Source: WorldNetDaily; April 30, 2001

Rescuing America's Unborn Children
by Alan Keyes

[Pro-Life Infonet Note: Former Reagan administration official Alan Keyes,
was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Social and Economic Council
and a 1996 and 2000 Republican presidential candidate.]

The U.S. Congress this week passed -- and sent on to the Senate -- a bill
to protect unborn children against violence suffered from assaults on the
mother. In a rational and decent age, it would not, perhaps be necessary
to marshal special arguments in defense of the obvious truth that violence
that causes the death of a child is a crime whether or not that child has
been born. But, of course, there are those who work tirelessly to keep our
age from being either rational or decent, and they are vigorously opposing
The Unborn Victims of Violence Act. They object to the bill because it
speaks of unborn children as unborn children, rather than as fetuses, and
because it accordingly threatens to disturb the web of sophistries and
lies that shrouds the real evil of the abortion doctrine.

The bill is important for the same two reasons as is the ongoing campaign
to ban partial-birth abortion -- to stop a particular evil in a way that
also strikes an effective blow in the larger battle. Everyone claims to
agree that it is good to make violence against women, which harms or
destroys the life within her, a distinct federal crime. I should say,
everyone agrees to this as long as the woman has not requested the
violence -- but leave that aside for the moment. The disagreement begins
over the language by which the law will refer to the child in the womb. A
pro-abortion substitute measure goes quite far in criminalizing violence
that "terminates pregnancy" against the will of the mother, but
scrupulously avoids acknowledging that there are two victims in such a
crime.

Abortion defenders call The Unborn Victims of Violence Act a strike
against "choice," because it speaks openly of the unborn child as a
person. I believe that they are correct. And it may be prudent for
defenders of the bill to avoid encouraging opposition by arguing too
loudly about its effect on the abortion debate. But it is necessary here
to acknowledge, as well as in the case of partial-birth abortion, that we
seek this part of justice not only for its own sake, but for the sake as
well of the larger good -- the restoration of the doctrine of human
equality in the American regime which will bring legal abortion to an end.

This law has the potential to be a powerful manifestation to everyone of
the perverse and contradictory logic of the abortion doctrine. For it is
clear to everyone -- hence the pro-abort rage -- that the logic of the law
extends in principle to every unborn child. Accordingly, the strained
restriction of legal protection to the "wanted" childs personhood reveals
the evil reasoning underlying the abortion doctrine: That whether killing
an unborn child today in America is a crime or the exercise of a sacred
right depends in no way on the nature or intrinsic dignity of the child --
or on any unchanging or permanent moral standard -- but simply on the
arbitrary will of the mother of the child.

Our words, and the words of our laws, reveal our understanding of reality.
Our willingness to insist on using the right names for things -- and for
children -- is a sign of our resolve to insist on respect for the truth.

Defenders of the abortion doctrine have been quick to realize that a
federal law recognizing that killing an unborn child against the wishes of
the mother is murder will be public testimony that some, at least, unborn
children are acknowledged to be persons equal in dignity to those of us
walking around. Laws protecting "chosen" children draw dramatic attention
to the most fundamentally evil htmlect of the abortion doctrine. Worse even
than the defense of the killing of the innocent unborn is the doctrine
that human beings receive their dignity and their rights from the act of
choice made by their mother, rather than by the will of the Creator.
Seeking to take the place of God is a greater offense than violating His
law by killing our neighbor.

The pro-abortion lobby argues openly that the unborn child -- wanted or
unwanted -- is simply a "fetus," devoid of human nature and dignity.
Despite the unanimous conviction of mothers everywhere that the children
they lovingly carry are human persons inherently entitled to that maternal
love and respect, Planned Parenthood and NARAL are willing to take their
stand on the position that even "wanted" children arent children until
they are born. The Unborn Victims of Violence Act specifically exempts the
violence of procured abortion from its provisions, but it would
nonetheless codify the opposite of the pro-abortion position that even
"wanted" children are not persons until they are born.

Why are they willing to tell living mothers that their children are not
persons_ Because the alternative is to adopt the yet more irrational, and
monstrous, position that human offspring in the womb can change from human
person to blob of tissue, and back again, and so on, from moment to
moment, simply as the intention of the mother changes. Defenders of
abortion seem to sense that America will more readily accept the
dehumanization of all unborn children, in defiance of the judgment of
loving parents and of all moral decency, than the more manifest absurdity
of dividing the unborn into persons and non-persons according to the will
of the mother.

But, of course, such division of unborn children into the categories human
will imposes on them is actually the essence of the pro-abortion position.
The proud claim of the right to decide who is human, and who is not, is
the heart of the evil. And the most powerful weapon against it is the
truth on which America was founded -- it is self-evident that human beings
do not have the power to make or unmake the dignity of our fellow man
according to our arbitrary will. To be human, rather, is to belong to a
community of creatures who are the common recipients of the endowment,
made by a will beyond our own, of an equal and unalienable dignity.

Americans have certainly drifted far from this founding truth -- but it is
not yet clear that we will knowingly and directly choose to deny it. The
abortion lobby is, with good reason, not willing to let the question be
put so directly to the American people. And the doctrine that whether
killing the unborn is a crime or a right depends on the preference of a
mere human being takes the abortion lobby uncomfortably close to an open
test of its deepest evil principle -- that some human beings are as gods,
endowed by the mere fact of their current strength and power with the
"right" to play the Roman Emperor and turn thumbs up or down on the rest
of us.

Defenders of life, and of justice, must strive continually to put this
question of principle before the American people -- and to refuse to speak
in ways that ever suggest acquiescence to the lies of the abortion
doctrine. Last week Pat Robertson, commenting on the official Chinese
policy of forced abortion, told a national television audience that: "I
think that right now theyre doing what they have to do. I dont agree with
forced abortion, but I dont think the United States needs to interfere
with what theyre doing internally." It is impossible to overstate how
destructive it is to the cause of American principle when so called
"leaders" of moral conservatism offer such energetic and servile
appeasement to the forces of evil.

Speaking the truth is not expensive, and it is not -- yet -- dangerous in
America. At least, it is not dangerous if we still have enough decency not
to define danger only in terms of lost trade contracts with the Chinese.
Whatever else we do or accomplish, we can at least call the evil of
abortion by its real name -- impious murder of Gods innocent ones -- and
refuse to join in the euphemisms and sophistries by which that real name
is concealed.

In contrast to Pat Robertsons pre-emptive moral appeasement, The Unborn
Victims of Violence Act is a weapon of truth in defense of the doctrine of
human equality on which America was founded. Its congressional sponsors
are to be praised for crafting a bill that is so aptly designed to
accomplish plain justice simply by acknowledging the truth that violent
assaults on pregnant women have two human victims, and that it does so in
a way that also invites the country to see the deeper principles at stake.
President Bush has wisely promised to sign the bill, recognizing that it
represents precisely the kind of prudent defense of the unborn that can
play a real role in bringing the mind and heart of America back to a
clearer understanding of the choice between good and evil, life and death,
that we cannot avoid indefinitely.

The Unborn Victims of Violence Act has the defenders of death squirming,
and that itself is a sign that the truth is at work. It passed the House
once before, in 1999, but the Senate failed to act. Let us hope, and work,
that the bill becomes law this time, and that it is followed by further
measures to reawaken, and reestablish, our national commitment to the
founding principle of American life -- that our rights, and our equality,
come from God, not from human choice.