LETTER 10
Blood Money
Zach,
Let me quote you some disturbing statistics about the abortion industry. According to the website Abort73.com,The Alan Guttmacher Institute (AGI), the research arm of Planned Parenthood, estimates that there were 1.21 million abortions performed in the U.S. in the year 2005. Of the 1.21 million annual abortions, approximately 88% (1.06 million) are performed during the first trimester. The other 12% (150,000) are performed during the second and third trimester. In 2005, the average cost of a nonhospital abortion with local anesthesia at 10 weeks of gestation was $413. The Women’s Medical Center estimates that a 2nd trimester abortion costs up to $3000 (with the price increasing the further along the pregnancy goes). If we take the $413 average for 1st trimester abortions and use a $3000 average for 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions, here’s what we get: $438 million is spent each year on first trimester abortions and $393 million is spent on late term abortions. That means that each year in the U.S., the abortion industry brings in approximately $831 million through their abortion services alone. If you add in the $337 million (or more) that Planned Parenthood (America’s largest abortion provider) receives annually in government grants and contracts, the annual dollar amount moves well past 1 billion.
Abortion, to put it plainly, is a very lucrative business, and this has been true from the beginning. By last count, Planned Parenthood (a tax-exempt organization!) has $951 million in total assets!
In addition to organizations, there are also a lot of individual doctors getting rich off of abortion. In his now-classic book, Pro-life Answers to Pro-choice Arguments, Randy Alcorn points out, “In 1992, when the average annual income for a physician in Portland, Oregon, was just under $100,000, a local abortionist testified in court that in the previous year his income had been $345,000. One physician says, ‘an abortionist, working only twenty or thirty hours a week, with no overhead, can earn from three to ten times as much as an ethical surgeon.”’ Abortion has been a very lucrative business for a very long time.
And, sadly, one of the reasons performing abortions is so lucrative is that abortionists are less likely to be sued for malpractice. No matter how badly some women are hurt, they do not want to reveal the fact that they have had abortions. So they stay out of court. And therefore the abortionists stay out of trouble.
The facts about the profitability of the abortion industry may help us to understand a few things about feminist resistance to free speech specifically, and to the free flow of information generally:1. Crisis Pregnancy Centers (CPCs). It has been ten years since we at UNC-Wilmington established a Women’s Resource Center (WRC). For nine of those ten years, I have been trying to get our local crisis pregnancy center linked on the WRC website, which is hosted by our university. But the feminists who maintain the WRC website have refused to include the link, claiming that they don’t have room on the website for both Planned Parenthood and the CPC. They have also said they cannot include the CPC because it is “overtly religious.” But most feminist criticisms of CPCs have not centered on religion specifically. Instead, they have centered on the more general accusation that CPCs try to make women feel guilty if they are even considering an abortion. These critics sometimes say that the real motivation for showing ultrasound images of the unborn baby is to make the woman “emotional” in order to get her to avoid making the “rational decision” to abort.But all of these explanations gloss over the fact that CPCs cost the abortion industry money. And money is a big reason why Planned Parenthood and its feminist allies would like to keep abortion safe, legal—and frequent. If Planned Parenthood is a pregnant woman’s only source of counseling, then the chance she will keep her baby is only about 10 percent. By contrast, some CPCs claim that by offering alternative counseling they can increase the chances that a woman will keep her baby to about 50 percent. And if the CPC is equipped with ultrasound technology (and the woman sees her unborn baby via sonogram), then the chance she will have her baby actually skyrockets to around 90 percent.
2. Breast Cancer Awareness. When I first heard that abortions significantly increase a woman’s chances of getting breast cancer, I was confused. I simply didn’t get the connection. But upon further reflection, it makes perfect sense. When a woman gets pregnant she experiences a rapid growth of breast tissue. An abortion creates an unnatural condition since the woman’s breast tissue is growing to prepare for a baby that is no longer there. That is the reason why women who have first trimester abortions double their chances of getting breast cancer. Professor Joel Brind of City University of New York has written a comprehensive study of the subject called Review and Meta-Analysis of the Abortion/ Breast Cancer Link. Here’s what he has to say about the level of cancer risk brought about by abortion: “The single most avoidable risk factor for breast cancer is induced abortion.”Now, ask yourself a question, Zach. In all the years that our university has sponsored breast cancer awareness seminars and speeches, have you ever heard a discussion of the issue of abortion? Clearly, discussing the role abortion plays in breast cancer poses a risk to those who profit from providing abortions. And so the information is routinely suppressed. If you don’t believe me, then just do a quick Google search of our university website. Nowhere—not in any course syllabus or any other published document—is the link between breast cancer and abortion mentioned. Nor is any professor at our university (besides me) currently discussing or researching the issue. It is simply dumbfounding.
