ABORTION CONUNDRUM

So the 'pro choice' lobby doesn't want the American people to have the right to choose their own laws on the subject of abortion.

That's not their only inconsistency.

I suspect that the NARAL constituency would enthusiastically support the idea of criminal penalties for certain types of abortions.

Sound crazy? Well, think about this:

The Michigan statute on the subject of abortion is still on the books, as are most of the other states' pre Roe v Wade laws. The US Supreme Court doesn't repeal state statutes. It just says they are unenforceable if they violate the US Constitution.

So the law books in Michigan still provide that if a woman dies while undergoing an abortion, the person trying to cause her to miscarry is guilty of manslaughter.

OK. Now suppose that a teen age girl gets pregnant and her boy friend agrees - maybe even persuades her - to end her pregnancy with a coat hanger. In the process, he punctures an artery and the girl bleeds to death.

Now suppose this boy friend is arrested and charged with manslaughter under Michigan's 1847 abortion law.

Where do the pro choice people line up on this one? Will they insist that the girl had an absolute constitutional right to do whatever she wanted with her own body, and thereore no crime was committed? Or will they back off of their extreme positon and concede that SOME abortions can be outlawed, and SOME abortionists can be prosecuted?

After all, the tragic consequences of coathanger abortions have always been the centerpiece of the pro choice argument. Will they now say that the only constitutional right created by Roe v Wade was a right of medical doctors to perform abortions, and not a right of women to terminate their pregnancies?

Harry Blackman's fuzzy opinion in Roe v Wade talks about 'a woman and her doctor' making the choice to end a pregnancy. He didn't mention ' a woman and her boy friend.'

One problem with unduly active appellate judges is that they never hold public hearings before they do their legislating. It's an unhappy fact that the black robe syndrome imputes infallibilty to appellate judges, when in fact they are just flawed human beings like everyone else.