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Dr. Charmaine Yoest of Americans United for Life was the official pro-life witness at yesterday's Senate confirmation hearing for Judge Sonya Sotomayor.  She addressed concerns about Sotomayor's position as a Board Member for the radically pro-abortion Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund.  During her Sotomayor's tenure on the board, the fund filed several amicus brief with the courts, urging a right to taxpayer-funded abortion and challenging New York's parental notification law.

           

            You probably heard about President Obama’s swatting of a fly during an interview with CNBC on the 16^th of June. While watching the news, you probably welcomed the light moment in the midst of constant bad news about the economy and the recession. But the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) publicly scolded Obama for the incident.

            “We support compassion for even the smallest of animals,” says Bruce Friedrich, the vice president for policy at PETA. But what about compassion for the smallest of humans?

            PETA’s official statement says: “There are people on both sides of the abortion issue in the animal rights movement, just as there are people on both sides of the animal rights issues in the pro-life movement. And just as the pro-life movement has no official position on animal rights, the animal rights movement has no official position on abortion.”

            So, according to PETA, it is an grave injustice to swat a fly, an animal which survives solely on instinct and lacks any sort of real intelligence. But they could not care less if a baby, a human created in the image and likeness of God, is mercilessly slaughtered.

            This kind of thinking is wacky, if not completely insane, to any fair-minded person. But no one seems to notice or care because our society has devolved so much that we completely disregard the principles that our nation was founded on.

            “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…” Our founding fathers held the principle that government’s responsibility is to protect life and that life is an unalienable right, never to be taken away by and person, group, or government. Would they not be appalled to see the same government which they conceived on this belief has now slaughtered 50,000,000 of its own children?

            “Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

            President Abraham Lincoln repeated those words of the Declaration of Independence – “all men are created equal” – in the Gettysburg Address. It is arguably the greatest speech ever given. But people seem to overlook these words. Lincoln’s and our founding fathers’ choice of words was not accidental or coincedental. They said that all men are CREATED equal. Not equal once they are born or equal once they can survive outside the womb, but equal from the moment they are created by God.

            But in 1857, seven men on the Supreme Court ignored the principles of our founding fathers and ruled in Dred Scott v. Sanford that black slaves were to be treated as property of the slaveholder; that they were not on the same level as other humans and could be bought, sold, or killed freely and without punishment.

Lincoln gave everything he had, including, ultimately, his life, to correcting the wrongs of the 1857 decision and proving the truth that blacks are just as human as whites; that all men are CREATED equal; that no life is any less important or valuable than the next. And, though it took decades for the this truth to be fully realized, he succeeded.

But five score and sixteen years later, seven men on the Supreme Court ignored the principles of Lincoln and our founding fathers, reverted back to the slavery era, and ruled in Roe v. Wade that unborn children are to be treated as property of the mother; that they are not on the same level as other humans and can be killed freely and without punishment.

            We must be the Lincolns of today. We must devote ourselves to correcting the wrongs of the 1973 decision and proving the truth those who are not born yet are just as human as those who have been born; that all men are CREATED equal; that no life is any less important or valuable than the next. We are all created equal.

Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) met with Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor last week, and this is video of him discussing that meeting.  He specifically asked Judge Sotomayor if she thought unborn children had any rights under the Constitution.  Her reply was that she had never considered it before.

Senator DeMint issued a statement after the meeting, saying,


He went on to clarify,

(Thanks to our friends at Human Events for the video)

Does your state have Choose Life license plates?  States often charge an extra fee for the specialty plates, and profits go to fund abortion alternatives like pregnancy care centers or adoption programs.

The plates have been challenged in the courts, amassing a patchwork of rulings across the country.  The nation's highest court has declined to rule on this issue in the past, but the continuous compilation of varied rulings by lower courts has convinced many legal scholars that the Supreme Court needs to step in and establish a standard.

The case they have chosen to take up involves the denial of a Choose Life license plate in Illinois.  The New York Times reports,

*snip*

Though Illinois refused to approve a “Choose Life” plate, it does have some 60 other specialty plates, including ones for the alumni of 18 different colleges, for people who support youth golf and for those who wish to assure you that they are “pet friendly.” Five different plates put hunters to the choice of declaring whether they like to shoot deer, ducks, geese, pheasants or turkeys.

The issue for the court to decide is whether license plates constitute the "speech" of a private individual (covered under the First Amendment) or "government speech," which is not regulated in the same manner:

Illinois says that it should be allowed to decide what goes on its license plates because they convey government rather than private speech. If that is right, the First Amendment drops out of the equation, as the government is free to say what it likes.

Different courts around the country have ruled differently, so the Supreme Court ruling will in fact affect more than just the state of Illinois.  Oral arguments will likely be scheduled in the court's next term, so a decision won't arrive until next year.

Today 75 year-old Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg underwent surgery for "early stage" pancreatic cancer.  This type of cancer is known for being particularly aggressive and deadly.  It has been in the spotlight this year because actor Patrick Swayze is afflicted with the disease. 

This tragic news reminds us that with the majority of Supreme Court Justices over 70, the likelihood of a Supreme Court vacancy increases every day, and a new confirmation battle may come sooner than anyone expects. 

We may disagree with her judicial philosophy, but all of us at SuzyB send prayers for a speedy recovery to the Justice and her family as she confronts this new challenge.