{"id":1310440,"date":"2019-05-18T23:32:00","date_gmt":"2019-05-19T05:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/parker-column-bats-in-the-belfry\/"},"modified":"2019-05-18T23:32:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-19T05:32:00","slug":"parker-column-bats-in-the-belfry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/parker-column-bats-in-the-belfry\/","title":{"rendered":"Parker column: Bats in the belfry"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WASHINGTON \u2014 When author Mark Childress penned \u201cCrazy in Alabama,\u201d he wasn\u2019t just whistling Dixie.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t been quoted this much since Roy Moore,\u201d Childress recently told me, referring to last week\u2019s coverage of Alabama\u2019s passage of a law banning abortion in nearly all circumstances. Moore, of course, was the U.S. Senate candidate who lost a 2017 race after accusations surfaced of inappropriate sexual conduct with underage girls long ago.<\/p>\n

So, is Alabama really crazy? Is Georgia, which recently passed a \u201cheartbeat bill\u201d banning abortion after the baby\u2019s heartbeat can be detected, usually at around six weeks? (Neither law has taken effect, and both will surely be challenged in court.) Lest I be chastened for daring humanize an embryo, let me state for the record that the correct term for \u201cheartbeat\u201d is \u201cfetal pole cardiac activity,\u201d because at six weeks, said embryo doesn\u2019t have a cardiovascular system and, therefore, no fully-formed, beating heart.<\/p>\n

The question of craziness, meanwhile, depends upon one\u2019s definition of crazy. Is Alabama crazier than New York, where some protections for babies \u201cborn\u201d alive during an abortion were recently eliminated, making it easier to end their life if desired by the abortion seeker?<\/p>\n

Is Alabama crazier than Virginia, where Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam seemed to support infanticide back in January when commenting on a proposed bill that would relax some of the state\u2019s abortion restrictions? In a radio interview, he said that in cases where a mother goes into labor with a late-term fetus that has \u201csevere deformities \u2026 there may be a fetus that\u2019s not viable \u2026 the infant would be resuscitated if that\u2019s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trying to clarify after the inevitable firestorm, Northam\u2019s office later said that the \u201cdiscussion\u201d would be regarding medical prognosis and treatment, not ending the life of the newborn. For a physician, Northam seems challenged to express himself medically. And consider this: Although only about 1.4% of abortions occur at or after 21 weeks, the Guttmacher Institute\u2019s data suggest that \u201cmost women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.\u201d Just to be clear.<\/p>\n

The crucial aspect of both the New York law and Virginia\u2019s proposed law (which as been tabled, for now) is that they reduce medical oversight of late-term abortions. In both cases, only one doctor would be involved in deciding and performing a late-term abortion, eliminating additional physicians who can tend to a baby that survive an abortion. New York previously had required two doctors in the room; Virginia required that three doctors certify that continuing the pregnancy would likely cause the patient\u2019s death or that it would \u201csubstantially and irremediably impair\u201d her mental or physical health. Thus, a single doctor could decide that a woman\u2019s perhaps fleeting state would be sufficient to end a baby\u2019s potentially viable life.<\/p>\n

Some Americans may find these adjustments acceptable, though they are surely few. More important is to understand that the extremism of what New York did \u2014 and Virginia attempted to do \u2014 invited the extremism of Alabama, Georgia and other pro-life states.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, pro-life legislative efforts haven\u2019t been for naught. Fence-sitters may now see more clearly on which side to plant their feet. In a 2016 Pew poll, 69% of Americans opposed overturning Roe vs. Wade. But most people are comfortable with limitations. We can quibble over where those limits should be, but nothing will ever please everyone. Where insight fails, facts are often helpful: Biologically, life begins at conception. Full stop. A fetus is not part of a woman\u2019s body except as is umbilically necessary to sustain its life. Otherwise, it is a free-floating human being with its own unique DNA. If left to develop according to nature\u2019s course, the little tadpole would become a fully formed human baby and, barring unforeseen circumstances, grow up to become a regular reader of this column.<\/p>\n

It is ironic, meanwhile, that as pro-life activists radicalize their agenda, abortion rates are in steady decline. Likewise, pro-choicers are radicalizing their agenda as birth rates are no longer sufficient to replace the current population. Whatever transpires in the legal realm, I\u2019ll always wonder how acceptance of destroying the pre-born has affected our humanity. And, how many among the over 60 million Americans aborted since 1973 were destined to shape a better world?<\/p>\n

I know. Crazy.<\/p>\n

Kathleen Parker\u2019s email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 When author Mark Childress penned \u201cCrazy in Alabama,\u201d he wasn\u2019t just whistling Dixie. \u201cI haven\u2019t been quoted this much since Roy Moore,\u201d Childress recently told me, referring to last week\u2019s coverage of Alabama\u2019s passage of a law banning abortion in nearly all circumstances. Moore, of course, was the U.S. Senate candidate who lost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1310440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 17:11:04","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1310440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1310440\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1310440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1310440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1310440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}