Abortion

Pregnancy Facts

Abortion and Crime Statistics

Data from CDC and the Justice department. These facts can by checked by anyone with a computer. Do a search for the statistics and then compare them. Two of many websites with this kind of data are http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_fact.htm for facts on abortion and http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm for facts on crime. For some reason they are almost never listed side by side.

In a debate about facts like these a pro-choice advocate did his own study comparing data on the web on poverty, abortion access, and violent crime. He found a stronger relationship between abortion access and violent crime than between poverty and violent crime. There is a very, very close historical relationship between abortion and all acts which are today condemned as illegal violence against people. This shows up every time the facts are listed together and can be traced back to Egypt, Greece and Rome in the legal history of all these behaviors. The cultural or emotional acceptance of these acts by a society does not vary independently, they always vary together.

There will be a temptation on the part of abortion advocates to claim that the increase in abortion and rape together is a natural result of more rapes causing more pregnancies due to rape and thus more abortions. This hypothesis is not supported by the numbers. The increase in abortions is per thousand women an increase from 5 to 25 from 1970 to 1980. The increase in rapes in the same period per hundred thousand in the population was from 20.5 to 36.8 or an increase of 16.3 per hundred thousand. For every hundred thousand people there were twenty thousand more abortions and only 16.3 more rapes. In addition, rape almost never results in pregnancy. While some scientific studies have found that rape is more likely to result in pregnancy than consensual sex, the rate of pregnancy from rape is still very low. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1398894.stm Rape results in pregnancy about 6.4% of the time. So the increase in rapes would have produced only 10.4 more pregnancies per million people. That same million people would have seen two hundred thousand more abortions. What these statistics show is that rape varies with abortion because they are psychologically related actions, not because rape produces pregnancy which results in abortion. Both reflect a feeling in society that it is legitimate for the strong to abuse the weak.

It is a useful rhetorical device to begin this essay demonstrating that when the Supreme Court enacted Roe vs. Wade they accidentally made it legal for a husband to kill his wife. It will proceed to a discussion of the close parallels in the legal history of these two behaviors which made this almost inevitable. It will then discuss why this parallel exists in terms of evolution, instinct, and human nature (all very Darwinian). It will point out that since society generally makes abortion and wife-killing either legal or illegal at the same time it is quite likely, in fact almost certain, that if abortion remains legal long enough, husbands will acquire the accepted right to kill their wives. Last it will point out that it is not just abortion and wife killing that group together in legal history but also infanticide and slavery. Since slavery was such a hot button topic that it fueled one Civil War in this country it follows that, at least theoretically, legalized abortion is emotionally loaded enough to constitute as much of a threat to the continued existence of the United States as legalized slavery was.

Political Rhetoric is great because so often the people screaming things in public forums convinced that they are presenting powerful arguments for their side are saying things that to a logical mind mean exactly the opposite of what they think they mean. This has been shown in previous instances in this book. To prove that the Supreme Court made it legal for husbands to kill their wives when they wrote Roe, the best witness is the Feminist Movement in the US.

The abortion issue is said to hang on the personhood of the unborn. As they are not persons they do not have a right to life. In Roe the SC ignored a huge body of their own past decisions allowing the rights under the 14^th amendment to illegal aliens though the 14^th amendment states;

Despite a huge body of law ignoring the word naturalized and asserting the rights of illegal aliens the SC chose to interpret born differently than naturalized and ignore all the rest of the legal decisions they had ever made with respect to the phrase ‘born or naturalized’. They chose to decide that the children of US citizens had fewer rights when unborn than aliens have after illegally entering the US.

They designated the unborn as non-persons. They stated that they doubted if the Framers of the 14^th intended it to cover the unborn. The legal history of behaviors like abortion, infanticide, wife-killing and slavery are similar. This means that when movements for the abolition of slavery are strong, movements for the abolition of abortion are also strong. There were strong anti-abortion movements in the states around the time of the Civil War and many anti-abortion laws were passed in this period. If they could have been asked it is quite likely that the people who passed the 14^th amendment to abolish slavery would have included abortion.

Now, Roe was passed in 1973. The 14^th amendment was passed in 1868. If the states passed anti-abortion laws more than a century before Roe they passed them at exactly the same time that the abolition movement was leading up to the Civil War. Society tends to instinctively class abortion, slavery, wife-killing and infanticide together as similar behaviors. A fact demonstrated by the legal history of these behaviors. So, it is quite likely that if you had asked the abolitionists who passed the 14^th amendment about abortion they would have extended its protection to the unborn. This is also witnessed to by the main decision in Roe quoted below.

In other words at exactly the same time the US was outlawing slavery through a bloody Civil War. The 14^th was passed in 1868 the latter half of the 19^th century. The anti-abortion laws were of the same vintage and spirit as the 14^th amendment and the abolition of slavery. The majority opinion of the SC quoting these facts while supporting abortion is another example of people saying things that prove the opposite of what they think they prove.

Still the legal fact is that the unborn are not persons under Constitutional Law. The question is are women persons under Constitutional Law. The 14^th amendment did not give women the right to vote, so obviously the Framers were not thinking of women when they framed it. As the Supreme Court says in Roe, “The Constitution does not define ``person'' in so many words. Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment contains three references to ``person.'' The first, in defining ``citizens,'' speaks of ``persons born or naturalized in the United States.'' The word also appears both in the Due Process Clause and in the Equal Protection Clause. ``Person'' is used in other places in the Constitution. But in nearly all these instances, the use of the word is such that it has application only postnatally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible pre-natal application.* All this, together with our observation, that throughout the major portion of the 19th century prevailing legal abortion practices were far freer than they are today, persuades us that the word ``person,'' as used in the Fourteenth Amendment, does not include the unborn.” end quote.

Their reasoning is flawed because they are citing the legal situation prior to the 14^th not the attitudes and practices passed concurrent in society with the 14^th, which was a time of great social change, but it proves equally well that women are not persons under the 14^th because clearly they could not vote and otherwise exercise the rights of persons in the times cited by the SC. Indeed, it was not until 1871 that any court in America made it illegal for a man to beat his wife,

This is the same period in which the 14^th Amendment was passed and the Civil War won. This was three years after the passage of the 14^th Amendment. The rights of women, the unborn, and slaves are tied together in the history of the law. This decision was later overturned by a higher court showing that the 14^th did not apply to women.

More recently the Feminist movement attempted to pass the ERA which would have formally made women legally persons under Constitutional Law. It failed to pass. The Feminists know that women are not legally persons under Constitutional Law, it is witnessed to by their public rhetoric and therefore a fact of unimpeachable authority. Constitutional personhood does not protect the right to life of women any more than it protects the right to life of the unborn.

The Supreme Court then engages in a discussion of the legal history of laws against abortion noting that abortion was frequently legal throughout much of history. Again Feminists will point out that throughout much of history husbands had the legal right to kill their wives. By the unimpeachable witness of the Feminist movement in the US there are as many legal precedents for husbands having the legal right to kill their wives as there are for legalizing abortion.

Next comes the issue of Privacy. The Right to Privacy is clearly related to the sanctity of the home and the Castle Doctrine. It is a penumbra derived from amendments based on this common law doctrine. Extending that to medical procedures is the penumbra of a penumbra, much weaker in terms of direct legal support. A man’s right to privacy in his home is much stronger legally than the right to privacy in getting medical procedures from a third party. Still, the Supreme Court had to discredit the Hippocratic Oath, because the Hippocratic Oath forbids abortion. They overlooked the fact that the Hippocratic Oath is also the source of our tradition of privacy and confidentiality in consulting physicians. To quote from their decision again,

It is worth noting that when Nazi Doctors who performed experiments on death camp inmates were asked how they could do such things being doctors sworn to the Hippocratic Oath they replied in the same language the SC quotes above. They had been taught that the Hippocratic Oath was religious superstition. As the authority the SC chose to quote said,

Such authorities and doctrines to be found legitimized in a decision of the United States Supreme Court.

