We're Running Out of Clocks to Turn Back

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

A writer for USA TODAY compares us pro-lifers to Osama bin Laden in this wonderful Tuesday column:

Without questioning the integrity of those who believe that life begins at conception, the struggle to overturn Roe v. Wade can also be viewed as an attempt to turn back the clock on women's freedom. Opposing such a reversal isn't a matter of thinking abortion admirable, but of accepting the magnificent revolutionary principle that no man has a right to tell any woman what she can or cannot do with her body.

Attempts to interfere with another citizen's liberty are worthy of Osama bin Laden, not of Americans.

We'll I'm glad Ralph Peters is sticking up for the opposite sex by calling us out as the terrorists we truly are. After all, why fight the terrorists abroad when there are plenty of us pro-lifers here in the United States to apprehend?

The Left really enjoys using that "turn back the clock" nonsense because it sounds so grave and ominous, but the reality is that overturning any court decision -- Roe v. Wade or Brown v. Board -- has no effect on the clock which remains fixed. The only way it could be "turned back" is if the legislature passed a law restricting what would no longer be protected by the Supreme Court. It is almost uniformly agreed in the political science community that in the unlikely event of a Roe reversal, the chances of a state passing a complete ban on abortion would be ridiculously small. Those of us hoping for a correction simply want such matters in the hands of accountable lawmakers, not high priests in black robes.

But that hasn't stopped the hysterical liberal lobbies from painting a doomsday picture in the minds of the public. And what bothers me most is how they try to rationalize the validity of Roe. The worst argument you can make is that laws restricting abortion would be "telling a woman what she can or cannot do with her body."

It's absolutely insane to suggest women (and men for that matter) have impalpable rights to their bodies. If so then every drug law would be unconstitutional. Every prostitution, vagrancy, and anti-strip club law has to be considered encroachment on a woman's "right" to do all those things to which the Constitution is completely oblivious.

At 18 a woman is a legal adult, so therefore any laws prohibiting her from possessing or consuming alcohol is as good as the state "telling a woman what she can or cannot do with her body."

No such right to absolute impunity over oneself exists. Stop pretending one does.