Obamas wrought in their three and a half years.

To repeat then, with a degree of confidence: if President Obama is re-elected, it will take 30 to 50 years to turn around his ship of socialism (it has taken that long in much of Europe and the UK).  We have witnessed Britain’s Royal Navy retire their last fixed-wing aircraft carrier!  There we go, slow but sure.  Europe – as commented earlier – is essentially unable to defend themselves and unwilling to defend others.  They have lost many of their key manufacturing industries.  They have abandoned their faith and heritage; they are in secular and economic decline.  (For a succinct op-ed, see Mark Helprin in the Wall Street Journal, 3/27/2012, “Obama’s Europa Complex”.)  With four more years of Obama-led big-government, we – the United States of America – will irreversibly arrive where Europe is (and only now – too late – trying to dig out).       

SAVING VIABLE INFANTS BILL

PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION BAN ACT OF 2003 REVISED

This proposed Bill includes the Dilation & Evacuation D&E Late-Term Abortion Ban Draft coupled to the already enacted Partial Birth Abortion (Dilation and Extraction D&X) Ban Act of 2003, since both methods are used for termination of identical aged infants (21 to 27 weeks lmp) for purely elective reasons.

“VIABLE INFANTS ABORTION BAN ACT BILL”  (A DRAFT)

The reason for the CDC’s 32% discrepancy is that a few states do not respond to the CDC’s annual surveillance, the most notorious exception being California which is the provider of – by far – the greatest number of abortions of any state in America.  Guttmacher Institute lists the estimated number of abortions in California in 2008 as 214,200…that, if correct, is 40% more than the number of abortions for the second largest provider of U.S. abortions, New York State with a reported 153,100 abortions in 2008.  There is statistical evidence to conclude that California’s total abortions are substantially more than the 214,200 number that Guttmacher has discerned, because their survey is voluntarily responded to, and many California abortion providers are reluctant to submit their statistical data to Guttmacher.  The state of California requires no reporting other than for those abortions that are paid for by state taxpayers funds under MediCal: and, as noted, California does not respond at all to the Centers For Disease Control since 1997.

Guttmacher’s statistics in regard to the state of California show that California’s abortion rate in 1991 was 60% higher than its abortion rate level in 2008; i.e. it was recorded as 44.3 abortions per 1000 eligible women in 1991 compared to 27.6 abortions in 2008, a purported precipitous drop of over 38%.  Very unlikely.  In the same time period, the U.S. national abortion rate in 1991 was just 34% higher than in 2008; i.e. the U.S. national rate declined from 26.3 abortions per 1000 women in 1991 to 19.6 abortions per 1000 women in 2008, a decline of 25%.  It seems impossible that the state of California reduced its abortions per year so dramatically.  The largest purported decline occurred – according to Guttmacher’s surveys’ responses from abortion providers in that state – between 1991 and 1995.  The abortion rate dropped from 44.3 abortions per 1000 women, to 33.2 abortions per 1000 women in just 4 years!  A drop of some 25% in 4 years!  In effect, that would mean that California’s abortions dropped – nearly overnight – from circa 365,000 total abortions in 1991 to circa 275,000 total abortions in 1995.  There is something very wrong about that reported data as reported by abortion providers in California to Guttmacher Institute.

California stopped reporting its annual abortion data to the CDC Annual Surveillance Reports after 1997.  The CDC Surveillance Report for 1997 lists California’s total abortions as 310,600 in 1997 (of which MediCal taxpayer-funded abortions were 111,600 per MediCal data).  The CDC notes that California’s abortions in 1997, at 310,600, amounted to 23% of ALL abortions in America that year:  The annual rate of abortions in California was 32 per 1000 eligible women (i.e. aged 15-44) in 1997 per Guttmacher charting, only 16% higher than the abortion rate in 2008 eleven years later.  That would clearly compute that California’s total abortions in 2008 must be at least 260,000 (minimum) – not 214,200 – IF the number of abortions reported by California to the CDC in 1997 was correct.