The reasoning here is that despite the fact that,

It is alright to ignore the apex of medical ethics because other people ignored it in the past. It follows then that slavery is alright because there are legal precedents for it in the past. Not just the clause about abortion but every clause, poisons, and privacy were excepted by this reasoning.

The Hippocratic oath is the source of our Medical Ethics and its commandment about confidentiality,

is equally subject to being ignored as inflexible or inexpedient. The reasoning that the SC adopted to ignore the Hippocratic Oath also implicitly or potentially invalidated the right to privacy in medical practice as the ethics embodied in the Hippocratic Oath is the source of that expectation in our society. So, the right to privacy which protects abortion is not just the penumbra of a penumbra, but the crippled shadow of a penumbra of a penumbra. It is crippled by the very reasoning advanced by the SC in Roe with regard to the Hippocratic Oath.

It follows then that a man’s right to privacy in his home protects his right to kill his wife much more strongly than a woman’s right to privacy in a Doctors office protects her right to an abortion. The sad fact is that the reasoning in Roe supports the legal right of a husband to kill his wife much more strongly and consistently than it supports the legal right of a woman to an abortion. If Roe proved that women have a Constitutional Right to an abortion then, under Roe, men must have a much stronger and more absolute Constitutional Right to kill their wives.

There is the issue of viability. Roe allows states to enact laws prohibiting abortion after the fetus is viable. The language of the decision calls it an interest in the potential life. The language is used loosely, as the right to life of the fetus is denied. The accurate language in context of the decision is potential life of a 14^th amendment person. In the situation of a man killing his wife there is no potential life of a 14^th amendment person. The woman is not and never will be a 14^th amendment person. The question of viability of the potential 14^th amendment person is entirely absent from the legal authority of a husband to kill his wife. Therefore the man has the legal right to kill his wife.

It is worth noting that one of the fundamental issues here is the 14^th amendment. It empowers the SC to void state laws if they violate the rights of citizens. The principle on which Roe is founded is that a state has no authority to make laws limiting the exercise of traditionally existing rights of Citizens. Since there is a large body of legal precedent for the right of a woman to an abortion it is designated such an existing right included under the ninth amendment and constitutionally protected from state interference under the 14^th. Despite this, the SC allows some violation of this right because of the existence of a potential 14^th amendment person. In this instance the limited right of the state to interfere depends upon existence of said potential person and also upon the weakness of a woman’s right to privacy which originates from the same tainted source as the voided right of the unborn to life.

In such a situation where both rights are tainted, while the one protected by the penumbra of an actual Constitutional right clearly voids the one suggested only by religious tradition, it is appropriate that the SC should allow the states some authority to intervene especially where a potential 14^th amendment person is concerned.

In the case of a husband killing his wife the husbands right to privacy is not tainted by any derivation from a religious source. It is purely secular and Constitutional in origin. It is much stronger legally than a woman’s right to privacy in consulting a doctor which is tainted by originating from the same religious tradition as the condemnation of abortion. If women were granted some sort of limited legal personhood based on such things as the 17^th amendment which gave them the right to vote, the strength of the Constitutional right of the husband, untainted by any hint of religious superstition would still guarantee the right of the husband to kill his wife. The idea that there is something special about human life requiring special protection and recognition is clearly rejected by Roe. Under the reasoning in Roe no law enacted by a state to prevent a husband from exercising his constitutional right to kill his wife can ever be valid.

Husbands in the US have had an absolute Constitutional right to kill their wives at any time and for any reason that they find sufficient ever since Roe was enacted into law. In one ill considered decision the SC voided almost all the legal progress women have made in the last 200 years.

Some will suggest that the SC did not mean to do this, it is not what the court intended. This is doubtless true, but it has no legal relevance. Legally the court cannot act with intent of the kind specified by this argument.

Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist Paper No. 78 said,

His opinion was that if the SC were to act as the Democrats propose, it would be better to have no SC at all.

If the SC acted with intent in Roe other than to judge the meaning of existing law they abused the power of their office. To suggest that they had such an intent is to accuse them of criminal abuse of their Constitutional authority. The SC can only develop the principles of the law and investigate the intent of the makers of the law. If principles developed in the honest attempt to do so apply equally in another case then they apply. They are the law. The SC can and did accidentally make it legal for husbands to kill their wives when they wrote Roe vs. Wade. Again, to maintain otherwise is to accuse the SC of a criminal act and anyone making such a claim must then insist that the court be impeached for malfeasance.

One can only wonder what kind of drugs the SC was doing when they came up with this decision. It was the end of the 60s after all, you know they were dropping acid or something.

The History of these Behaviors

There is more than a chance similarity between these behaviors of abortion and wife-killing. As seen in the example of the Civil War so ably but inadvertently illustrated by the Supreme Court in Roe, societies tend to outlaw abortion at the same time they outlaw other abuses of persons like infanticide, slavery, and wife-killing. The SC looks at the history of abortion in three classical societies in Roe. These societies are Egypt, Greece, and Rome. Egypt is glanced at briefly as the source of the ‘superstitions’ that Pythagoras passed on to Hippocrates who passed them on to Christianity. Rome and Greece are cited as societies in which abortion was legal. Again this is a half-truth. Greece and Rome endured in the classical period for a thousand years or more each. Their laws with respect to abortion, slavery, wife-killing and infanticide changed over this period, as is to be expected. They followed a similar pattern. In the earlier more primitive period all of these behaviors were legal and widely accepted. Menelaus was going to kill Helen for being unfaithful with Paris then changed his mind. Odysseus would have slain Penelope as ruthlessly as he butchered the maid servants in his home if she had been unfaithful. As Hellenic civilization progressed philosophers began to condemn these practices. Later Greeks generally thought the Trojans were nicer people than their Greek ancestors of the time. Greece was earlier than Rome, and while killing wives went out of fashion and philosophers came to condemn infanticide, abortion and slavery; despite moral condemnation of these practices, remained largely legal.

In early Rome the Father was God. He had absolute right of life and death over his children as long as they were alive. If he married a daughter off cum manu her husband acquired this absolute right to kill her as he saw fit, if sine manu it remained vested in the father. Later under the Principate, abortion was outlawed, Ulpian condemned slavery as a violation of natural law, and the right of husbands to kill their wives was declared illegal. In Egypt which was old when Greece was young, women had the highest legal status in all of the classical world. Property and titles passed down through the female line. Infanticide and abortion were condemned as immoral, as in the ethics which Egypt gave Hippocrates through Pythagoras.

The Supreme Court cites the legal precedents from the early and barbaric period of Rome and Greece where women were non-persons who could under various circumstances be killed by their husbands as valid and worthwhile legal precedents for a decision protecting women’s rights. They dismiss the ethical code of Egypt a much older civilization where women were legally powerful and dignified persons, as superstition. The Supreme Court picked and chose legal precedents without regard for their history or context.

A social scientist looking at this legal history would probably say, other things being equal, that you should cite the ethical standards of societies with high standards of women’s rights as legitimate in a woman’s rights issue. You should dismiss the legal citations from societies where women were never legal persons as likely to be dangerous in some subtle manner to women’s rights. That is before the debate over abortion became so heated that even educated, intelligent people will believe any argument no matter how ridiculous, if it supports their side. The SC decision in Roe is virtually the negative image of what it should have been based on the legal history of these behaviors.

