Endnotes to Part 6: Death of a Child
22. The majority opinion in Stenberg v. Carhart seized on this logical and ethical inconsistency in the Nebraska law. Justice Stevens, in joining the majority overturning the partial birth abortion law, chided the dissenters by stating (I think truthfully): “For the notion that either of these two equally gruesome procedures performed at this late stage of gestation is more akin to infanticide than the other, or that the State furthers any legitimate interest by banning one but not the other, is simply irrational.”
23. We as a citizenry are in denial or ignorance of own passive complicity in D&E abortions. D&X (“partial birth” abortion” seems to have shocked much of the citizenry because the procedure brings the victim into visibility as the child is “delivered” through the birth canal except for the skull. This same child if dismembered within the uterus can be killed without restriction. The mere movement of this person from the womb to partial visibility outside the womb is hardly a rational basis to confer or withhold the right to life.
