Tag Archives: #Abortion

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Comment rescue: Elwood P Dowd in The Pirate’s Cove on prenatal infanticide

William Teach’s most liberal commenter, a strong supporter of prenatal infanticide, asked:

When does a conceptus become a person?

It should be at conception!

We already know that he is alive; we define single cell organisms as alive if they meet certain criteria, including respiration, absorption of nutrients, elimination of wastes and reproduction. There is no question that life exists even at the moment of conception.

Which leaves those favoring prenatal infanticide trying to claim that he is not human or is not a person. He is obviously human, in that his DNA are human, and he continues along the natural growth path through which all humans go. We develop through gestation, and we continue to develop after we are born; development and growth, as well as aging and decline are natural parts of life.

That leaves the question the distinguished Mr Dowd raises: is he a legal person?

The Supreme Court addressed a similar question 166 years ago:

The question is simply this: can a negro whose ancestors were imported into this country and sold as slaves become a member of the political community formed and brought into existence by the Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all the rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the citizen, one of which rights is the privilege of suing in a court of the United States in the cases specified in the Constitution? . . . .

The words “people of the United States” and “citizens” are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the “sovereign people,” and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty. The question before us is whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word “citizens” in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.

The case was, of course, Dred Scott v Sandford, 60 U.S. 393 (1856).

Roe v Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), was similarly decided: beings which had no voice of their own were not legal persons, and could simply be killed at the whim of the pregnant women, just as Chief Justice Roger Taney ruled that, not being legal citizens of the United States, Negroes had no right to sue in the federal courts.

It took what President Lincoln called a “great civil war,” and the military defeat of the Confederacy, plus the imposition by the victorious Union of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to replace the decision in Dred Scott.

The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a “person” within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant’s case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument. On the other hand, the appellee conceded on reargument that no case could be cited that holds that a fetus is a person within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The similarities with the Dred Scott decision are stark and obvious.

Mr Dowd also wrote:

Americans never respond well when a right is taken away. For 50 years Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land, with women having the right to an abortion with significant limits after the first 12 weeks of gestation (1st trimester).

Many Americans did not respond well when their rights to own slaves were taken away, but those rights were taken away to grant rights to the people who had been enslaved. If Roe is overturned, it will be to give rights to, to recognize the rights of those living human beings who are still in their mothers’ wombs.

I get it: many pregnant women simply do not want a child, or another child. They have now, and will have in the future, the absolute right to surrender that child for adoption, a right I would not take away even if I could. This could result in a hard life for those children, but a hard life is better than no life. We see this with the handicapped, many of whom about which we have said — though not to their faces — “I could never live like that; I’d rather be dead,” who have an attempted suicide rate roughly four times than of non-disabled people, but still fewer than 10% actually attempt to kill themselves:

As compared to adolescents without physical disabilities, adolescents with physical disabilities were significantly more likely to commit suicide or have suicidal behavior. In a study among 85,765 students in Denmark, Christoffersen, Poulsen, Nielsen found that adolescents who had been hospitalized for severe handicap or chronic disease had an increased rate of attempted suicide as compared to those were not physically disabled (8.7% vs 2.9%). In a cross-sectional study conducted in 13,917 adolescents from the 50 states and the District of Columbia, Epstein and Spirito reported that adolescents with physical disabilities and health problems were significantly more likely to attempt suicide as compared to those without (OR = 3.01, CI: 2.18-4.17). Hence, the limited number of studies that took a look at suicide in physically disabled adolescents, it was found that adolescents with physical disabilities were more likely to attempt suicide as compared to those did not have physical disabilities.

If 8.7% of physically disabled adolescents attempt suicide, then 91.3% do not. Somehow, some way, 91.3% of handicapped adolescents, the people about whom we have so often mused that “I’d rather be dead than to live like that,” have decided that they’d rather live than die.

After my father left, while I was in the second grade, I grew up poor. My mother, who had no education beyond high school, was responsible for caring for three children — I was the oldest — as my father found child support to be more of an option than an obligation. In the 1960s, men could get away with that! While not as poor as some, we did go a couple of months without running water, when a pipe froze and burst, and my mother did not have the money to get a plumber to fix it. Yet, despite that, I never contemplated suicide.