It is recorded in De Bello Gallica by Julius Caesar that the Gauls had the legal right to kill their wives. Other classic sources show that Germans could kill their wives with approval of the village council and that abortion was practiced.

These behaviors, wife-killing, infanticide, abortion, and slavery are barbarisms that survived widely, almost universally into early civilizations. As those civilizations grew older they were either outlawed or morally condemned. They are pecking order behaviors. The strong having the right by reason of status to abuse or kill the weak. The similarity in the legal history of wife-killing and abortion is so close that women’s rights advocates should have seen legalizing abortion as the first step towards legalizing wife-killing.

The very news of such a step should have caused cold chills of apprehension to race up and down their spines. In addition to pecking order behavior, the territorial imperative enters into the psychology of abortion. Humans have an instinctive aversion to invading others territory. The statements, “It’s her Body” and “A Man’s Home is His Castle” have the same emotional impact. The instinctive mechanisms used in emotional arguments in defense of abortion are precisely the same as those used in defense of a man’s right to beat or kill his wife. The role of these mechanisms in the history of republics, democracies and tyrannies is discussed more fully in the section of this book entitled Reciprocity, Pecking Order Behavior and the Territorial Imperative.

Pecking order behavior is status behavior. Status behavior is pandemic in human society. Society probably could not exist without it. Someone has to be the boss. The question is how do you pick the boss. Is the boss the boss because of sex, race, creed, money, or ability. The other question is, how much power can the boss have over his or her subordinates. Can the boss kill them at will. Can the boss deny them legal aid. Do subordinates have any rights?

Human rights theory assumes that all human beings have certain rights which cannot be violated by persons higher on the pecking order. Status implies certain ‘rights’ associated with that status. There is a natural confusion between status ‘rights’ and human rights. Both are associated with status. When defending human rights you are defending a persons status as an equal under some circumstance. When defending status ‘rights’ you are defending a persons rights due to rank. Since both are issues of status, both feel roughly the same emotionally. This kind of confusion is natural in society. Many times people defending their ‘rights’ are defending status rather than legitimate human rights. Wife-killing, abortion, infanticide and slavery are pecking order behaviors. People defending these ‘rights’ feel quite strongly that they are defending their rights because they are defending their status as equals to others who have the ‘right’ to have abortions or own slaves. They feel quite strongly that they lose status when they lose their “rights“. Equal rights psychology is to some degree instinctive and to some degree learned. Whether pecking order psychology or equal rights psychology dominates in a society is always a matter of tension and change within that society. Most people feel and accept status rights established by tradition or custom as the same as human rights. Despite this emotional confusion over the issues, pecking order behavior is the antithesis of real human rights behavior. Women who favor abortion rights feel that they are being reduced to a status below that of the unborn if abortion is outlawed. They do not feel that the unborn are simply being granted a minimum of human rights, the right to life. They have to sacrifice their freedom, their liberty for the life of the unborn.

The problem is that endorsing one status behavior strengthen other status behaviors. Claiming the right to kill others because of your status implies the right of others to kill you because of their status. Voltaire expressed the fundamental principle of human rights when he told a French Abbe in some correspondence, “I do not agree with a word you say but I will fight to the death for your right to say it”. Real human rights cut both ways. Hobbes stated in “Leviathan”,

Would you want another human being to have the power over you that you are claiming over others? Legitimate human rights arguments protect the rights of others in order to protect our own rights. The pro-choice movement recently demonstrated quite clearly that they did not have any understanding of the reciprocity of real rights when they attempted to use RICO to attack pro-life protesters. Virtually every other protest organization understood how such a ruling could be used to stop all demonstrations. Only the pro-choicers were so tied to a psychology of privilege that they could not understand the danger of their own actions. They are incapable of understanding legitimate human rights issues.

Human eyes can see that infants, children, slaves, and women are human beings. The unborn are not visible to the human eye. Why then does the legal history of abortion so closely parallel these other more obvious cases of abuse of persons? In his essay on human understanding Hume notes that infants are programmed by instinct to see causal relationships in the world around them,

Darwin had not yet lived, and the theory of evolution as we know it today was not invented yet, but it was apparent to observation that human beings had drives or instincts.

With evolution we can refine our discussion of these drives or instincts. We have a sounder theoretical basis for analyzing and predicting them, but all that is necessary for this analysis is observation. Anyone can observe that there is an instinct for sex in all bisexual animals, humans included. Anyone can observe that nesting and parenting instincts exist in animals according to their species and type. To deny that humans have an instinct or drive to prepare for and parent a child once they know it is on the way is to deny everything we know about the origin of our species.

For a brute species like Komodo dragons, digging a hole in the ground, placing the eggs and guarding it may suffice. It is possible that no conscious realization that young dragons are the result of the process may exist. For humans to prepare to take care of their young, they must imagine and picture them. Instinct drives them to project a construct of personhood on the unborn. The personhood of the unborn is an automatic result of human instinct. It could not be otherwise. Humans could not prepare according to the rules of their culture and the methods they had for subsistence for a new human being without picturing the person in their minds.

Some might ask, if so, then how could people define the unborn as non-persons? If people are driven by instinct to see them as persons, then people could not possibly define them as non-persons.

This sounds good, except that other similar laws and definitions vary directly with the personhood of the unborn. When the unborn are non-persons, women are non-persons, infants are non-persons, slaves are non-persons. In such societies only adult dominant males are persons.

The law of persons of Rome is the classical embodiment of this legalized caste system dividing the human race into persons and non-persons so that the strong could legally and legitimately exploit the weak. It was the body of law that the Supreme Court called on in the Dred Scott decision, and it is the same body of law of persons they called on to legitimize abortion.

History shows that humans can easily be conditioned by environment to accept the classification of other groups of human beings as non-persons. It shows that humans can easily be conditioned by environment to accept the right of persons to kill non-persons casually for any reason they deem fit. There is nothing unusual in humans accepting such ideas, they are perennial in history. Most early legal codes are a combination of pecking order status with reciprocity. Injuring a high caste person always cost more than injuring a low caste person.

Since humans are driven by instinct to see the unborn as persons in the same sense they see other weak humans as persons, designating them as non-persons strengthens the basic behaviors which support such status systems. This pecking order behavior is the fundamental instinct which ties these behaviors, wife-killing, infanticide, abortion and slavery together. On a subconscious instinctive level these behaviors are fraternal twins.

If you legalize one you prepare the subconscious of those who accept the decision to accept the others. If you teach that the unborn are not persons when the people you are teaching are driven by instinct to feel that they are human beings, then you teach these people that if you designate other people who feel human to you as non-persons, it is alright to do what you want with them. This is the psychology which legitimizes wife-killing and slavery.

The more widespread the acceptance of abortion becomes the easier it will be for the mass of society to accept other related behaviors as legitimate. Such behaviors as wife-killing, infanticide and slavery. The pro-choice people at the time of Roe ridiculed any connection between these behaviors. Today many pro-choice people advocate infanticide as well as abortion. This is pecking order behavior. In legalizing abortion women are strengthening pecking order behavior and insisting loudly and emotionally that it is legitimate and right for the strong to kill the weak in order to avoid a burdensome relationship. It is difficult to imagine anything more dangerous to women’s rights in the long term than legalized abortion.

Historically whenever pecking order behavior was predominant women ended up as chattel property. They are among the last to become free and the first to be enslaved. Women’s rights advocates should be marching on the streets shouting “Roe must Go, Roe must Go” not defending it as a triumph for women’s liberation. To quote Plato‘s “Republic“,

The excesses of liberty always lead to tyranny. When a right includes the abuse of others, it is an excess of liberty, an exercise of license, not liberty. It results in the long run in the loss of liberty.