However, based on the previously noted unlikely precipitous drop in California’s so-called “reported” data from 1991 to 1995, it is virtually certain that the REAL number of total abortions in California in 1997 was more like 360,000, not 310,000 (based on an abortion rate in California in 1997 of 37.2, not 32.0; i.e. assuming the same rate of decline from 1991 t0 1997 as in the United States as a whole).  That 16% error has no doubt been carried through to the present day.  It is, undoubtedly, the reason why the California Department of Health decided, or was ordered, to stop reporting to the CDC its annual abortion data and statistics as of 1997:  The level of discrepancies at that time were probably just too great to explain.  It is clear that ever since 1995, a large number of California abortion providers stopped reporting their information even to the Guttmacher Institute.  The REAL California total abortions number for 2008 is thus at or over 310,000, not 214,000 as reported by the Guttmacher Institute.

What this, in fact, means is that the current Guttmacher data for the United States as a whole is at least 100,000 abortions low, assuming there are no other shortfalls in reporting by the other 49 states of the United States and Washington, D.C. (which even Guttmacher infers is unlikely due to the voluntary nature of the survey response format).

Now we are able to more accurately ratio up the 21-weeks-and-later-gestation abortions’ data that the CDC has reported state-by-state (for the 33 states that answered that Table 7  CDC question) to take into account the missing 10,000 abortions not identified by any gestation period (i.e. listed as “unknown”) by most of those 33 states:  Plus the data not reported for 21-weeks-gestation or for any period gestation by 17 states (including California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Connecticut, D.C., and ten others):  And for the massive under-reporting error in California’s specific data.   This computation can be cross-checked by noting that reported 21-weeks-and-over-gestation abortions have been running at between 1.4% and 1.6% of total abortions for the past ten years (based on that CDC annual data which excludes California and 16 other states not reporting, as well as the “unknown” column of abortions reported in the by-gestation-period Table 7).  If the true total of all abortions in America in 2008 was 1,300,000 (the 1.2 million as reported by Guttmacher adjusted for the California discrepancy described above), 1.6% of that total would indicate that 20,800 infants were aborted in the 21-weeks-and-over-gestation period in the year 2008.

The big question pertaining to the CDC data for Table 7 (abortions by weeks of gestation) is why over 10,000 abortions were not identified by the 33 states reporting such data to that question – the responders simply left that sub-total as “unknown”.  One suspects that a high proportion of those missing numbers  pertain to late-term abortions in the over-21-weeks category that abortion providers were reluctant to identify to their State Health Authorities – however, it is impossible to ascertain the true number.  The level of intentional under-reporting is disturbing.  Nevertheless, it is not difficult to conclude that factoring up the CDC number of 21-weeks-and-over abortions for the points listed in the paragraphs above readily comes up with a total of 20,000-plus abortions a year that are in the late-term post 21-weeks-and-over category.

The subject of viability will be presented in the next post, dealing with hard data from several national medical studies in the United States and in the United Kingdom, proving that the definition of viability has changed from the totally-guesstimated 28 weeks of the early 1970s to  the factual 22 weeks lmp in the present day medical environment of NICU’s in university and other major hospitals.   

Nearly all such op-ed articles have been by authors sympathetic to Republicans and/or clearly unsympathetic toward President Obama and the Reid/Pelosi radical-liberal branch of the Democrat Party.  Some articles have been thoughtful and sober in tone (e.g. Kimberly Strassel), others have been cruel and unnecessarily scathing (e.g. Dorothy Rabinowitz).  One senses that, within the latter group, those who most viciously castigate Santorum are embarrassed by his openness in talking about abortion up front.

Rick Santorum is not the best Republican candidate to put up against, and beat, Barak Obama and help other Republican senatorial candidates wrest control of the U.S. Senate from the Reid Democrat majority.  (One caveat – much depends who the Republican Vice-President nominee is chosen to be.)

Mitt Romney is the optimum candidate to beat Obama.  Mitt Romney’s two main disadvantages are (1) Romneycare in Massachussetts; and (2) histrionic on-air opposition from the ultra-conservative talk show hosts (Hannity, Limbaugh, Ingraham, Levin, Beck, Savage) causing low-Republican-voter turnout based on turn-off, as in the 2008 election that enabled Obama to become President of the United States.

Having said that – i.e. indirectly stating that the MAIN goals of this election are to replace Obama and to change party control of the Senate – we super-conservatives who also unashamedly and openly broadcast our respect for human life in the womb DO admire the man, Rick Santorum, and we do believe he would be a great president of the United States of America.

