Move Over ACLU — ACLJ Fights for the Unborn

In this time, when bad news and ominous portent are so rampant, I can’t resist passing along especially great news when it comes my way.

Sometimes the din of despair — about hurricanes, earthquakes, economic downturns, accelerating terrorist threats, vast numbers of illegal aliens, healthcare and looming social security insolvency, melting ice caps, droughts, floods, unprecedented low approval ratings for Congress and the president—is almost deafening. And certainly disheartening!

Furthermore, in my new memoir, “Pat Boone’s America, 50 Years," I express my deep and growing concern about our moral drift and the obvious decline in our culture’s boundaries and standards of integrity, character, decency, and even basic humanity. It seems an increasingly bleak picture.

So when something positive, hopeful, and encouraging arises, I want all my fellow citizens to know about it! Such welcome information came recently from the American Center for Law and Justice, (ACLJ, www.aclj.org ). Notice carefully the initials; I’m not referring to the often-scurrilous ACLU, which too frequently causes many of our problems. No, I’m referring to their counterforce, an active and dynamic phalanx of attorneys who actually honor and defend the Constitution and our individual and collective liberties. The ACLJ and its dedicated and able attorneys confront the ACLU radicals in court, and have been posting a rousing number of significant victories on our society’s behalf.

A case in point: The nightmarish acceptance of partial-birth abortions. With outright support and encouragement by too many, these were performed right out in the open by licensed doctors in America's hospitals. On the medically spurious premise that somehow a pregnant woman's health and well-being is enhanced by the procedure, a healthy baby in the very process of delivery would get its skull crushed, its brains sucked out and its thus dead body removed. This is one of the "choices" the "pro-choice" movement has fought to preserve and promote, with the continuing support of the likes of Bill and Hillary Clinton.

But, in a stunning victory for the cause of life itself, the Supreme Court of the United States has upheld the national ban on partial-birth abortion, which has outlawed the procedure. Of course, the ACLU and all the liberal pro-abortion advocates did their damnedest (word chosen intentionally) to oppose the ban. But our heroes at the ACLJ carried the day and won some ongoing protection for the most helpless among us, our unborn infants. They filed and argued amicus briefs in two cases before the Court —including one on behalf of some 80 members of Congress and more than 320,000 Americans.

And more great, positive, and hopeful news: Our Supreme Court chose to express itself in a new and different way, for the first time banning a specific abortion procedure. The Justices clearly considered — and extensively cited in the majority opinion — factual medical evidence that put this procedure into the proper perspective, exposing the grisly, horrifying nature of the procedure itself. There was a noticeable shift in the language used to talk about the abortion issue.

“There can be no doubt the government has an interest in protecting the integrity and ethics of the medical profession,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “It was reasonable for Congress to think that partial-birth abortion . . . ‘undermines the public’s perception of the appropriate role of a physician during the delivery process, and perverts a process during which life is brought into this world.’”

Hold on, there’s more: The opinion further stated, “Whether to have an abortion requires a difficult and painful moral decision . . . it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained . . . Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow.”

And, the high court also acknowledged that the Act will likely result in fewer abortions. “It is a reasonable inference that a necessary effect of the regulation and the knowledge it conveys will be to encourage some women to carry the infant to full term, thus reducing the absolute number of late-term abortions,” this referring to the almost equally abominable practice of killing the infant at an earlier, but still late term, stage . . . in the womb of its mother.

Did I hear a “Hallelujah!” somewhere?

Is there yet hope for the sanity of America? Can the incessant, militant, humanistic (not humane) screech of the pro-abortion claques be answered with a civil, moral, caring, and constitutional argument that will cause thinking people to realize there are two, yea three, lives involved in every potential abortion, not just the woman’s? And the doctors’ and nurses’ own Hippocratic oaths and integrity as well? And that other, more humane alternatives must be found to handle unwanted pregnancies, like maybe practicing moral abortion before conception? Is this still possible?

Yes, it is — if millions of us will support the heroes with the know-how and grit and legal integrity to take the battle to the foes, and to the courts. (Sometimes, lamentably, they’re one and the same.) The ACLJ is fighting and winning other important battles, which I intend to keep reporting; but for now, please visit their website, consider thanking them and congratulating them, and perhaps become a regular supporter of their efforts.

As I’m proud to say I am.