The more violent a society is, the lower women’s status is. The more stable and peaceful a society is, the higher a woman’s status is. The history of abortion and its close historical association with all acts we call violent demonstrates clearly that human are hardwired to instinctively feel abortion is a violent act. Abortion is a violent act and it is tied historically to violent periods in the early history of classical societies. It is also tied to high rates of violent crime and murder in the US today. If you are interested in abortion issues then you will be familiar with a study that came out around 1999. Legalized Abortion and Crime, was published by John J. Donohue III of Stanford Law School and Steven D. Levitt, a University of Chicago economist. It suggested that abortion reduced crime in areas where it was practiced because it eliminated a lot of people born into groups with a high risk for crime. The study was controversial, but it cited many other studies and all of the parts of the country which legalized abortion prior to Roe had rising murder rates at the time abortion was legalized while the rate of murder was not rising in the states which resisted abortion. A pro-choice correspondent of mine attempted to disprove this by correlating abortion access and poverty and crime. He admitted finding a stronger correlation between abortion access and violent crime than existed between poverty and violent crime. The movement to abolish slavery and abortion occurred simultaneously across the US. The movement to legalize abortion in the US gained strength as rates of murder rose. When people are more emotionally prepared to kill to accomplish their ends, murder rates go up and abortion is legalized. Abortion is a violent act tied subconsciously to other violent acts. The more violent a society, the lower women’s status in that society. Legalized abortion will result in lower status for women in the long run.

Every generation dice are rolled to see which way society will go with respect to human rights and freedoms. Abortion loads the dice in favor of pecking order standards. Pecking order standards are antithetical to real human rights and particularly dangerous to women’s rights. Betting that abortion can remain legal indefinitely without it becoming emotionally acceptable for men to beat or kill their wives is betting against the historical odds. If you bet against the odds you might win once or twice but you will lose eventually. Different cultures have different norms. Legalized abortion will tend to norm Citizens to a greater level of acceptance of interpersonal violence or of violence against persons as a legitimate means of solving personal problems. It is inevitable that if abortion remains legal long enough it will become psychologically and emotionally acceptable for men to kill their wives.

A graphic way of presenting this in a political speech would be to prepare two pictures, one of a wife or girlfriend brutally beaten to death. There is no objection to presenting such material in a campaign against domestic violence. It is ugly, graphic, and disgusting. It arouses feelings of outrage when seen. Then present the picture of an aborted fetus 4 or 5 months along. Pro-choice advocates desperately attempt to suppress all such material, but it is just as fair to present such material in a campaign against abortion as it is to present the other in a campaign against domestic violence. Then point out the simple fact that once Americans really accept abortion as legitimate, once they accept this pointing to the picture of the aborted fetus as right and just, they will no longer have a problem accepting the other, pointing to the picture of the woman beaten to death as equally right and just. Hobbes states in “Leviathan”,

Reason removes the Liberty of Ignorance by informing us of the consequences of our actions. Reason removes certain things we mistakenly assume are Liberties by demonstrating that the consequences they involve include our own subjection. Reason shows that legalized abortion is an accidental step towards the subjugation of women. This kind of error is not uncommon in legal issues. Very frequently simplistic assumptions about how a law will work turn out wrong.

All in all, people who accept abortion as a legitimate human right are normed way further towards the pathology end of the scale than average Americans. If Americans ever really accept abortion on an emotional level they will be normed far enough towards accepting violence as a solution to personal problems to accept wife-beating and murder. Today the population group in the US most likely to have abortions is also the most likely to kill their spouses. In an amusing contradiction to most of human history, it is the wives who kill the husbands. Black women in the US today are the most likely group to get abortions and kill their spouses. This inversion of the normal historical pattern related to these behaviors may be attributed to a matriarchal family pattern imposed on blacks in the US by slavery. See the section in this book on Husband Murder in Black America for a closer look at this phenomenon.

Abortion and the Jury Trial

The role of the Jury is discussed at greater length in the section of this book with that title. This deals with one aspect of the power of the Jury which can frequently be abused. The prevalence of the sympathy or “Oprah” defense. The “Oprah” defense rose and fell with abortion and violent crime over the last 40 years. The arguments used in the sympathy defense are the same as those used in the defense of abortion. The perpetrator suffered, was suffering, or would suffer if he did not act as he did. The woman would suffer such dislocation of her life if she did not abort the fetus.

As violent crime climbed and this “Oprah” defense was used in a series of major trials like that of the Menendez brothers, it became increasingly odious to the American people. The term “Oprah” defense was coined to describe it. It was successful during the period that abortion was most accepted and declined as resistance to abortion increased. This shows that a population which accepts these arguments in defense of abortion will accept them in defense of murder. This is true even in cases not involving women. It is a defense with a long legal history. Indeed, it is the same defense which was used to defend men accused of murdering their wives in Victorian England.

An interesting description of the long and sometimes contentious struggle between Judges and Juries in Victorian England to change the standards under which a husband beating his wife to death should be treated with sympathy and mercy has been written by Martin J. Wiener and is posted at http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/lhr/17.3/wiener.html.

The article discusses the changing meaning of legal terms like provocation, intent, and the growth of the insanity defense. Nagging and drunkenness on the part of the wife ceased to meet the legal standards for provocation which would reduce beating a wife to death from murder to manslaughter. This led to the invention of the insanity defense and the case being made that continued nagging and insulting of the man by his wife drove him temporarily insane, you could call it the Nagging Wife Syndrome. Exactly the same defense reinvented by feminists today in BWS or Battered Wife Syndrome. Discussion with legal and psychological professionals in Forensic Psychology on the Web has shown a consensus of opinion that BWS has no scientific or legal validity.

In this struggle the judges led the way, fighting a moral crusade to invade the privacy of men’s homes and extend legal protection against domestic violence to women.

In Roe vs. Wade the Supreme Court notes that some opponents of abortion laws have attacked these justices as religious moralists,

The same feelings that are revolted at a man beating his wife to death are revolted by abortion. They cannot be artificially separated by legal artifices. You cannot educate an instinctive reaction out of a person. If you educate a person to accept abortion you automatically and unavoidably educate him to be more accepting of other similar behaviors.

The cultural acceptance of abortion and wife beating or killing do not vary independently of each other historically. The Supreme Court and pro-choice movement had to attack the anti-abortion principles and movements in Roe. This meant that they had to almost systematically attack and degrade the cultures in which women had high legal status and the legal movements which raised women’s legal status in recent times. In order to legitimize abortion they had to embrace the legal and ethical principles of societies which kept women as chattel property. The natural almost inevitable result of this is that they accidentally made it legal for husbands to kill their wives.

(I cannot express how much I despise Roe vs. Wade. Let me try. The difference between what I expected before reading Roe and what I found when I read Roe was tremendous. In few areas of human endeavor does the rational faculty of mankind show such elegance and beauty as in the finer sort of legal reasoning. Reading these decisions can give the philosopher a physical-intellectual pleasure like that which mathematicians experience when contemplating the pure beauty of higher mathematics. I expected something like that when I first read Roe. That is not what I found. I went rabid after reading Roe vs. Wade. I was frothing at the mouth for weeks after I discovered what the SC had actually said. Roe has less logical consistency than a nursery rhyme. Almost every paragraph contradicts and invalidates a point made in another paragraph. Roe is such an abominable perversion of the principles of sound reason that just reading it should be sufficient to make anyone with a logical mind become pro-life.)

