The James Wilson Foundation on Natural Rights and the American Founding

“The Mysteries of the Born-Alive Acts” : Hadley Arkes in The Catholic Thing

by James Wilson Institute on September 8, 2020
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In his column for the Catholic Thing, Professor Arkes discusses the bill named the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act,” which argues that even an unborn baby marked for abortion has the right to be protected. He raises in this piece the matter of Bret Baier and the remarkable reluctance of Catholic figures in the media to call into question the new radical position of the Democratic Party on abortion. Prof. Arkes points out that the “liberal” party has become more and more the pro-abortion party, supporting a right to abortion that extends beyond the pregnancy and entails nothing less than the right to kill a child born alive. The pro-abortion narrative now categorizes abortion as a “public good” rather than a private choice. As for the “Mysteries,”  there is no mystery as to why the media, print, and television, have blacked out this story.  They evidently don’t think it is something good for the American people to know.  But the mystery is why conservative figures in the media, and Catholic figures—and Donald Trump have failed to make use of this piece of intelligence, which would certainly set off tremors in the political landscape, tremors which could define a presidential election.

Some excerpts from the article:

The Democratic position now is that: the right to abortion extends beyond the pregnancy itself and entails nothing less than the right to kill a child born alive.

The Democrats hated the bill, as they became more and more the pro-abortion party. They were willing to avoid embarrassment and vote for that bill, stripped of its penalties in 2002, as long as they could do it on a voice vote and not take a recorded vote.

The “liberal” party has become ever more cohesive in its willingness to support abortion, not as a private choice, but a “public good” to be promoted with public funds and made compulsory in medical insurance even for the Little Sisters of the Poor.

What could be said here of Baier could be said even more of Donald Trump. Could we imagine the effect if Trump turned to Joe Biden in the debate and asked him directly whether he stands with his party in the House and the Senate – and with the president he served, Barack Obama? For Obama insists that the bill to protect children born alive is incompatible with Roe v. Wade.  “Do you hold, Joe, with your friends, that the right to abortion extends beyond the pregnancy and entails nothing less than the right to kill a child born alive?  Is that the right you are trying to defend?”

The full article can be found here.

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Law and liberty cannot rationally become the objects of our love, unless they first become the objects of our knowledge.
— James Wilson, Lectures on Law, 1790