We see it in prisoners on death row, the vast majority of whom continue their appeals to the last extremis, preferring to stay alive in a cage than to die. Life may be hard for the orphan, but it is still life.[1]Regular readers of The First Street Journal know that I am opposed to capital punishment.

Abortion in almost every case is a choice of the convenience of the pregnant woman over the life of her unborn child.

On November 24, 2008, Patterico posed a question based on a comment from one of his readers:

Suppose the technology existed to safely remove a fetus from a womb at any gestational stage for incubation elsewhere until birth. If such “no-death abortion” was available to any woman who wanted it, would most abortion rights supporters stand down?

I’m especially interested in what abortion rights supporters have to say, because I’ve always thought that their position is based on opposition to forced pregnancy (”Keep your laws off my body”).

I especially love this hypothetical because I too have been thinking about the same issue for years. Indeed, I asked a modified version of it in this post. But Not Rhetorical’s articulation is less inflammatory and more conducive to good discussion.

I’m especially fond of the hypothetical because I explicitly discussed it recently with two women: the first night with one who was pro-choice, and the next night, with one who was pro-life. (To my surprise, the pro-choice woman would most assuredly not accept the sort of “no death abortion” that Not Rhetorical posits.)

I have told people since (and said to the pro-life woman) that I wish I could have had a camera over my shoulder taking footage when I was talking to these women. I respect both of the women very much, even though I violently disagreed with the pro-choice woman on this issue. But I found the contrast between their points of view — and the reasons for them — to be transcendent and profound in a way I’m not sure I could ever adequately express.

I don’t feel comfortable saying more, even without naming the women, because the conversations were private. But the conversation solidified my view that this particular hypothetical cuts right to the heart of the debate in a way that few others do.

I also very much liked Not Rhetorical’s suggestion for commenters: “I’d appreciate it if you could keep the usual stuff about murder and evil and so forth to a minimum. Like zero. I’m more interested in a dispassionate discussion.” Indeed. Every discussion about abortion devolves into one side screaming Abortion Evil! and the other side screaming Abortion Is a Right! That can get tiresome, and I’m looking for something that addresses the concerns raised by the specific hypothetical.

Patterico added the following to his hypothetical, assuming that the law absolutely assures mothers who choose this that they will never bear any legal responsibility for the child, whether financial or otherwise.

There are 153 reader comments, and they run the gamut, but there are clearly some who don’t think that such a solution would be a good thing, talking about the burdens on the adoption and foster care systems, and on welfare. One commenter, styling himself TC, wrote:

Anybody ever stop to think that not ALL conceived homo sapiens should be brought to life? I suppose I’m a bit tainted by a grandmother that was an OB nurse for 43 years and hearing some of her tales. . . . .

One more time here, IT IS JUST NOT YOUR BUSINESS AT ALL!!! YOU DO NOT HAVE A RIGHT or even a NEED TO KNOW!!! ever!!!

So very many people are just as concerned about getting rid of the child as they are about the woman who does not want to be pregnant. So many people seem to believe that children ought to be disposable, because they are just so much of a burden.

Actress Nana Visitor, who played Major Kira Nerys on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, was pregnant during the filming of Season 4, and the writers found an interesting way to work it into the series. In the episode “Body Parts,” Keiko O’Brien was critically injured in an accident aboard a runabout. In order to save her baby, Dr Julian Bashir transferred it to the only available undamaged womb, Major Kira’s. Several episodes into Season 5 involved Major Kira and her interaction with the O’Brien family, and of course the Major was simply helping them out, and was going to give the baby, eventually named Kirayoshi, to the O’Briens after delivery.

That she did, but after Kirayoshi was born, Major Kira wistfully, almost tearfully said that she just wished she could hold him. How many of the women who favor prenatal infanticide are worried that once they go through pregnancy, fully intending to give up their child, wouldn’t be able to do so due to the natural bonding that takes place between human mothers and children? It’s just so much more important to kill him before that can happen!