In politics every victory creates a permanent addition to the system. If that addition empowers an abuse, then it can and frequently will be used in the future to abuse the people who gained their victory through it. This means that, as a general principle, in political struggles it is better to lose the right way than to win the wrong way. Winning the wrong way builds political and legal artifacts that will destroy the victor in the long run. Regardless of whether you are pro-life or pro-choice, you should be outraged by the method used to legalize abortion in the US.

Feminists in defending abortion as a right have resurrected the legal precedents, legal arguments, and behavioral mechanisms which have traditionally been used to reduce women to chattel property. If they win to struggle to get these things accepted. If Americans ever really accept abortion and the associated principles and behaviors as legitimate, women’s liberation is doomed. NOW is doing everything it can to ensure that women will be reduced to chattel slavery in a society where men have the right to beat or possibly kill their wives.

The Strange Relationship between Abortion and UFOs

The UFO Abduction Phenomenon is pretty amazingly huge. It is a very large sociological or cultural event. Two things should come to mind when observing it. It has an explanation, and that explanation is not space aliens. It is a cultural phenomenon. Grays have taken the place traditionally held by elves, hobgoblins, trolls, fairies, etc. in modern US culture. Visions like those experienced by UFO abductees have been recorded throughout human history and generally make up a part of the religious or spiritual inheritance of most cultures. Why Grays? Why in the US? Why Now? These are the questions.

It has been demonstrated that on an instinctive emotional level abortion is a violent act indeed the killing of someone we are driven by instinct to feel is a fellow human being. Humans have had nightmares about the dead returning and haunting them throughout history. This being so, people in the US should be having nightmares about abortion.

Such a population would self-sort into those who recognize the nightmare as being about abortion and become pro-life, and those who do not and must seek some other way to interpret what they have experienced. The second group would be looking around for some clue to tell them what was happening to them. One day they would read a story about UFOs which have been around for awhile and the alien in the story would not fit the description of what they experienced. Then one day, one of the UFO stories would feature an alien who did look close to what they experienced. A light goes on. That is what is happening to me. I was visited by Aliens. Abortion created a population group which needed a cultural explanation for their nightmares. One UFO story or another was close enough to fit. They said the same thing happened to them. Then someone else would say they were experiencing the same things. Their nightmares about abortion containing similar elements, fetus-like beings, medical operations, lost children or fetuses would then shape the entire UFO field.

This is obviously what happened, but it is worthwhile to look at the timetable of events and see how well it fits. The table below is largely based on “Watch the Skies: A Chronicle of the Flying Saucer Myth” by Curtis Peebles, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994.

The population of people having nightmares about abortion and needing an explanation for them provided a single dominant theme in the development of the UFO myth. People emotionally disturbed by nightmares about abortion sought an acceptable rationale for the emotional distress they were experiencing. More and more people came forward discussing their experiences. Estimates range from a few hundred thousand to two million people. There were no Grays before Roe. Before Roe aliens were bug eyed monsters or noble appearing human beings. Some looked enough like the fetus-like monsters in nightmares about abortion that the experiences could be compared. This led to “UFO abductions”. Abortion has caused something of an epidemic of mental and emotional health problems in the US.

Abortion and Revolution

Many societies throughout history have legalized these behaviors. Slavery was indeed legal for several decades in the history of the US. Slavery did not violate human instinct which accepts pecking order behaviors as legitimate. Slavery violated learned standards of behavior which are taught as sacred as part of our “Civil Religion”. The Declaration of Independence states,

Slavery violated the values expressed in these words with respect to Blacks in the South. The conflict between abortion and the US culture begins at the same place with nearly the same words as the conflict between slavery and the US culture. The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Pro-life people will cite the Declaration of Independence and Pro-Choice people will reply that the Founding Fathers never meant it to be taken seriously. It was a piece of propaganda designed to enlist the poor and lower classes into the Revolution.

Humans have always been able to class outsiders as non-persons. Many names of primitive tribes mean simply ‘the people’ with everyone outside the tribe recognizably human but not people. Humans in such tribes still have children that they love. The instinct to see the unborn of one’s own tribe as people is probably stronger than that to see outsiders from other tribes as people. The emotional power to incite anger, outrage, and violent dispute in abortion is probably equal to or greater than that of slavery.

Slavery was legal under the Constitution. The Supreme Courts decisions to recognize its legal status were legal decisions. They outraged the sentiments in the Declaration of Independence but they were legal. The revolution against this occurred in the North where a revolutionary leader, or at least a leader perceived as revolutionary was elected. The South then counter-revolted against this by seceding from the Union.

In Congress today the Republicans want strict constructionists as judges on the SC. The Democrats want creative interpretation of the Constitution. The Pro-Lifers want the law enforced, the Pro-Choicers want the law to be flexible and rewritable. This shows quite clearly that both parties know that when the SC made its decision in Roe it did not obey the existing law. It made up new law to fit its ideology and sentiment.

The actions of the SC in legalizing abortion created new law whole cloth. Plausibly, this violated the Constitution and the intentions of the Framers. It provides a greater legal justification for revolution than the SC’s decisions respecting slavery did.

The abortion issue is just as emotionally charged as slavery and provides greater legal justification for revolution. In theory it is a threat to the continued existence of the US. It took decades for slavery to develop into a revolutionary issue in the US. Separation between the Slave states and Free states allowed a comfortable distance on the issue. Similarly the systematic campaign by pro-choice forces to conceal the uncomfortable aspects of abortion have allowed most Americans to maintain a comfortable distance on the issue. The longer the issue remains politically active the less convincing this illusion will be. Americans will have to make a choice between the principles advanced in the Declaration of Independence and the legality of abortion.

The longer abortion remains legal the greater the anger, hatred, and spite which will develop on both sides of the issue. The greater the chance that charges of crimes against humanity will be brought against abortion providers.

Choices should be made on the basis of reason, not on the basis of intense passion created by years of opposition and possibly by armed and bloody strife.

Abortion and Ex Post Facto Laws

This quote opened the first non-introductory section in this book. The guarantee against ex-post-facto laws is basic to any real guarantee of due process. If a new law can be passed at any time which allows people to be sent to jail for things which they did before the law was passed, then anyone at any time can be sent to jail for doing something which was legal when they did it. How can due process protect against legal abuses of the Citizens under such circumstances. The advocates of abortion are also the advocates of voiding the protection against ex-post-facto laws. On other issues where their sense of right and wrong is offended by the actions of others, they want to send those others to prison even if what those others did was legal under existing laws. It is very worthwhile, therefore, to discuss how voiding the ex-post-facto protection of the Constitution can result in them being sent to prison themselves. This section compares abortion providers to Nazi Death Camp workers. Such a comparison will be called hate literature by abortion advocates.

It is still necessary to make that comparison. It is fact based and logically irrefutable. It also puts abortion providers in an area where the ex-post-facto guarantee has already been voided by Congress and the Supreme Court. The Nuremberg Trials were opposed by Senator Taft on principle because they voided the ex-post-facto guarantee in our Constitution. A Supreme Court Justice recognized and supported this position as well. The story is well presented in the book, “Profiles in Courage” by John F. Kennedy. Yes, the John F. Kennedy who was elected President of the United States. No protection against ex-post-facto prosecution for actions which can be construed as crimes against humanity exists in the US today.

Point by point there is no factual basis for suggesting any significant emotional or psychological difference between abortion providers in the US and medical personnel who performed experiments on death camp inmates during WWII.

When considering this, it is worthwhile to examine clear-cut widely recognized examples of these two extremes to determine what the real difference is between them.

