With Questions About Constitutionality of New Law, Will Partial-Birth Abortions Ever Be Banned?
by Rusty Pugh and Jody Brown
November 7, 2003
(AgapePress) - An outspoken pro-life activist and pastor says the partial-birth abortion ban is a bogus piece of legislation that "even the devil himself" would have signed.Pastor Flip Benham, national director of Operation Rescue / Operation Save America, says the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 signed into law this week by President Bush will not save the life of a single child. For one thing, he says, abortionists will simply change the procedure to find another way to kill the unborn child. Secondly, according to Benham, no one is going to police the action of abortionists.
"There is no one that is going to get close to the abortion mill," he says. "The health department doesn't go there, the IRS doesn't go there, social services don't go there -- and the police department rarely if ever goes there, unless it's to arrest Christians who are outside of the mill. There is no one that is going to police the activity in the abortion mill."
Benham says President Bush signed the ban knowing full well it was more a public relations ploy than a meaningful piece of legislation. In God's eyes, he says, there is no difference between a child who is about to be born and a child only seconds after conception -- and anyone who truly cares about them would recognize that fact.
"What we as Christians have to say is that we're not beholding to this president, to this piece of legislation, to the Congress, the Supreme Court, or the Republican Party, but solely to God and His Word and His love for voiceless, pre-born children," he says. "We are going to stand for these children if they are two seconds old in the womb."
The president has said that American culture is not ready for a total ban on abortion. Benham wonders how long it will be before the culture changes to do what is right. He says even children's author Dr. Seuss understood the truth when he had the character Horton the Elephant say: "A person is a person no matter how small."
More Injunctions
Meanwhile, federal judges in California and New York have joined one in Nebraska in issuing temporary injunctions against the PBA ban. Late Thursday, U.S. District Judge Phyllis Hamilton in San Francisco ruled that the new law may be unconstitutional because it provides no exemption for the health of the mother. That, she says, causes "an undue burden on a woman's right to choose."
Hamilton's action followed a similar ruling handed down in New York by U.S. District Judge Richard Casey. That ruling came in response to a petition filed by the National Abortion Federation and seven abortionists who say that without an injunction they would suffer irreparable harm.
According to Cybercast News, the ruling in California affects doctors who work at 900 Planned Parenthood clinics. The ruling in New York reportedly could carry national implications -- the National Abortion Federation claims that its members perform half of the abortions done in the United States.
A federal judge in Nebraska filed a temporary injunction on Wednesday, just minutes after the president signed the measure into law. That ruling affected only four abortionists.
Pro-life groups say the rulings are not surprising. Nevertheless, says a spokesman for the National Right to Life Committee, "it is distressing." The Justice Department, tasked with enforcing the laws of the nation, says it will continue to use "every resource necessary" to defend the ban on partial-birth abortions.
