:: The S.I.C.L.E. Cell ::

:: Monday, May 19, 2003 ::

If there are any questions as to where AOL (America Online) stands regarding Laci and Conner's Law, just let this morning's welcome menu clear that up for you. I signed on, and the first headline that popped up was: "GOP Uses Laci to Push Bill". Under that it says "Backers of Fetal Rights Law cite Peterson Murder Case". Click on the hyperlink and it takes you to an Associated Press article written by David Crary. This article changes the subject and is seemingly devoted to abortion support as the vast majority of it presents and supports the opinions of Kate Michelman and Representative Zoe Lofgren. Crary even uses the "balanced" opinion rule to abortion's advantage.

Here's how media bias works...
The author publishes a comment by Kate Michelman who says:

''This is one of their strategies - to ascribe legal rights to the fetus separate from the woman... Their intent is to do whatever they can to contribute to the ultimate goal of overturning Roe v. Wade and taking away a woman's right to control her reproductive life.''

At the end of the article (and to be fair?) the author quotes Dr. Joe Cook (OB/GYN for Life) as saying, "We have to approach this [outlawing abortion] in a way that is doable, a step at a time." Crary also quotes Douglas Johnson, the legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee as saying, "It's important to protect unborn children from all threats."

California Representative Zoe Lofgren (D) is proposing a replacement bill for Laci and Conner's law. She wants a possible life sentence for anyone who "terminates a pregnancy" against a mother's will. She is quoted as saying, "'We can protect women from violence without opening the Pandora's box of the abortion debate." Lofgren and Crary fail to mention that California's own fetal homicide law has not "opened the Pandora's box of the abortion debate."

The next statement is great. Crary is hoist by his own petard when he slips up and says, "Lofgren expressed dismay that crime victims like the Petersons are used as 'the poster child for the right-wing agenda'." Notice the author's own words: "victims like the Petersons". There's an "s" there, buddy, and that is plural. Crary (and Lofgren) also fail to acknowledge another teeny tiny bit of information: renaming the bill was the Peterson family's idea.

Can you imagine Laci's mom asking you to memorialize and honor her daughter and grandson and then telling her no? Abortion supporters can. Or maybe they'd just suggest a Lofgrenesque alternative, but you have to wonder how the courts are going to logically embrace such a substitute.

If the possible life sentence is a penalty for revoking the choice of a woman to carry her child to term, then why attribute a life sentence to the offender? There are many offenders who revoke a woman's right to choose something, yet they are not given life sentences. What's so special about a pregnant woman? Ah, but now we're getting somewhere!

Lofgren says of the sponsors of the bill: "I can deal with people who simply disagree on abortion,'' she said. ''What bothers me are people who aren't honest about what they're doing.''

I hear Webster is considering listing that statement as the very definition of hypocricy.

Also on today's AOL unwelcoming welcome menu, the Ass. Press reported on approximately 100 students who walked out of Senator Rick Santorum's commencement speech at their self-chosen Jesuit university. It appears they are offended by the Biblical take on homosexuality, which makes me wonder why the heck they chose to go to a Jesuit university in the first place. Of course the author (Bill Bergstrom) mentions a really intellectual quote from a bisexual walk-out while it seems he hand picked kind of a dumb quote to represent a counter demonstrating "pro-lifer". (Reminds me of the time I participated in a Life Chain. The media pulled up and after eyeballing us for a few minutes, the only person he chose to interview on camera was an aged nun in full habit.)

Santorum is the father of Gabriel Michael, a son who died after being diagnosed with a fatal valve defect that did not allow him to eliminate urine into the womb. At the time, Rick was arguing for the Partial Birth Abortion Ban in Washington and was being told over and over again by abortion supporters that men don't have any idea what it's like to be in a situation where the child they carry has a fatal defect and so none of them had the right to comment on Partial Birth Abortion. Gabriel Michael died in Rick Santorum's arms two hours after being born prematurely due to an intrauterine infection which resulted from in-womb corrective surgery.


SICLECell@hotmail.com

:: ashli 9:58 AM # ::
...