Daily Archives: June 27, 2011

Unions Made Him Do It!

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Unions made Justice Prosser put his hands around Justice Bradley’s neck! John Hayward writes for Human Events —

It seems the Wisconsin Supreme Court provides a tense working environment, with no love lost between the liberal bloc headed by Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and the more conservative justices. Prosser has accused Abrahamson and Bradley of being “masters at deliberately goading people into perhaps incautious statements,” and claims she successfully goaded him into calling her a “total bitch” on at least one occasion.

It’s disheartening to learn that a state Supreme Court is full of goading and bitching, instead of wisdom and scholarship, but as we have seen over the past year, Big Labor politics does not create a solemn environment for statecraft, especially when Big Labor is losing.

I’ve been withholding judgment on exactly what happened between the justices, but whenever any man says a woman made him assault her, verbally or physically, I am inclined to think he’s an abusive SOB who thinks he is entitled to shove women around.

Elsewhere — Michele Bachmann confuses John Wayne with John Wayne Gacy, but refuses to forgive Chris Wallace for asking her if she is a flake.

Sarah Palin is sniffing around in Iowa, pretending to be low key. I’m wondering if she’s trying to arrange to be declared a candidate by popular acclamation.

The Fetus Gestapo Tightening Its Grip

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New laws in several states prohibit nearly all abortions after 20 weeks’ gestation. This flies in the face of Roe v. Wade, which permits states to prohibit elective abortion only after viability is possible, at roughly 24 weeks’ gestation.

The laws are being justified on the theory that a fetus at 20 weeks can perceive pain, in spite of the fact that its cerebral cortex has not yet developed. Most scientists insist that a functioning cerebral cortex is necessary to perceive pain, or anything else.

On a Web site summarizing their case, abortion opponents counter with recent studies by a handful of scientists claiming that a functioning cortex is not necessary for the experience of pain. They charge that the American and British obstetrical colleges are biased, dominated by abortion supporters.

Projection, much?

These laws allow for an exception only in the case of possible death or permanent bodily injury of the mother. The law focuses on a couple who were not allowed to terminate a 22 week pregnancy, even though the fetus had stopped developing and the pregnancy had caused a serious infection.

Even worse, states are beginning to prosecute women for stillbirths. Kansas is attempting to shut down its three remaining abortion clinics through onerous and arbitrary building regulations.

Several states have passed new laws that force women to overcome arbitrary and unnecessary hurdles to terminate pregnancies. These include coercive “counseling” and ultrasounds. And, of course, several states are moving toward defunding Planned Parenthood, or have already defunded it. Across the country there has been a huge spike in state anti-abortion legislation.

I am glad to hear that everything is so hunky-dory in so many states that legislators have nothing else to do but think up ways to ban abortions. I’d hate to think this obsession with womb regulation might be taking precedence over more pressing matters. (/snark)

But I say again, polls going back many years show that American public opinion on abortion is not nearly as extreme as what one sees in a lot of state legislatures. A Time poll conducted last week showed that 64 percent of adults nationwide think that women have a right to terminate a pregnancy in the first few weeks, as opposed to 35 percent who think they don’t. So, while many Americans lean more conservatively on such issues as parental notification and limits on later-term abortions, there has long been a broad consensus that abortions in the first trimester or so (which are 88 percent of abortions performed in the U.S.) are a woman’s business, not the government’s.

This leads to two question. One, it seems to me there long has been a pattern for state legislatures to be more right wing than the the people of a state on many issues. Over the years I’ve noticed this in regard to several issues, from flying Confederate flags over statehouses to allowing bar patrons to carry guns. This speaks to the power of right-wing organizations to elect candidates, but I really wish someone would do a comprehensive study of this someday.

Second, I do wonder what the people in many of these states think. I suspect many of them voted for the guys who promised to cut taxes and grow jobs. Once elected, however, they appear to spend the bulk of their time trying to shut down abortion clinics. Which doesn’t grow jobs. When are they going to realize that if they want sane, responsible government, they have to weed out politicians who are obsessed with abortion.