What Rick Santorum has done in running for this nomination over the past year is to bring social issues in America to the fore, at a time when the American public has been totally consumed by the disastrous economic policies of this president and administration:- massive debt and government spending, massive unemployment, expanded welfare subsidization (encouraging non-work), stifling of oil and gas exploration/production at home, massive default crises due to ‘unaffordable’ housing (the Frank & Dodd Show), Obama’s “the right war” in Afghanistan, and industry-ruining socialized Obamacare.

Rick Santorum has in effect said, “there IS something else at stake in America; it is our very fiber; it is our moral compass; it is our founding principles; it IS why we are different from Europe, the Eurozone that has been declining into ineffectual secular discontent en masse; think about it Americans…we should not go there; we must respect all life and we must preserve our religious freedoms.”  THIS is what Santorum has done for America this past year, and he has been magnificent in doing so.

If Rick Santorum does not succeed in this presidential bid, let us hope that he will once again become a United States Senator; that he will once again sponsor a Bill like the D&X PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION BAN ACT BILL that he shepherded over a decade ago, this time a Bill to Ban D&E Dismemberment Abortion of post-21-weeks’ viable infants for elective reasons.  Santorum is THE champion of anti-late-term abortion of viable infants in America (over 20,000 a year by that D&E Dismemberment procedure that abortionists call “the classical method”) and he should be re-empowered as a legislator to do something about it – as he did before.      

Opinion polls repeatedly showed that over two-thirds (68% to 70%) of American adults were appalled by partial birth abortion and were in favor of a federal ban on the D&X PBA procedure except in a rare case where it might be necessary to save the life of the mother.  

In spite of multiple Partial Birth Abortion Ban bills passing in both houses (Congress and Senate) in the 1990s, by significant majorities, they were vetoed by then-President Clinton each time.  The Senate was unable to reach the necessary two-thirds override votes.

It took the election of President G. W. Bush to get the eventual Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 signed into law – without an exception for so-called ‘health consideration’ of the mother, but with an exception to save the ‘life’ of the mother.  The 2003 PBA Ban Act was subsequently upheld, as is, by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Legislative voting on the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 (and prior votes on all earlier-proposed PBA Ban bills) proved to be the ultimate litmus test as to how U.S. senators and congressmen personally felt about and politically judged the morality of termination, by abortion, of post-21-weeks’ gestation infants.  It was legislatively acknowledged, and testified-to by medical experts, that such D&X partial birth abortions – about 3,000 a year – were never medically necessary.  

Religious preference of the lawmakers – those elected representatives of their constituents – seemed to make scant difference to their votes.  Forty (40) Catholic congressmen and women voted against the Ban on Partial Birth Abortion (even though the final vote in the House of Representatives was overwhelmingly in favor of the Ban by 281 to 142).  In the U.S. Senate, ten (10) Catholic senators voted against the PBA Ban – where once again the final Senate vote was 64 to 33 in favor of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.

The Jewish vote was similar to Catholic legislators’ votes, probably even more pronounced toward support for continuation of late-term D&X Partial Birth Abortion.  Of the 26 Jewish congressmen voting, only 1 voted in favor of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.  In the U.S. Senate, only 2 of 11 Jewish senators supported the overwhelmingly-passed Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.

Political affiliation DID, however, have a recognizable impact on the way those U.S. legislators voted in the 1990s and up through early 2003.  Returning to the important Catholic vote, of the 50 Catholic U.S. legislators (in House and Senate) who voted against the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, 49 were Democrats!

And geographic location seems also to have had an impact on U.S. legislators’ votes.  Of the 50 Catholic U.S. legislators who opposed passing the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, 13 Catholics were from the abortion capital of the world, California.  In fact, of the total Nays (all votes against the PBA Ban Act 2003) 32 were from California.

In fact, of the combined 175 Senate and House Nay votes opposing the PBA Ban Act of 2003 (versus 359 Yea votes) some 78 Nay votes were from just 6 states:  California, Florida, Texas, and the eastern seaboard pro-abortion bloc comprising New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.  76 of the 78 Nay-voters from these 6 states were Democrats.

