THE FIRST STEP TO ENDING ABORTION AND BILL SALETAN HAS MADE IT

A most incredible op-ed piece from the LA Times today by William Saletan attacking the proposed partial-birth ban. He tries (unsuccessfully) to portray President Bush, Rick Santorum and the rest of us with a conscience as a vast cabal out to abolish a right to privacy. He was able to make this tenuous mental leap because Roe v. Wade was based on a right to privacy. His logic is all backwards because he’s saying if a (abortion) follows from b (right to privacy) and a is removed then so is b. Example: Mike is a chef and he bakes cookies. The cookies (a) follow from Mike being a chef (b). If you say I can no longer bake cookies, that doesn’t mean I’m not a chef anymore. Who said liberals must be logical anyway?

Perhaps Saletan realized his arguments were flawed because at the very end he switched to new tactic. Look at this from the last paragraph:

“This is where Santorum and his allies hope the abortion debate will end: the abolition of individualism through the redefinition of freedom and happiness.”

A bit over the top, huh?

Saletan has some Santorum quotes that are un-referenced, I believe because Saletan is taking the phrases out of context, like all of the Liberals did when Santorum spoke of the consequences of finding a Constitutional right to gay marriage. You can read those and decide for yourself, I have the feeling we are looking at another Dowdism here.

THE BIG NEWS, though, is from a telling paragraph in the middle of the piece. In commenting on the pro-lifers framing the debate over infanticide and not abortion, we get this telling admission:

“Why do Bush and other pro-life politicians obscure this? Why confine the debate to infanticide, not abortion? Their immediate concern was constitutional: A Supreme Court committed to Roe — which the Rehnquist court is, at least for the moment — could nevertheless uphold a ban on infanticide. And politically, they just didn't want to reopen the broader question of abortion rights. To separate the two issues, they had to convince the public that the killing [bolding mine]in a partial-birth abortion takes place outside the woman's body.”

Is it just me? Am I reading this wrong or did Saletan just say abortion is killing? By differentiating abortion and infanticide only by where the killing takes place, does that not admit abortion is killing? You’re darn-tootin’ it does!!! I didn’t spot this the first two times I read it, it seems Saletan and his editor didn’t either.

Thank you William Saletan for coming right out and admitting that abortion is killing. THAT'S the first step to ending abortion and you have just made it.