3. Parental Notification Laws. In addition to preventing free speech on a wide range of issues like abortion and breast cancer, feminists often try to prevent the free flow of information between private parties—where there is a chance that the information might reduce the number of abortions. A prime example of this phenomenon is the staunch feminist opposition to parental notification laws. When a twelve-year-old girl becomes pregnant, there is little sense arguing that she has the maturity to understand the consequences of an abortion. Indeed, there is little chance that she understood the consequences of sex in the first place—hence the unexpected pregnancy. So she really should talk to one or both parents before having an abortion. Nonetheless, the feminist movement fights tooth and nail against parental notification laws because there is a very good chance that parents will be opposed to their little twelve-year-old getting an abortion. And, as we discussed previously, such opposition would cut into the profits of the abortion industry.So now we find ourselves in a strange place in America. If a teenager wants an abortion, she can have it. But if sometime later on she becomes upset and cries hard enough to get a headache and she needs an aspirin, then she’s out of luck. The school nurse can’t give her an aspirin without first securing parental permission. Abortion “yes,” but aspirin “no.” Which one would you say is more likely to be harmful to a twelve-year-old?
4. Reporting Statutory Rape. Over the course of the last several years, numerous undercover sting operations have caused Planned Parenthood great embarrassment. In some of the operations, young women have called a Planned Parenthood clinic to report that they were pregnant—specifically identifying themselves as under the age of consent. In recorded phone calls, Planned Parenthood employees make it clear that they are willing to provide abortions—without reporting the statutory rapes. Recordings of some of these phone conversations have been released to the media, causing great embarrassment to the “pro-choice” movement. After several of these sting operations were conducted over the phone, some pro-life organizations decided to start conducting them in person using hidden cameras.In June of 2008, two college women volunteering for Students for Life of America (SFLA) entered two clinics in North Carolina posing as underage girls. One posed as a fifteen-year-old, and the other posed as a fourteen-year-old. Both claimed they had just had unprotected sex with their mother’s boyfriend, who was in his thirties. Each girl also told the clinic workers that the boyfriend had suggested that she come get the “morning after” pill. According to North Carolina law, this informa
tion is enough to trigger mandatory statutory rape reporting. In other words, anyone aware of such information must report it to proper state or local authorities.
In both visits, staffers acknowledged that what was happening to the girls was, in fact, statutory rape. In North Carolina, the age of consent is sixteen and the perpetrator only needs to be four years older than the victim. Of course, all of the staffers were aware of the law—and in one case a staffer repeatedly admitted that they were required to report the incident.
After the visits, SFLA filed two North Carolina Public Records Requests (under N.C.G.S. Section 132) in order to find out if the Planned Parenthood locations had reported the crimes. SFLA obtained and posted online documents showing that the crimes were not reported to authorities in either Charlotte or Winston-Salem—the respective locations of the two clinics where the sting operations occurred.
This is chilling when you stop to think about it. For years, the abortion lobby has claimed that the horror of rape justifies legal abortion. Now, it appears that the profitability of abortion justifies their toleration of rape.
Zach, over the past couple of weeks I have been pleasantly surprised by your willingness to think more deeply about the abortion issue, and to listen to some truths about its supporters. I was pleased to see that you recently “liked” some of my anti-abortion posts on Facebook. The fact that you’ve been willing to consider arguments on this issue from a conservative Christian—and even to take a public stand that will make you unpopular with your progressive professors and fellow students—gives me hope that you may also be open to discussion of some other aspects of “progressive” thought as well. But before we move on from the subject of abortion, I have one more point I want to make about it in my next letter.
LETTER 11
Punishing Abortion
Dear Zach,
Progressives often try to avoid tough issues by labeling conservatives as “insensitive” or “mean.” (It’s no coincidence that the progressive worldview is behind the current self-esteem movement in public education. It seems much more concerned with producing good feelings than articulating logically defensible positions.) This tendency is often on display when the issue of abortion comes up. You will soon find out that if you decide to speak out against Roe v. Wade, you often end up hearing this question: “Do you mean that you would actually seek to incarcerate women who have abortions?”
The question is meant to make you look bad, not to elicit an answer. But you should be prepared with an answer in order to effectively turn the tables on your attacker.
The fact is, even when people see the logic of the argument against abortion, they’re still hesitant about the prospect of outlawing it—because they don’t want to see desperate women thrown into jail.
So first, you might want to ask the following question, which will expose the question-begging nature of their inquiry: “If abortion kills an innocent human being, should it go unpunished?”
But then you need to provide a detailed answer—that is, if your adversary is willing to listen. My suggested response, in a nutshell, is harsh punishment for abortion doctors and a lesser punishment for women who have abortions. There’s a very good legal reason for drawing a distinction between the woman having the abortion and the abortionist performing it, which I will explain below.
Abortion is premeditated murder. In order to convict someone of murder in the first degree, however, the prosecutors must prove more than just premeditation. They must also prove willfulness and deliberation. Finally, they must prove that the defendant’s actions were the proximate cause of death.