It seems very clear that, whatever the key underlying reason for those Senators and Representatives who voted against the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003,  those that did so are – by an extraordinarily large  percentage – members of the Democratic Party.  Of the U.S. Senators voting Nay, 30 of the 33 were Democrats.  Of the U.S. Representatives voting Nay, of the 142 voters a total of 137 were Democrats.

Why is that?  The question is asked in several books and countless articles, and never fully answered.  Norman Podhoretz’s book “Why Are Jews Liberals?” is riveting but does not zero in on abortion as a major issue for Jews, except superficially.  David Carlin wrote a book entitled “Can A Catholic Be A Democrat?”; the answer is obviously yes…but why?  Is it due to their Irish or other ethnic heritage, or their concern for the poor – or is it because they are simply in favor of abortion, even late-term abortion, for any reason at any time (like D&X Partial Birth Abortion and D&E Late-Term Dismemberment Abortion)?  Even if it means going against the fundamental tenets of their Catholic faith?  Another author, Michael Winters, wrote a book, “Left At The Altar”, which speculates that Catholics may help to change the Democratic Party – but convincingly?

A more thorough analysis is presented in Ramesh Ponnuru’s brutally-titled “The Party Of Death” (subtitled “The Democrats, the Media, the Courts, and the Disregard for Human Life”).  The author points out that in decades past, the Democratic Party was more inclusive and took a more nuanced view of abortion, with prominent leaders such as Hubert Humphrey and Edmund Muskie being openly pro-life.  ”Somehow,” he writes, “the Democratic Party changed from being the ‘party of the little guy’ to turning its back on the littlest guy of all.”

However, pro-abortion advocates that go beyond the pale and advocate late-term second-trimester abortion – of what are now known to be potentially viable infants at post-21 weeks’ gestation – by either method of D&X Partial Birth Abortion or D&E Dismemberment Abortion are by no means restricted to above-referenced Catholic and Jewish sectors.  Women legislators who voted Nay on the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 outnumbered Yea female voters by a ratio of 3-to-2.

It has been so long now since the debates on Partial Birth Abortion that the American public seems to have forgotten how frightful that procedure was, and forgotten how adamant they were that late-term D&X abortions by that Partial Birth Abortion method should be banned.  What the public never realized, in or before 2003, was that there was – and is – another equally gruesome method of late-term abortion – perpetrated on precisely the same gestation age and same potentially-viable infants – known as “the classic late-term abortion method” comprising D&E (dilation and evacuation) Dismemberment Abortion.

D&E Dismemberment Abortion was performed on more than 17,000 viable and potentially-viable infants annually prior to 2003.  D&X Partial Birth Abortion was performed at that time on about 3000 viable and potentially-viable infants annually in the two decades preceding 2003.  Immediately the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 became effective as law, those 3000 annual D&X abortions reverted to being D&E Dismemberment Abortions.  Since 2003, the number of late-term D&E Dismemberment Abortions of potentially-viable infants has exceeded 20,000 per year.

The D&X Partial Birth Abortion Ban did not save one single viable infant’s life.

The eventual Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 and the long, long debate leading to its passage, was to reveal to the American public the horror of that procedure, and most importantly, to reveal clearly how the political views and positions of U.S. elected legislators stood in relation to late-term abortion of viable infants, abortions at any time in the gestation cycle, for any reason.

It is nearly a decade later on.  Late-term D&E Dismemberment Abortion of potentially-viable infants continues apace, at the rate of nearly a quarter of a million such infants a decade, by a medical abortion procedure – of dismembering living children in the womb – that is even more gruesome and primitive than the partial birth abortion method ever was.

It is past time to once again gauge the political positions and moral views of the current cadre of U.S. congressmen and senators in regard to a potential Ban on D&E late-term Dismemberment Abortion (with the same exception as in the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, i.e. taking into consideration the life of the mother) and the means for doing so is to put forward a Bill in the House of Representatives and begin anew the long debate.  

A draft Bill has been published on this blog website, modeled precisely on the wording and rationale of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 – refer to the April 26, 2011 post on this site, and to other earlier posts on the same subject.

