During the debates over partial-birth abortion, the only truth uttered by its staunchest defenders is that those who seek to outlaw the practice will not stop there. Banning this particularly gruesome method is an end in itself, to be sure, but it is also a means to another end: namely, ending all abortions.
In the Senate last week, pro-lifers lost the vote but won the debate. Presidential spokesman Mike McCurry said after a so-called compromise measure was defeated, "We are now headed, obviously, to a veto and that won't accomplish anything in the long run."
Yes, it will.
Even though senators failed to muster the necessary 67 votes to override a promised presidential veto of the partial-birth abortion bill, pro-life forces are actually in better shape now than in the heady days after the Webster decision in 1989. Every vote the pro-abortion extremists are forced to make diminishes their strength.
Senator by senator, authority by authority, the debate over partial-birth abortion is winning. Last year's debate brought C. Everett Koop back into the picture on the pro-life side; pro-abortion Sen. Pat Moynihan (D-N.Y.) was forced to concede the procedure was "too close to infanticide." This time it was the American Medical Association and Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). And don't forget the admission of abortion lobbyist Ron Fitzsimmons that the pro-abortion talking points are lies.
The case of Sen. Daschle is interesting. Although he believes the partial-birth abortion ban would not survive a test of the Supreme Court's surrealistic jurisprudence on this issue, he said: "You could make a very strong argument that this abhorrent procedure needs to be stopped regardless of the circumstances. And if this will bring about some new direction by the court with regard to how we might effectively eliminate the procedure, we might be helped by allowing the legislation to pass."
And despite the phony "grievous injury" health exceptions in Sen. Daschle's "compromise" bill, it purports to ban not just partial-birth abortions, but all third-trimester abortions. This is progress.
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Issue: "Army's new MP's?"
May 31, 1997
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