Keyes On Point Again

This week, Dr. Alan Keyes had another on-point column, pointing out the curious inability of the compromised pro-life community to make coherent refutations of the cogent arguments put forward by him, Judie Brown, Brian Rohrbough (and Colorado Right to Life), and many other prominent uncompromised pro-life leaders against both incrementalism and the fatally flawed Partial Birth Abortion ruling.

He also points to an article I'd forgotten about, by Judie Brown of the American Life League.

Both of these columns are better than Janet Folger's WorldNetDaily column from yesterday which minimizes a serious philosophical divide, dismissing it as bickering. It's more than just talk & backtalk -- it's an issue that's very important to resolve, and we'd better do so to be effective. The way we're going isn't working, and we'd better commit to a real strategy, real soon!

Here's the link to Dr. Keyes' "Bad Fruit" : http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/keyes/070624

And here's a teaser:

Bad fruit
Rational debate of Carhart called for

Alan Keyes
June 24, 2007

I learned with sadness and chagrin that at the recent convention of National Right to Life, the organization's leadership decided to purge the Colorado Chapter because the chapter took to task the pro-life leaders who applauded Justice Kennedy's reasoning in Gonzales v. Carhart — the recent Supreme Court decision on partial birth abortion. (For my analysis of this decision, please see the article "Gardeners of Evil" at RenewAmerica.us.)

Unfortunately, this news was not my first inkling of the internecine conflict the decision brought to light within the ranks of the pro-life movement. Judie Brown has been one of the critics of the decision's wicked entrenchment of the unconstitutional Roe/Casey jurisprudence. When RenewAmerica published her response to those who have taken such criticisms as personal attacks against themselves, one of the organizations coming in for criticism withheld its support from a Christian citizen mobilization effort I am involved with.

Need for rational discussion

I am of course not surprised or dismayed that there should be disagreement among pro-lifers. I have been deeply disappointed, however, that instead of answering the lucid arguments being made by people like Judie Brown and myself, the Gonzales v. Carhart cheering section has chosen petty maneuvers and power plays aimed at damaging or silencing their critics.

This is the standard response of those who lack the ability to defend their position with good logic and clear arguments. We have suffered this kind of response for years from the proponents of abortion, from their claque in the liberal media and their tools in the political arena. But the rational moral strength of our position has placed pro-lifers beyond the temptation to stoop to such tactics — until now.

To read the rest of the article : http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/keyes/070624

Bob

Keyes' Gardeners of Evil - On PBA Ban

I'd meant to post this a while back, when I first blogged on the subject. This is a small glimmer of the magnificence which was Keyes' in-person remarks at the Colorado Capitol in April. There's a DVD available from Colorado Right to Life (linked) if you're interested in hearing the whole thing.

I'm posting a teaser for the article, which can be found in its entirety at: http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/keyes/070428

Gardeners of evil

Alan Keyes
April 28, 2007

Shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Gonzales v. Carhart (the case that involved a challenge to the federal law restricting so-called partial birth abortion), I received an email reporting the decision with a copy of the ruling attached.

Unlike many whom the media identify as leaders in the pro-life movement, I felt no inclination to leap for joy at the news that the Court's opinion upheld the constitutionality of the law.In the first place, I have never been convinced that the legislative action in question had much significance for the pro-life cause. I believe it was mostly intended to provide cover for pro-abortion Republican politicians, who could offer their vote for the PBA restriction as a fig leaf to cover the shame of their supposedly pro-life supporters who put partisan politics above their obligations of conscience. In the second place, it seemed unwise to react to the decision before carefully considering the argument that produced it.

Abominable affirmation

Having done so, I cannot join in, or even understand, the approbation which others have expressed for this decision. It is in fact an abominable affirmation of the Court's unconstitutional decisions in Roe and Casey. With grotesquely meticulous care, the man whose pivotal vote preserved so-called abortion rights in the Casey decision (Justice Kennedy) carves out an exception intended to prove and strengthen the rules set forth in Roe and Casey.

As my good friend Judie Brown put it recently (at a Colorado Right To Life dinner in Denver), Kennedy played the part of a skillful gardener, cutting back the evil planted by Roe/Casey in order to strengthen and extend its roots, hoping no doubt to make it harder to overturn in any subsequent ruling. While allowing for a state interest in restricting one brutal way of murdering the nascent child, he makes it clear that this restriction is tolerable under Roe/Casey only because abortionists still have access to other equally brutal modes of killing.

At one point, with what seems like dogged satisfaction, Kennedy describes such an alternative in almost clinical detail, no doubt because he knows that in doing so he implicates all the justices who join his reasoning in explicit support for the right to use this alternative to kill the child, even though it is just as horrendous as the one restricted by the "partial birth" legislation.



To read more of this article, the link is here: http://www.renewamerica.us/columns/keyes/070428

Bob