Dr. XYZ, is a saint and a martyr, a humanitarian and idealist, ruthlessly slain by mindless cult brainwashed terrorists of the pro-life movement. Or so the popular media portrays him.

Dr. Mengele is the infamous angel of death from the Nazi Death Camps, a horrific monster and demon incarnate in human form.

Surely, by a point by point comparison of these two Doctors we can clarify something of the difference between Good and Evil.

Dr. XYZ performed many different medical procedures in his life, (1) saving lives, bringing new lives into the world, and (2) terminating unborn human lives. All in accordance with the law of his country and time. He was by all accounts an intelligent, sensitive, cultured man.

Point 1) He performed many different medical procedures in his life, not just the abortions which led to his death.

Under point 1 for Dr. Mengele, he was a qualified and capable surgeon during wartime. No data is available about whether he used his medical skills to save lives as well as perform the experiments for which he is infamous, either during the war or after it. It is plausible to hypothesize that he did, but it is unknown to me.

In the absence of evidence to the contrary, Dr. XYZ appears to have done more good (in saving lives) than Dr. Mengele.

Point 2) Terminating unborn human lives. This is why some call Dr. XYZ evil, and why he was killed. Dr. Mengele experimented on and terminated the lives of children after they were born, Dr. XYZ terminated the lives of human fetuses who many consider children before their birth.

Legally, there is no difference between the two men. Both acted IAW the law of their lands and countries. Scientifically, Dr. Mengele acted in accord with the 'science' of his nation. Technically, Dr. Mengele's actions were not violations of the Hippocratic oath as they were not perpetrated on 'humans' according to the standards of his time and country. According to the doctrine of Dr. Mengele‘s nation, the untermensch were animals virtually a different species and thus no more protected than cattle or sheep. Dr. XYZ’s are a violation of the Hippocratic oath in his time and country. Ethically according to this revered standard of medical ethics, Dr. Mengele emerges as the better man because the Hippocratic Oath does specifically forbid abortion. Is there another difference, something in Dr. Mengele’s actions that set him apart mentally, psychologically, or emotionally from Dr. XYZ?

Most would say that his humanity should have been outraged by the suffering he caused, that basic decency would have made it impossible for anyone but a monster to cause the suffering he caused those children, and he could not ignore their humanity or their pain. More, as a doctor, he should have known that they were real human beings, not untermensch, that the political indoctrination of Nazi race science should not have blinded a trained scientific mind unless it wanted to be blinded.

What does a trained scientific mind in the absence of political indoctrination perceive in a fetus? It is possible to establish a baseline on this issue. In the middle ages, science such as it was perceived a fetus as having a right to life after quickening. That is after signs of life became apparent to observers outside the womb. This doctrine traces back to Aristotle’s “Politics”. Aristotle three kinds of natures in life, a vegetable nature which all life possessed, an animal nature which animals and men possessed, and a rational nature which only man possessed. He suggested that abortions should not be performed after the first signs of life within the womb which were observable in his time. This was quickening or the first movement which a woman felt in her womb. Aristotle’s opinion was that prior to this only the vegetable nature was present and abortion would cause no pain or suffering.

This is a pretty cold blooded scientific opinion, without any regard for any sanctity of human life. When scientific knowledge of when life began advanced, when motion or an animal soul was observed at a much earlier stage in development of the unborn, trained scientists campaigned to reform the laws and extend that right to life to the beginning of life as they now knew it began. The anti-abortion laws were spearheaded not by religious leaders but by the leading medical authorities of the day. This is maintaining the same standard which Aristotle set. In a formula a + b = c, the value of c depends on the values of (a) and (b). If the value of (a) changes then the value of c changes. The value of (a) changed as scientific knowledge of when life began changed, so the value of c, the point at which abortions should be legal also changed.

On this baseline, it is possible to state that trained scientific observers in the absence of political indoctrination perceive fetuses as having a right to life as soon as the signs of life are clearly present. This is an ethical standard dating back to Aristotle and Aristotle was a practical man who endorsed slavery because it was practical and showed no sense of a religious reverence for human life.

Dr. XYZ had even more advanced knowledge of the life of the fetus, could observe its suffering, reaction to music, and other datum indicating its life and even to some degree awareness of pain and external stimulus. Yet he did not perceive it as having a right to life. The difference between this orientation and that to which most Americans are normed is growing more visible as technology which allows regular people to look inside the womb becomes more developed. Today, parents are putting baby pictures taken with ultrasound and other technology into their baby books weeks and months before the child is born, even showing them off around the office and to neighbors, family and acquaintances. Dr. XYZ was immune to this type of human feeling and sentiment because of his experience as a medical professional.

This is a description of some of the details of late term abortions it will illuminate how differently medical personnel are normed than regular citizens.

Dr. XYZs behavior violates a plausible baseline on what unbiased scientific observers would do. A baseline which traces its way throughout the entire history of science and ethical philosophy to Aristotle. His actions must be attributed to political indoctrination.

Doctors must do many things which seem unnatural to non-medical personnel. They deal with blood, death, and human suffering on a daily basis. Frequently to help they must take actions which apparently hurt, destroy diseased tissue and inflict real pain on their fellow human beings. In order to be effective doctors they must harden their hearts to their natural feelings under these circumstances and do what reason tells them will produce the greatest good for the patient.

This capacity is admirable in a Doctor when it saves lives and alleviates human suffering. Dr. XYZs ability to exercise this capacity when performing an abortion does not automatically make him into a monster. This capacity places medical personnel in a place of danger with regards to ethical behavior. Having been forced by the demands of their profession to still the common feelings of mankind they must trust society to guide them in ethical matters. If society falls into error, then they very easily fall into error as well.

If Dr. XYZs ability to thus harden his heart does not make him a monster, then Dr. Mengele's similar capacity in itself does not make him a monster. The politics and science of his day told him in no uncertain terms that he was acting to aid mankind, and that the suffering he caused was necessary. His experimental subjects believed that he actually cared for them, and was concerned with them. This suggests that he was kind to the degree that his experiments did not require him to be cruel.

On a baseline of common humanity, Dr. Mengele should not have been able to do what he did. On a similar baseline Dr. XYZ should not have been able to do what he did. Both did so in violation of this baseline based on the political indoctrinations they received as medical practitioners in good standing in their times and country.

As far as the actions that got one killed and the other condemned as a monster are concerned there is no evidence of any difference, mentally, emotionally, or psychologically between Dr. Mengele and Dr. XYZ.

Let us look at the motives for their actions. Dr. Mengele believed firmly that he was acting for the greater good of humanity. Dr. XYZ acted from commercial considerations, though he doubtless firmly believed in the rightness of his actions.

Dr. Mengele gets points for nobility of motive over Dr. XYZ.

Looking at the facts in these two cases, there is little real factual difference between Dr. XYZ and Dr. Mengele. Save one. Dr. XYZ was a citizen of the US. Dr. Mengele was a citizen of Germany at the time we were at war with Germany.

The definition of good and evil is now clear. Someone is good if they are on our side and bad if they are against us. This is Clintons definition and the definition of Pro-Choice people in general.

There is no other factual basis for defining Dr. XYZ as a saint, and Dr. Mengele as a monster. On the basis of the facts, if Dr. XYZ was a saint, then Dr. Mengele was a saint. If Dr. Mengele was a monster who deserved to die at the hand of a snipers bullet, then ditto for Dr. XYZ.