In the end, those favoring abortion seem just as interested in making sure the child is dead than just relieving the pregnant woman of her burden. Those favoring prebirth infanticide are the ones siding with Chief Justice Taney.

References

References
↑1 Regular readers of The First Street Journal know that I am opposed to capital punishment.
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Senator Bob Casey lies through his scummy teeth! Another Catholic Democrat who finds being a Democrat more important than being Catholic

In 2004, Pennsylvania’s Auditor General, Bob Casey, Jr, ran for State Treasurer. Because I wanted to support declared pro-life candidates, and because I wanted to see more pro-life Democrats in the Democratic Party, I went ahead and cast my ballot for Mr Casey.

This was obviously a mistake.

Sen. Bob Casey said he’ll back a bill to ensure abortion access, a new marker for the ‘pro-life’ Democrat

Casey, and his family, have a long and complicated history with abortion laws, but the Democratic senator said he will vote for the Women’s Health Protection Act.

by Jonatham Tamari | Tuesday, May 10, 2022

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bob Casey will vote to support a bill to ensure access to abortion nationwide, he said Tuesday, taking a significant step in favor of abortion rights despite long describing himself as a “pro-life” Democrat.

Casey, whose namesake father was part of a landmark Supreme Court case on abortion restrictions, announced his stand Tuesday ahead of a Senate vote, expected as soon as Wednesday, that would attempt to write into law the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion and blocking many bans.

While the vote is certain to fail in the face of opposition from Republicans and likely from West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, it represents Democrats’ first formal pushback against a forthcoming Supreme Court decision that appears poised to overturn the pivotal abortion ruling.

Casey, in a statement, said he has never voted for and would not support “a categorical ban on abortion” that could result from the expected ruling.

There’s more at the original.

What exactly does “pro-life” mean to someone who has claimed that definition, but who is planning to vote for a bill which would codify a ‘right’ to prenatal infanticide into federal law? Continue reading →

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The pro-abortionists really, really don’t like it when someone uses plain and concise language If abortion is such a good and noble thing, why must the left mealy-mouth their words about it?

We have previously noted how the credentialed media use control of language to try to influence the debate toward their favored positions, which always seem to be toward the left.

Twitter did so by prohibiting “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.” Simply put, if someone wanted to tweet something about William Thomas, the male swimmer who claims to be female and is on the University of Pennsylvania’s women’s swim team using the name “Lia,” that person would have to concede to Mr Thomas’ claim that he is a woman by using the feminine pronouns and his assumed name, not his real one. The New York Times laughably gave major OpEd space to Chad Malloy, a man male who claims to be a woman going by the name “Parker” to claim that Twitter’s Ban on ‘Deadnaming’ Promotes Free Speech.

Twitter’s ban on ‘deadnaming’ — the reference to ‘transgender’ people by their birth names — and ‘misgendering’ — the reference to ‘transgender’ people by their natural, biological sex — tramples on the speech of normal people, people who do not believe that girls can be boys and boys can be girls. The argument is that, in effect, we can’t hurt their precious little feelings, and so we must concede their major point to engage in debate. Here’s hoping that Elon Musk changes that!

Now comes Jeffrey Barg, also known as the Angry Grammarian, getting upset that Associate Justice Samuel Alito used plain language, did something radical like tell the truth, in his leaked draft majority opinion on Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization: Continue reading →

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Conservative Kentuckians need to thank Mitch McConnell! He filled an inside straight when the safe bet would have been to fold.

Screen capture from The Washington Post. Click to enlarge.

If this draft opinion truly reflects the decision of the Court, we need to give thanks exactly where it is due: to Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who, as Majority Leader at the time, prevented a vote which would have elevated Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court. This allowed President Trump to instead appoint Neil Gorsuch, one of the (reported) 5-4 majority which overrules Roe v Wade 410 US 113 (1973).

