Abortion Culture's Freedom to Kill

Ross Douthat's column today on the culture wars compares variations in Democratic group support on questions of gay rights and abortion. He suggests that liberals, especially those under 35, are particularly firm in their opposition to abortion rights. This group conceives of the sanctity to life within the divine context of the inalienable rights as set forth in the Declaration of Independence. Douthat notes that this younger constituency is skeptical of the far-left judicial activism found in such legal inventions as "penubras" and "emanations": "This helps explain why Americans under 35, while more sympathetic to gay marriage than their parents, also tend to be slightly more anti-abortion."

Scott Lemieux at Lawyers, Guns and Money takes issue with Douthat. He first cites five year-old survey data - yep, that old! - to indicate patterns of public support for a court nominee committed to upholding Roe v. Wade. Recall, in contrast, the recent Pew survey that found just 46 percent of Americans "supporting legal abortion," and hence logically, Roe v. Wade. I know it's only a blog post, but geez, that's really bad work, unscholarly even.

Also, Lemieux is aghast with Douthat's implication that there's been "no rollback of Roe's near-absolute guarantee of abortion rights," exclaiming: this is "frankly absurd"! But it's his conclusion itself that's particularly telling of the deathwish abortion extremism on the Democratic-left:

... perhaps some day he'll explain why there's some moral significance to pre-viability abortions that occur during the second as opposed to first trimester, but I'm not holding my breath.

Actually, this notion of "pre-viability's a canard.

The trimester system has long been attacked as an arbritrary, judically-imposed regulatory scheme enabling leftist hostility to life. I mean really, what is viability? Is a fully healthy newborn outside the womb viable? Life begins the moment of fertilization. Support for abortion by Democratic-leftists from President Obama on down is pure barbarity.

Douthat's right: Leftists don't care about freedom. Or, if they do, it's freedom to kill, including killing human infants irrespective of stages of gestational development.