I have a radically middle position. I consider both Dr. Mengele and Dr. XYZ to be human beings, and recognize that all human beings are capable of being monsters if nurture so dictates. For this reason, I am not personally inclined to condemn abortion workers as monsters not seeing myself as being so much better than they that I can make such absolute judgments. Possibly other pro-lifers so introduced to reason might be less inclined to use deadly violence against abortion workers. This position is necessary to the historian, it is one of the fundamental principles of studying history that the faults of a man are the faults of his time and his virtues are his own.

So, this could be considered a reasoned defense of abortion workers from passion unguided by reason. Sadly, there is so little, if any, factual difference between abortion workers and Nazi Death Camp workers, that you cannot defend one (on a factual basis) without defending the other. In the table at the start of this section it was pointed out that over 90% of all abortion are performed before the 12^th week of pregnancy and that at such early stages the unborn are not recognizably human. Therefore, it could be argued, the abortionist is not killing something recognizably human the way that Nazi Death Camp workers were. This underestimates the scale of abortions performed in this country.

Taking just the years 1995 to 1999 5.079 million abortions were performed in this country. Assuming that only 5% were developed to a point of being recognizably human 253,950 recognizably human unborn were aborted by abortion workers. Abortion has been legal since 1973 and the years cited represent a period when rates of abortion were decreasing from their peak. According to the National Right to Life Foundation over 40 million abortions have been performed in this country since 1973. They base that count on statistics published by “Alan Guttmacher Institute, special research affiliate of Planned Parenthood Federation of America--the nation's largest provider and promoter of abortion. Estimates for 1997 and 1998 are based on trends from previous years.” http://www.nrlc.org/abortion/aboramt.html

Taking 5% of 40 million and you get two million recognizably human beings aborted by abortion workers in this country. (This is an estimate purposely much lower than might be made. It cuts the almost 10% occurring after the 12^th week of pregnancy in half and the unborn are recognizably human three weeks prior to this stage of pregnancy as shown in the table at the beginning of this section. An estimate of 20% of abortions being of recognizably human unborn could be justified by the facts.) This is a high enough number to demonstrate that people working in centers dedicated to providing abortion abort recognizably human unborn, unborn so recognizably human that they should stir basic feelings of human sympathy, on a regular basis without feeling any such thing. It demonstrates that they show the same level of total indifference to human suffering that Dr. Mengele and other workers in Nazi Death Camps did. The facts do not support hypothesizing any psychological differences between abortion care providers and Nazi Death Camp workers with regard to human values like sympathy to human suffering or the importance of human life.

If it has been right and just to hunt down Nazi Death Camp workers and prosecute them and send them to jail for life, then everyone involved in the abortion industry and in promoting abortion deserves the same treatment. Otherwise the only standard of our law is if they are on our side they are good if not they are bad.

As was stated at the beginning of the particular discussion, the ex-post-facto protection has already been voided by Congress and the Supreme Court in areas which can be construed as crimes against humanity. Nothing can be considered to be legal in a meaningful sense if you can be punished for doing it before it was made illegal when the laws change. Under the current state of International Law and American Law it is not possible to actually legalize abortion in a meaningful sense of the word. No Legislative Assembly, no Judicial Body has the power to make abortion as a form of birth control legal in the world today. It is sufficiently horrific to a large enough portion of the population to be classified as ‘crimes against humanity’. If political forces change and abortion is outlawed, a backlash may lead to the ‘ex post facto’ prosecution of many of the more extreme abortion providers and their being sentenced to life imprisonment a couple of decades in the future. While the Supreme Court did manage to make it technically legal under the letter of the law for a husband to kill his wife in the US, they did not, and cannot make abortion legal in a meaningful sense. What a fine mess Roe has gotten us into. This is the problem with sacrificing fundamental principles of good government to noble causes. No matter how noble the cause, once you have destroyed the basis of good government, grotesque abuses may follow.

The Catholics have patron saints for just about everybody and everything. Lawyers have at least five patron saints. Possibly Lawyers need extra help to get into Heaven. One of these is St. Thomas More. He was executed by Henry the VIII because of his objection to Henry’s assuming control of the Church of England to divorce his latest queen. A movie and stage play have been made based on his life called “A Man for All Seasons” by Robert Bolt. In the movie there is a remarkable speech. St. Thomas states that he would apply the protection of the law to Satan himself, for the protection of the law is the protection of all Citizens, and if you void it to prosecute evil, then it can no longer protect the innocent, and when that happens, evil will triumph in the world, using the powers of the state to abuse the common man. The play was written around the time of the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings and was interpreted by many as a political statement protesting the purported violations of due process in prosecuting Communists at the time.

This is a tremendous exercise in Liberal Left hypocrisy. This play trumpets the importance of the principles of the law to defend even the ultimate evil, Satan or the Devil. No matter how evil someone is, you cannot sacrifice principle to prosecute them. It was written at the time of the McCarthy hearings and interpreted as a political protest against the prosecution of Communism. Mr. Bolt became a very successful Hollywood screenwriter. These same Communist Left types religiously defended Stalin and Mao, though both doubled or tripled Hitler’s body count. Yet they equally passionately protest against these legal principles when they protect others who they, the disciples of the Church of Secular Humanism of the Shining Path of Political Correctness believe are evil. Their only principle is, if people are on our side they are good, if people are on the other side they are evil. Still under the sting of prosecution of his fellow Hollywood types Mr. Bolt rose eloquently to the defense of sound principles of legal government. His eloquent defense of government by law, as opposed to government by edict is inspirational and points out the right lesson, though it may have arisen from the sting of partisan politics.

Hitler and the Third Reich have won a great victory for evil in the world. They managed to be so evil that people felt justified in voiding the protection of the law in their case. Though the same people failed to insist on such prosecution of others who are responsible for more than a hundred of million deaths in the name of Communism. This precedent makes it possible to void that protection in other cases and places the safety of all Citizens at risk. This is the great triumph of evil which Hitler represents. His legacy is that the fundamental guarantees of human rights have been voided in the name of good in order to prosecute his followers. Evil is triumphant in the name of good, a name which it always attempts to assume for its own purposes.

There is an amusing, poetic, correlation between this kind of evil and the word Satan. Satan means the angry one or the accuser in Hebrew. The greatest evils in history have generally been perpetrated in the name of good by angry righteous accusers crusading for the RIGHT. This spirit is Satanic in a literal sense. The spirit which mercilessly prosecutes evil and sacrifices all legitimate principles of law in that crusade is perfectly captured by the meaning of Satan and Satanic in context of these words original Hebrew meaning. This spirit of self-righteous rage, a rage and hatred he directed against the Jews who he considered evil, could be called the essence of many of Hitler’s speeches. The voiding of the ex-post-facto protection to prosecute crimes against humanity was a triumph of Satanism in several nuances of meaning. Hitler as the epitome of evil retains a triumphant legacy in International Law because of this. If there exists any real ultimate spirit of Evil in the world it cannot help but rejoice in this victory which those who prosecuted Nazis in violation of the principle of the Law have achieved for Hitler and Evil in the world.

Let us consider Aristotle’s principle of virtue yet again. “Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect; and again it is a mean because the vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate. Hence in respect of its substance and the definition which states its essence virtue is a mean, with regard to what is best and right an extreme.” Excess in defense of virtue is a fault.

The rational principle is that you do not sacrifice a great good for a lesser good. You do not right an evil by committing a greater evil. History has given us certain principles of law which must be maintained as safeguards against the abuse of state power. The ex-post-facto guarantee is one of these. When you sacrifice this guarantee you sacrifice the good of all the future generations of mankind in order to punish an evil which afflicted only one generation. Virtue lies in maintaining the sound principles of government. The desire to void those principles in order to prosecute evil is an excessive passion. It buys a short term satisfaction of the desire for vengeance at the price of the long term good of all humanity.