The election season is upon America again and everything, understandably, is about the jobs crisis, the budget crisis, the potential double-dip recession looming crisis, the European crisis, the housing crisis, and above all the lack of governance leadership crisis.  No one, but no one, wants to talk about late-term abortion in America, or what it may be doing to potentially erode our nation’s moral fiber.  No one wants to know the real numbers.  No one believes the facts, that over 20,000 truly viable and potentially-viable infants are killed each year by stripping their limbs and heads from their torsos, in-utero, and evacuating the destroyed fetal parts by suction.

This crisis of late-term D&E Dismemberment Abortion in America has to be talked about head-on, has to be debated, analyzed, brought out in the open.  It will be banned, eventually; one would hope much sooner than in a decade hence.  If we Americans defer the dialogue of this core moral issue now, we may not easily solve the crises involving the other issues that are confounding our lives at this time.

We can not count on this current President ever signing into law a similar D&E Ban Act as the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, a new Act comprising a Ban on D&E Dismemberment Abortion.  President Obama would veto such a Bill just as President Clinton did over a decade ago.  But the composition of congressmen and women and U.S. senators may continue to change…maybe even previously-pro-late-term abortion positions of many Catholic and Jewish and women lawmakers in the U.S. Congress and Senate may change.  Indeed, perhaps a majority of Democrats may change their minds about this pivotal issue.  Late-Term D&E Abortion should not be seen as a core Democratic Party political tenet.

Juan O’Callahan  29 September, 2011     

This writer sent the following to the Editor at the Journal regarding Dan Senor’s piece:-

Is “Israel” finally trumping “abortion” as a turnaround raison d’etre vis-a-vis the traditional Jewish Democrat vote and ‘08 Obama obsession?  (“Why Obama Is Losing the Jewish Vote”, op-ed, Dan Senor, 09-14-2011.)

As Norman Podoretz made clear in his 2009 “Why Jews Are Liberals?”, the unequivocal answer appears near the end of his book:  “In particular (McCain’s) long-standing pro-life position was bound to make him unacceptable to the overwhelming majority of Jewish women, who seemed to think that the absolute right to an abortion had been inscribed on the tablets Moses brought down from Sinai:  And when he chose Sarah Palin, an equally adamant foe of abortion, to be his running mate, he guaranteed that hardly a Jewish woman in America would vote for him.”

That probably explains why, earlier, Jewish U.S. senators and congressmen in Washington voted against the overwhelmingly passed Late-Term D&X Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 by the astonishing margin of 92% (34 to 3).

Republican President George W. Bush was one one staunchest friends of Israel that American Jews ever had.  McCain would have been the same.  President Obama has been anything but.

However, if op-ed author Dan Senor thinks Jewish women will vote for a pro-life Republican, or their menfolk will do the same (courage!), because of this administration’s diffident treatment of Israel, he may be expecting a minor miracle. 

Let’s pray for a miracle!  The vote in New York regarding replacement for Mr. Weiner’s seat is a promising omen.
 

‘Gradualists’ are those who may be seen to occupy a middle ground, by (possibly) accepting certain legal limits to certain abortions of infants who have reached a presumed gestation age of viability, say, 24 to 26 weeks (according to Frances Kissling, a proponent of abortion):  But who also do not see anything wrong with any or all earlier abortions such as during the first trimester and most of the second trimester.

Gradualists may consider themselves and be defined as “pro-choice” (as most are). A few gradualists may be of the waffling variety, with the sometimes-heard rhetoric – (especially from a few liberal Republican political candidates) – “I’m basically pro-life, in the sense that Im against late-term abortion”.  

Professor Kaczor defines ‘Absolutists’ as those at the extremes on either end of the abortion debate.  ”At one extreme, absolutist critics of abortion hold that abortion is always wrong and that the basic moral status of every human being is equal:  At the other (extreme), absolutist defenders of abortion hold that (abortion) is always ethically permissible, even moments before the birth of a full-term baby.”

I am an absolutist critic of abortion and I absolutely hold that the moral and God-given status of every human being, from conception to natural death, is equal.

At the same time, I am an advocate of promoting a federal legislative directive banning the abortion of any child in the womb at or over the gestation age of 21 weeks lmp, the age of 21 to 22 weeks lmp being the now-proven and medically definitive viability gestation age of extremely premature-birth infants = NOT 24 to 26 weeks – (see US and UK medical studies referred to earlier in this blog).  The 21-week cut off vis-a-vis abortion may warrant being lowered to 20 weeks, for yet another another reason, which comprises the indication based on further medical studies that infants of that age are capable of experiencing pain.  The federal ban on such late-term D&E abortions at 20 weeks and over would emulate the guidelines and legislative language set forth in the 2003 Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.