When Senator McConnell took his decision, it was not at all clear that a Republican would win the 2016 election. The odious Hillary Clinton was the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, though Bernie Sanders was still making inroads, and Donald Trump was throwing the orderly Republican nomination process into chaos. Every poll, every poll, concluded that Mrs Clinton would solidly defeat Mr Trump if that was how the November contest would be held. If that turned out to be the case, the (purportedly) more moderate Judge Garland would be replaced as nominee by a really flaming hard leftist like, oh, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Even if Mrs Clinton would simply have renewed the appointment of Judge Garland, were he on the Supreme Court he would have voted to uphold Roe.

Senator McConnell placed a serious bet, against the odds, and he won; he filled an inside straight, when the safe bet would have been to fold.

I’m very proud to say that I voted for Mitch McConnell in November of 2020!

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“It’s a stinking business, Mr Rutledge, a stinking business!” It seems that Planned Parenthood is having difficulties finding physicians who want to perform abortions

In the musical 1776, Roy Poole, the actor playing delegate Steven Hopkins of Rhode Island, shouts to John Callum, who played Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, on slavery, “It’s a stinking business, Mr Rutledge, a stinking business!” That’s how I see abortion, and I am appalled that anyone would willingly be a part of it.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 940 OB/GYNs employed in Georgia in May of 2010, the fifth highest in the nation. The ‘location quotient’ for OB/GYNs in the Peachtree State was 1.38; BLS defines the term as:

The location quotient is the ratio of the area concentration of occupational employment to the national average concentration. A location quotient greater than one indicates the occupation has a higher share of employment than average, and a location quotient less than one indicates the occupation is less prevalent in the area than average.

There are 21 OB/GYNs employed in Georgia per 100,000 population, which is the highest number in the South, and one of the highest in the nation, but somehow, Planned Parenthood can’t find anyone in the Peachtree State willing to perform preborn infanticides! Continue reading →

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Jill Filipovic is just hopping mad!

It was March 3, 2016, when uber-feminist Jill Filipovic published Dear Everyone Who Said Ruth Bader Ginsburg Should Retire: You Were Wrong: The Texas abortion case before the Supreme Court is just further proof that the justice knew what she was doing. Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt was before the Supreme Court, and, in the end, Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan formed the five member majority which invalidated some restrictions the Lone Star State placed on abortion.

Well, Justice Kennedy retired and Justice Ginsburg departed this mortal vale, and the seat left vacant when Justice Antonin Scalia died have been filled, by Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, all appointed by President Trump.

Miss Filipovic wrote:

Ginsburg, who many pundits were calling on to retire a little over a year ago, may be the justice who offers the best chance not only of overturning the law, but of writing a coherent and fair opinion laying out a detailed standard for challenging future abortion laws.

The argument for Ginsberg’s retirement was fairly straightforward: She was old, there was a midterm election looming in which Republicans were set to potentially take control of the Senate, and it was Obama’s last chance to appoint a liberal. And what if a Republican won in 2016? And again in 2020? Ginsburg, in her 80s, could be replaced by a conservative.

Ginsburg’s refusal to retire hinged on a few points: She still had all of her mental faculties, she was good at her job, and even the pre-midterm Senate wasn’t liberal enough to appoint someone as progressive as her. Besides, she’s a Supreme Court justice — have some respect and let her make the call.

“Who do you think President Obama could appoint at this very day, given the boundaries that we have?” Ginsburg told ELLE. “If I resign any time this year, he could not successfully appoint anyone I would like to see in the court. [The Senate Democrats] took off the filibuster for lower federal court appointments, but it remains for this court. So anybody who thinks that if I step down, Obama could appoint someone like me, they’re misguided. As long as I can do the job full steam…. I think I’ll recognize when the time comes that I can’t any longer. But now I can.”

So, Justice Ginsburg was concerned not the President Obama couldn’t get a liberal through, but that even if he tried with a stealth liberal like he did with Merrick Garland, the nominee wouldn’t be liberal enough for her.

When Miss Filipovic wrote, it was becoming clear that Donald Trump was in the lead for the Republican presidential nomination, and of course he could never defeat Hillary Clinton in the general election. The seat once held by Justice Scalia would be filled by someone nominated by incoming President Clinton.