It is indeed the passion which Hitler epitomized in his life and actions. Hitler threw aside all legal restraint in his desire to persecute the Jews who he considered evil. His doctrine was government by edict of the Fuhrer not government by law. He suspended government by law as a hindrance to doing what he defined as right. Men like Simon Wiesenthal and others who have devoted their lives to vengeance against the Nazis have to one degree or another imitated his example, even to insisting on the voiding of the law to achieve their ends. You do not oppose evil successfully by imitating it’s methods. Mr. Bolt put just the right words in the mouth of St. Thomas More to help us remember this principle. Aristotle in discussing assassination shows the danger of passion in politics,

It is important not to sacrifice the soul of the legitimate state, government by law, to the passion for vengeance.

Dealing with Reality

It is physically impossible to provide life at the level of conception with the same kind of protection that we conceive of as necessary for human life in general. Nature generates single cell life with great abandon. Much of it, possibly most of it dies of natural causes. In the course of normal human generation 50% or more of the fertilized eggs die before the mother has any idea that she is pregnant. Sources vary in this, the most common numbers I see are around 85%. Again, it is physically impossible to guarantee life to human life at this stage of development. It is the definition of political foolishness to attempt to pass laws that are physically impossible. It is akin to attempting to pass a law to make pi =4. It is not nice to say, but at the single cell level all life, even human life is cheap. Nature makes it that way, the construction is frequently quite shoddy with chromosomal abnormalities and other subtle problems which the cheapness of life at that stage eliminates before they become too expensive in terms of the resources expended in creating the new life. There is indeed a legitimate question if a woman is actually pregnant until the new life has formed a relation with the woman by attaching itself to the wall of the uterus.

The US political system is based on Social Contract theory. Rights in the US are based on participation in the Social Contract. Until a human life has formed a relationship with another human life, it cannot possibly be a member of or be protected by the Social Contract. In terms of scientific possibility and the legal theory underlying human rights in the US, until the unborn attaches to the uterine walls, it has no rights. This is a physically, scientifically, legally viable point to begin attributing to the unborn the basic right to life. It is quite likely that knowledge of pregnancy, attribution of personhood to the unborn, and the other psychological and social effects of pregnancy do not exist or are so weak as to be unimportant in terms of the social and psychological effects of abortion up to this point.

Under this definition all forms of birth control and even morning after pills would be legal. If birth control were illegal, every fertile woman in the US would have about 1 baby a year for 30 or 40 years. Our planet could not sustain such population growth. Morning after pills are just strong birth control pills. If a woman takes two or three birth control pills at a time, she has essentially taken a morning after pill. It is impossible to outlaw such an action. When it is impossible to outlaw something, it is best not to outlaw it. It is better to err on the side of woman’s rights and privacy and the dignity of citizens and allow morning after pills to be legal than to outlaw them and then invite crusaders to outlaw improvised morning after pills such as taking multiple birth control pills.

There are other advantages to legalizing the morning after pill. By allowing a woman the right to prevent pregnancy, even hours or a day or so (72 hours) after a new life has formed, you extend ample opportunity to do so. Having had every opportunity to prevent pregnancy even to terminating a life in its earliest stages she can be legitimately be held responsible for her pregnancy. In the case of rape, morning after pills provide a response that prevents pregnancy. The act of taking a morning after pill and thus cleansing her body of anything left by her attacker must be of great emotional benefit to the woman involved. It also removes rape in most cases as an excuse for abortion. Every rape kit should contain necessary means for emergency contraception.

Aristotle, “Virtue, then, is a state of character concerned with choice, lying in a mean, i.e. the mean relative to us, this being determined by a rational principle, and by that principle by which the man of practical wisdom would determine it. Now it is a mean between two vices, that which depends on excess and that which depends on defect; and again it is a mean because the vices respectively fall short of or exceed what is right in both passions and actions, while virtue both finds and chooses that which is intermediate. Hence in respect of its substance and the definition which states its essence virtue is a mean, with regard to what is best and right an extreme.”

One excess here is excessive protection of privacy where the state has the right to torture and kill its subjects, a man has a right to kill his wife or children, and a woman has an absolute right to arbitrarily kill her unborn child. This abuse is akin to the abuse of the right to property which made slavery legal and offended the Civil Religion of the United States in almost the same manner. The other excess is where the state can invade the privacy of a Citizen without restraint reducing him to a Subject. This excess violates the right to privacy, free practice of religion, Maslow’s higher needs, and the penumbra against behavioral conditioning represented by the 3^rd Amendment. The question of abortion becomes technically difficult because it is not only difficult in a medical sense to determine when a new human life becomes a person, it is important to determine the same thing in a sociological sense in terms of Natural Law determined by biologically programmed Human Nature. At what point do people see another person in the unborn. If you legalize the arbitrary killing of something that people see as another person, you behaviorally condition the Citizens to accept such action as legitimate. It subtly and insidiously conditions people to believe that the strong can have a legitimate right to beat or kill the weak. In the case of women’s rights it insidiously conditions men to feel that under some circumstances it can be legitimate to beat or kill women. This violates the behavioral conditioning penumbra developed in the section on the Third Amendment and applied by the Supreme Court in outlawing polygamy as described in the section on marriage, again. It is a general threat to the psychology of human rights and a specific threat to the legal status of women as persons. The legal history of abortion and the almost universal mythic or religious belief that pregnancy signals the advent of a new person, establish quite clearly that the point where people perceive a new person is at the knowledge of pregnancy.

Medical personnel would like to dictate standards here though they are completely ignorant of and incapable of forming a knowledgeable opinion of the social effects of such standards. Like Utopians of all ages they are impatient with what they feel is human ignorance and superstition and believe that such humbug should not influence the decisions of rational men.

In quiet debates among rational men this might be true. In dealing with the government of vast numbers of men other standards must prevail. Medical professionals would not enjoy living in a world where the average man on the streets was normed to an indifference to blood approaching theirs.

Our system of government is founded on the assumption that humans are not perfectible in a Utopian sense. People will be people and the State must make Laws that take Human Nature into account as constant reality. Utopian concepts are built on what the Federalist Papers call the weaker springs of human nature. The fact is that medical science is not the right authority to consult as an authority in such matters. Laws are matters for social science, history, and legal scholars to determine. There is too much Utopian Medical Idealism in the background of Roe vs. Wade. This version of the Secular Humanist Religion is quite dangerous to the psychology of Human Rights. Medical personnel must be consulted and concessions made to ensure that freedom which is necessary for necessary research is preserved. Their role in determining public laws which effect the masses of humanity is properly much more constrained.

The relevant area of fact is not when medical authorities may say that a new human life becomes a person, it is when humans are driven by instinct to recognize the personhood of such a new life. That this occurs much before birth is not to be seriously questioned. That the perception grows the longer the pregnancy lasts is not to be seriously questioned. The question is when can that life still be terminated without violating principles comprehensible to regular people in a way that is consistent with our general traditions of human rights.

Any time prior to the attachment of the egg to the uterine wall appears safe. After that point, certain knowledge of the existence of such a life exists. The psychological effects and on a large scale the social effects begin to be felt. Pro-Life advocates would insist on protection of the unborn prior to that point which is physically impossible. Making laws which are impossible to enforce leads inevitably to a host of problems with arbitrary rulings, edicts, etc. Pro-Choice advocates would insist on a right to abort much after that point which is sociologically dangerous. The right point is where nature draws the line, not with the start of life but with the beginning of pregnancy. It is physically real enough not to be considered arbitrary and close enough to when instinct draws the line as to be safe for society as a whole.