Proving first-degree murder would be quite easy in the case of the abortionist. Let’s examine each element of the crime separately, as the prosecution must prove each individual element beyond a reasonable doubt:1. Premeditation means that the killer consciously reflects upon the desire to kill before actually killing. The law measures such reflection in moments, rather than hours or days. Given that the doctor carefully prepares his instruments and frequently pauses between the individual actions that he must engage in to perform the abortion, proving premeditation should be quite easy.
2. Willfulness means that the killer specifically intended death, not just serious bodily harm. Obviously, abortion is done for the specific purpose of producing death. The doctor knows the unborn baby is alive and that at the end of the procedure he or she will not be. It is his desire to produce death, not injury. There is no real ambiguity concerning intent in the case of abortion. It would be easy for prosecutors to satisfy this element of first-degree murder.
3. Deliberation simply means that one has killed in “a cool state of blood” in the absence of anything the law considers to be provocation. Provocation occurs when the homicide victim did something to cause the deadly attack. A common example is being caught in an act of adultery by a jealous spouse. If one is killed under such circumstances, one is said to have provoked the killing. The killer was not in a cool state of blood and, therefore, did not deliberate. The killing is not excused but instead mitigated to a lesser degree, usually voluntary manslaughter. Obviously, no one can engage in an act of provocation against anyone while still inside the womb. Therefore, it should be easy for prosecutors to establish deliberation on the part of the abortionist.
4. Causation simply involves proving that “but for” the voluntary actions of the accused, the deceased would still be living. This is also very simple in the case of the abortion doctor. A pregnant woman walks in to her appointment at his office. Later the same day, a formerly pregnant woman walks out of his office. Remember that the procedure that ends the pregnancy always stops a beating heart. There is no real question that dismembering the baby is what caused the heart to stop beating and resulted in that baby’s death.
Sustaining a first-degree murder charge against a woman who gets an abortion would be more difficult. She does not perform the procedure so there is, for her, no direct action that results in the death of the baby. In other words, she does not actually commit the offense.
Still, as you will recall from our Trials of the Century course—specifically, from the Manson case—people can be held accountable for acts they themselves do not commit, as long as those acts are a part of a criminal conspiracy.
A criminal conspiracy, however, requires a meeting of the minds.
Zach, the mind of the abortionist and the patient do meet in the sense that they agree on the act of abortion. But they do not fully meet in most cases because the woman rarely knows what the doctor knows—namely, that abortion stops a beating heart and kills a clearly living and obviously human entity. For these reasons, prosecutors would be reticent to charge the patient under a conspiracy theory, and the jury would be unlikely to convict if such a charge came before them. Still, seeking an abortion would clearly be solicitation of a criminal act—a much lesser charge than conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
If we do overturn Roe v. Wade, states would have the right to criminalize abortion and use solicitation statutes to discourage women from seeking abortions in the first place. So I would recommend the following in the case of abortion: 1) a murder prosecution for the doctor, and 2) a criminal solicitation prosecution for the patient.
There is nothing “mean” about punishing abortion. It’s exactly the other way around—we are being mean when we see that abortion is murder and then look the other way in order to impress others and enhance our self-esteem.
LETTER 12
The Law of Outliers
Zach,
You’ve been willing to take a public stand on the issue of abortion. Let’s move on to a hot-button topic that is getting to be even more likely to cause conservatives to be labeled as “mean” people and “haters”—gay marriage. Gay rights activists want same-sex unions to be legally recognized as marriage, and conservatives want to stick to the traditional definition of that institution. But let’s work our way around to that issue from a preliminary consideration of the reason for a
nd importance of laws in general.
A fundamental understanding of laws differentiates adults from children. Any mature system of justice must make tough choices that place the interests of society as a whole above the interests of individuals. An example of such a choice is the decision to differentiate between the legal defenses of “mistake of law” and “mistake of fact.”
Imagine for a moment that a student picks up another student’s backpack as he is leaving class at the end of a lecture. Before he realizes he has picked up wrong backpack, he is apprehended by the police and charged with petty larceny—that is, taking and carrying away the valuable personal property of another with the intent to permanently deprive the owner of possession.
The student could raise a “mistake of fact” defense. He thought the backpack was his own, so he could not have intended to deprive the true owner of his property.
But imagine that the student tried to raise a “mistake of law” defense. In other words, he admitted he knew that the backpack belonged to another student, but he refused to acknowledge that he knew anything about the crime of larceny. Should the court recognize that as a legitimate legal option?
While courts are willing to accept, with some limitations, the “mistake of fact” defense, they overwhelmingly reject the “mistake of law” defense. The obvious reason for doing so is that such a defense would be subject to widespread fraud and manipulation by guilty defendants. That reason alone provides sufficient justification for the old maxim, “Ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand Page 5
