Even with many people grappling with when life begins, it is hard to deny that a baby - born live - is a human being. For those who don't know the specifics of partial-birth abortion - which many people, including pro-choicers, consider infanticide - it is not a medical term, and is instead defined by the federal government. Essentially, it occurs when a baby is partially delivered (past its navel) before it is killed. In other words, it is a partial live delivery, and the death occurs through the physician's method of extraction. According to the executive director of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers , the procedure is most commonly performed on healthy mothers and healthy fetuses that are more than five months along. The most common method is to use foreceps to grab the child by the leg and pull it through the birth canal and out of the mother with the exception of the baby's head, which remains inside. The physician then stabs a pair of scissors into the baby's skull and opens them to expand the head. After the scissors are removed, the baby's brains are sucked out via catheter. This is not so much the aborting of a pregnancy as it is the aborting of a life.
And yet, this gruesome procedure is one that Obama supports. He is opposed to legislation that would ban the procedure, and while in the Illinois Senate, did not vote in favor of a bill similar to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act (BAIPA), which prevents the murder of live babies who are the victims of abortions-gone-wrong. (He was the only person to speak out against the Illinois bill. And the BAIPA passed the U.S. Senate with unanimous support, even gaining the acceptance of some of the most outspoken abortion supporters, including Barbara Boxer.)
For a man who presents himself as the hope of our nation, this darker, extremist side is often cleverly ignored. He is the master of feel-good statements, advocating his own brand of post-partisanship by supporting abortion funding while saying that we should seek to reduce the number of abortions in this country. Perhaps he seeks to do that through what Richards would refer to as "real" sex education. No, "real" sex education does not emphasize abstinence or require that students be told the gruesome story of abortion. Itstresses how to participate in sexual activity in a safe(r) way.
To that end, I would like to propose a new education program for our public schools: Safe(r) Drunk Driving Education. In the program, teachers can briefly inform students that the best possible way to avoid the dangerous consequences of drunk driving is to avoid participating in the activity all together. However, since we all know that kids are going to drink and then get into cars and drive, teachers will need to spend the majority of their class time focusing not on abstaining from the activity, but on instructing students in how to do it safely. Teachers can go over how to properly fasten a seatbelt. Students should be instructed that having a car with airbags adds another level of protection. It's probably best to drive more slowly and cautiously to compensate for slower reaction times. There may also be methods (such as taking a herbal pill or consuming a cup of coffee) to reduce the effects of drunkenness.
But by all means, drive drunk. Have fun with it. Just be safe. And if something goes wrong and someone gets hurt, well, another's person's life just isn't that valuable.
Or maybe it is. Maybe all life is. Maybe with the ordaining of the Constitution to "secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity", our country's forefathers endowed the pre-born with a hope and a future. Maybe the cry of " Can I Live " is the audacity of our posterity.