This recent case offers the court an opportunity to clarify the “undue burden” standard, or craft a new one. Before Scalia’s death, there were fears the conservative wing of the court could use this case as a vehicle to overturn Roe v. Wade and dismantle abortion rights generally. Now, there is virtually zero chance of that happening; instead, the best-case scenario is that the liberal wing of the court triumphs and publishes an opinion making it more difficult for state legislators to cut off women’s access to safe, legal abortion, protecting abortion rights for at least the next generation.

The most likely candidate to write that opinion is Justice Ginsburg. And that should be enough for a clear ruling: She was absolutely right when she ignored the mostly male peanut gallery imploring her to hang up her robe, relied on her own supreme wisdom, and refused to retire.

I’m sure that the then-Miss Filipovic never, ever thought that it would be President Trump who would nominate the replacement for Mrs Ginsburg after she went to her eternal reward.

To the right is a screen capture of the now Mrs McCormick’s angry tweets of this morning. I chose a screenshot just in case she either deletes them — which is unlikely — or blocks me from seeing them, which she might do if she sees this article. The links to the original are for the first, second and third.

What has her so bitterly angry? From CNN:

Texas 6-week abortion ban takes effect after Supreme Court inaction

By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter | Updated 2:32 AM ET | Wednesday, September 1, 2021

(CNN) A controversial Texas law that bars abortions at six weeks went into effect early Wednesday morning after the Supreme Court and a federal appeals court failed to rule on pending emergency requests brought by abortion providers.

The lack of judicial intervention means that the law — which is one of the strictest in the nation and bans abortion before many people know they are pregnant — goes into force absent further court intervention.

The law allows private citizens to bring civil suits against anyone who assists a pregnant person seeking an abortion in violation of the ban.

No other six-week ban has been allowed to go into effect — even briefly.

“What ultimately happens to this law remains to be seen,” said CNN Supreme Court analyst and University of Texas Law School professor Steve Vladeck, “but now through their inaction the justices have let the tightest abortion restriction since Roe v. Wade be enforced for at least some period of time.”

The case comes as the justices are poised in the upcoming term to rule on the constitutionality of a Mississippi law that bars abortion at 15 weeks.

There’s more at the original.

Mrs McCormick, in the last of the three tweets I listed, complained about an “authoritarian court,” which leads me to ask: at what point would she favor authoritarianism herself? In her article The Importance of Being Honest: Sometimes we have to sacrifice for public health. But don’t deny the sacrifice itself, she expresses understanding that being forced to wear a facemask, something Republicans and libertarians see as an authoritarian dictate, is a burden, is a sacrifice, but sometimes that burden must be borne. She calls “proponents of stricter anti-Covid measures,” “a group I’m generally a member of,” and says:

The impulse to downplay inconvenient outcomes of one’s own position has been in full force throughout Covid, and with the school reopening + Delta, it’s gotten even more extreme. I keep hearing, for example, that wearing a mask is no big deal and anyone who complains about masking is probably a Covid denialist reactionary. This is pretty weird, because it seems to me to be obviously, demonstrably true that wearing a mask is an inconvenience and a personal and cultural sacrifice — it means you can’t fully read other peoples’ facial expressions, it impedes basic human interactions, it makes you break out, it irritates your face, it fogs up your glasses, and I find that when I wear one I start to feel a little disoriented after a while, especially inside under bright lights. Wearing a mask sucks! But it sucks far less than giving someone else Covid, or getting Covid yourself. And so of course, in scenarios where people are not all fully vaccinated and infection rates are high, we should continue wear masks inside. I wear masks inside and I think indoor mask-wearing for essential activities should be mandatory (I also think vaccines should be mandatory for inessential activities, like dining out).

She is, by her own words, willing to force people to bear the burden of mandatory vaccinations and mandatory masking. She recognizes the burdens being put on people, but believes that not getting vaccinated and not wearing a mask is a greater danger than being burdened by doing so, even against your will.