What Professor Kaczor omitted from his analysis is that it is possible to be both ‘Absolutist’ in reference to abortion, and in favor of banning late term-abortions (which he seems to assign as the territory of only ‘Gradualists’) as a tactical procedure:  I call that, which is what I am, being an ‘Incrementalist’.

I am an Incrementalist because we CAN ban such late-term D&E abortions (with an exception to save the life of the mother, as in the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act) and actually save the lives of over 20,000 such aborted, viable infants a year.  We can do that soon!  We will not be able to ban all abortions, to overturn Roe v. Wade any time soon.

The Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 was the ultimate litmus test a decade ago as to how our legislators, of either party and of all sectors and faiths, voted on that issue.  That was – unfortunately – its only value.  It did not, and has not, saved ANY babies lives, late-term or otherwise.  That’s because the 3,000 late-term babies that were previously aborted by the D&X Partial Birth Abortion method, simply continued to be aborted each year by the equally painful and macabre D&E Dismemberment Abortion method (comprising the other 17,000 late-term babies aborted each year by that so-called “classical abortion method”).

I am an Incrementalist and a Pro-Life Absolutist.

Several responders take issue with that, and insist that one must fight to ban all abortions now, and not divert efforts by hoping to ban one small sliver of the million-three-hundred-thousand infants destroyed each year.

I beg to differ.  It IS worth the fight to Ban Late-Term D&E Abortions NOW for two important reasons.  One, it can be done:  And we save over 20,000 lives a year – nearly quarter of a million in a decade.  Two, it will once again give us a stark litmus test, real voting records, of our current crop of legislators in Congress and the U.S. Senate, on the inflammatory issue of killing viable babies by dismembering their bodies in the womb, shredding their limbs.  

We need to record once again how the Catholic senators and congressmen would vote on this vital issue; how our women and men would vote; how Jewish legislators would vote this time; how those of other faiths and of no faith would vote.  This is THE bedrock, the keystone issue underpinning the morality of America.   It needs to be recorded and voted on.  

Are we going to go the way of secular Europe:  Or are we going to remain that one nation apart from the rest?

Of comments submitted to this blog, over half comprise negative assertions of the sort summarized above.  (As notified last year, and in 2009, we do not publish comments if responders decline to identify themselves.)

On the other hand, very few respondents appear to be supportive of the author’s effort to ban late-term elective D&E abortions of viable infants; or to express surprise or shock at the magnitude of the numbers of potentially-viable children aborted annually (i.e. 20,000); or applaud a goal to make the American people aware of our nation’s virtual infanticide; or even indicate that they did not realize there was a difference between late-term D&X partial birth abortion (already banned) and late-term D&E elective ‘dismemberment’ abortion of viable babies.  

With such ambivalence, one is tempted to consider if one is doing the right thing.

Yet, this author is convinced that the real numbers and facts are so extraordinary that most people cannot grasp them; or, in extreme instances, people just will not believe them.  A typical comment by an unidentified respondent:  ”Your article is not credible.  You could be making up the numbers.  I can’t locate any corroborating studies.”  This despite an enormous library of cccf research posts throughout 2009, 2010 and 2011 citing references, data and conclusions from recent and earlier medical studies, annual surveillance data, analyses and reports in this country and abroad (e.g. CDC, US NICHD, UK EPICure, UCONN Health Center, Guttmacher Institute, California DHCS, Harvard Medical among others) including web address links.

Naysayers are reluctant to do research.  It’s easier to close the lid and shut one’s eyes to the truth.

Yes, the numbers are real!  There really ARE 20,000-plus potentially viable babies aborted every year in the U.S., in the second half of the second trimester.  Yes, the reasons for late-term second-trimester D&E abortions of potentially viable infants are virtually ALL elective; almost none are by reason of medical necessity.  Yes, the proven potential viability of infants in the womb IS NOW 21 to 22 weeks gestation, not 28 or 26 weeks as previously ‘guesstimated’ at the time Roe v. Wade was enacted by the then members of the U.S. Supreme Court.  