So, apply that logic to abortion. A woman gets pregnant, and does not want to be, does not want a child.[1]It is completely legal, in every state, for a mother to take her unwanted child to a police or fire station, or hospital, and leave him there, surrendering her parental rights, with no questions … Continue reading That is a burden to her, no doubt about it. Her solution: abortion.

But abortion is a burden as well. While it’s a financial burden, though not a great one, on the woman, it also places the burden of ‘relieving’ her burden onto the unborn child. His burden? A death sentence!

So, which is the greater burden: nine months of an unwanted pregnancy, or death for the child? Because, whether Mrs McCormick will admit it or otherwise, that is the exact comparison.

We have placed even greater burdens on people in the past; the United States has had a conscription system under which, though no one has actually been drafted since the 1970s, millions of men have been drafted in the past, and hundreds of thousands of them paid the ultimate price, in World War I, in World War II, in Korea and in Vietnam.[2]Full disclosure: though I was of draft age at the tail end of the Vietnam war, I was not called up due to a high lottery number. The burden of an unwanted pregnancy is far, far less than that of a soldier bleeding out his life’s blood in the rice paddies of South Vietnam.

We do not know how many children will be saved by the Texas law, though surely some will. Some pregnant women will travel to New Mexico or Oklahoma or Louisiana to be ‘relieved’ of their burdens, though hopefully fewer than would otherwise have had abortions in Texas clinics.

How will the Supreme Court rule on the Mississippi case? It is absolutely certain that the three justices appointed by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama will vote to overturn it. The left are deathly afraid that Justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett will uphold the law, at least in some form. The Chief Justice? If he is going to be in the minority with the three liberal justices, he might just vote with the majority, so that he can assign the opinion, rather than Justice Thomas, assigning it to the Justice he believes will write the most restrictive opinion . . . probably himself. But predicting Supreme Court decisions has rarely been a money-winning game.

References

References
↑1 It is completely legal, in every state, for a mother to take her unwanted child to a police or fire station, or hospital, and leave him there, surrendering her parental rights, with no questions asked. Having a child she does not want does not mean that the mother must keep the child.
↑2 Full disclosure: though I was of draft age at the tail end of the Vietnam war, I was not called up due to a high lottery number.
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Will other bishops and priests have this kind of courage?

Among all of the talk about denying the Eucharist to (purportedly) Catholic politicians who support abortion, I have very, very rarely heard of it actually being done. From the Catholic News Agency:

    Diocese responds after state senator says he was denied Communion

    By Kate Scanlon | July 19, 2021 | 2:30 PM EDT

    Washington, DC: After a New Mexico state senator said he was denied Communion this weekend because of a political matter, his diocese responded that it had privately warned him he should not approach for Communion, due to his obstinate support for a pro-abortion bill.

    In a tweet on Saturday, July 17, New Mexico state Sen. Joe Cervantes (D) wrote he “was denied communion last night by the Catholic bishop here in Las Cruces and based on my political office.”

    “My new parish priest has indicated he will do the same after the last was run off,” Cervantes added. “Please pray for church authorities as Catholicism transitions under Pope Francis.” The senator represents New Mexico’s 31st district, around Las Cruces.

    In response, Christopher Velasquez, director of communications for the Diocese of Las Cruces, told CNA on Monday that it is “unfortunate that a pastoral issue with a member of the local church be publicized.”

Mr Velasquez stated that Senator Cervantes was notified, several times, by both the Most Reverend Peter Baldacchino, Bishop of Las Cruces, and his local diocesan pastor, that if he voted for Senate Bill 10, which Mr Cervantes cosponsored, repealed a 1969 state law criminalizing abortions, he should not present himself to receive the ERucharist. That law has not been enforced since the odious Roe v Wade decision, but if the Supreme Court ever overruled Roe v Wade, the New Mexico law could come back into effect. The Bishop, Mr Valasquez said, had not received any reply from Senator Cervantes. The article did not specify whether Mr Cervantes had responded to his diocesan pastor.

It’s good to see a Bishop with the courage of his convictions and his faith. If only more bishops and priests would show the same mettle.