Yes, we are killing real, survivable, ‘ensouled’ human beings – real persons – at the rate of 400 children a week, every week of the year, by the D&E medical abortion method of dismantling and shredding their bodies while alive and feeling pain. 

Now the gestation age at which infants in the womb actually feel pain (medically proven and defined as 20 weeks, if not earlier), and the gestation age at which infants born extremely prematurely at major hospitals’ neonatal units and surviving in significant percentages (thus setting the new post-2000 definition of infant viability as circa 21/22 weeks gestation lmp…which is the equivalent of 20 weeks from conception) have come together.

There can no longer be any doubt in the minds of U.S. legislators.  No infants of 20 weeks’ (lmp) gestation or older should be permitted to be aborted unless the life of the mother is in grave danger (should such a pregnancy termination not be performed).  The lives of 20,000 viable babies a year would be saved.  America would not be killing it’s viable children.  America would not be inflicting indescribable pain on viable infants, nor would its medical practitioners be performing a killing procedure reminiscent of the the fifteenth century capital punishment method of drawing and quartering the human body.   

An unidentified responder (apparently a ‘Catholic mother’ but proudly not in harmony with her Church, the Vatican or the U.S. Bishops) submitted a professionally composed list of arguments as to why late-term second-trimester D&X partial birth abortion, and D&E in-utero dismemberment abortion methods should both be permissible, for any reason at any time through 28 weeks’ gestation, citing a 2006 Guttmacher study for some of her support.  (However, the referenced Guttmacher survey confirmed, in fact, that no second trimester abortions were performed for medical reasons.)  That concerned ‘Catholic mother’ – using an alias and ‘nospam.net’ mycingular mail – was likely a staff member of a pro-abortion group.  Fine, if the writer identified herself and her affiliation.  We would then publish the responder’s comments in full.

Be assured; no numbers on this blog are “made up”.  Where estimates are made, the sources for reaching those estimates are clearly identified.

Think about it.  Then again, think about it again.  20,000 annually, is the number of viable and potentially viable children who are aborted by shredding every year.  

For a comparison of the language used in the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 and the proposed language for a similar Ban Act for Post-20-Weeks’ D&E Dismemberment Abortion (with an exception, in both Acts, as worded in the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, for the “life of the mother” being gravely endangered) see three earlier Posts/Articles below, the first and most recent being “PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTION AND D&E DISMEMBERMENT ABORTION BAN ACT/S COMBINED” dated March 12th, 2011:  a working draft entitled “Completing Section 3 To Draft Late-Term D&E Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act Proposal” also dated March 12, 2011; and the earliest entitled “Late-Term D&E Abortion Ban Act Draft Bill” dated January 2, 2011.

What the “Completed Section 3″ of the proposed Draft Act/Bill does is to combine the proposed language of the D&E Dismemberment Abortion Ban Act with the very language used in the D&X Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.  Since both D&X and D&E Abortion rationales at this stage of pregnancy are the same, the gestation ages of the infants are identical (i.e. late 2nd-Trimester), the purposes of both Abortion methods are in neither case ever medically necessary, and that severe pain is caused in both gruesome procedures, it is logical that the language of both Bills/Acts are identical.

The number of infants destroyed by these two procedures, D&X and D&E, during the second half of the 2nd-Trimester – when those infants have now been medically proven to be potentially-viable or positively viable – over the past 35 years must total on the order of 700,000 (i.e. at least 20,000 per year).  Both the U.K. and the U.S. medical studies on the viability of extremely premature birth infants show statistically that for the period encompassing 22 through 26 weeks’ gestation (lmp) the average rate of viability to survival over two years of age was in excess of 50%.  That statistic would indicate that the minimum number of Positively Viable Babies killed by D&E and D&X Late-Term 2nd-Trimester Abortion in America since Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton has totaled more than 350,000 human beings – persons – viable, survivable persons.   Not only has this carnage been “virtual infanticide” as Patrick Moynihan said; it may be more accurate now to declare that it has as “virtual genocide”.

The facts below explain the seriousness of this annual destruction of 20,000 viable and potentially-viable infants in America.  The facts are unknown in America.  The title of the power-point presentation should be “The Unknown D&E.”