In yet another ethically repugnant judicial decision, Texas district court judge Lee Yeakel struck down a Texas abortion law (SB 8) that prohibits 2^nd trimester “dismemberment abortions” in which live humans are dismembered prior to death and then sucked out of their mothers’ wombs in pieces.

The law, passed by both the senate and house and signed into law by Governor Greg Abbott, would have permitted dismemberment of humans in utero as long as they were killed first by “injecting a chemical called digoxin into the woman’s abdomen; injecting potassium chloride directly into the heart; or inserting instruments through the cervix to cut the umbilical cord.” As barbaric as those methods are, they are less barbaric than death by dismemberment.

Dismemberment would violate every state’s laws on permissible ways to euthanize animals, and yet a Texas judge and Planned Parenthood barbarians prefer to dismember live humans rather than euthanize them first in more “humane” ways.

No compassionate, civilized human endorses killing tiny humans in the womb by any method, but until that legal right is eradicated, compassionate, civilized humans should seek to prevent the unborn, whose bodies have pain receptors by 10 weeks gestation, from experiencing the prolonged torment of having body parts ripped off one by one.

“Progressives” argue that requiring doctors to kill babies before they dismember them is ineffective and unsafe (Clearly, they’re referring to the safety of the mothers). So, here’s what a 2008 study reveals about the digoxin method of killing babies terminating pregnancies:

Intrafetal digoxin injection at a dose of 1.0 mg is safe and effective for fetal demise prior to pregnancy termination in the second trimester.

In testimony before the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice, Dr. Maureen Condic, associate professor of neurobiology, adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah School of Medicine, and director of human embryology instruction for the medical school and of human neuroanatomy for the dental school explained the timetable of brain development as pertains to pain perception:

The earliest connections between neurons in the… (regions of the brain involved in… pain perception) are detected by 37 days post sperm-egg fusion and are well established by 8-10 weeks…. Connections between the spinal cord and the thalamus, the region of the brain that is largely responsible for pain perception in both the fetus and the adult, begin to form around 12 weeks and are completed by 18 weeks.

An article on fetal surgery for spina bifida, which is performed between 19-25 weeks (i.e., the 2^nd trimester), recommends the administration of pain medication to babies:

[I]t is not known definitively when fetuses can experience pain. Therefore, it seems prudent to provide analgesia during fetal surgical procedures.

This argument parallels one of the central arguments against abortion: If, as many on the Left claim, no one knows when life begins (or when “personhood” begins), then isn’t it prudent to provide protections against being killed to the unborn who are indisputably the product of conception between two humans, who are living, who have human DNA, and whose DNA is distinct from that of the women in whose bodies they are developing?

Yeakel wrote that the “State’s legitimate concern with the preservation of the life of the fetus”—an interest which he believes begins at birth—is subordinate to the “right” of a woman to have an abortion, which in Yeakel’s view is “absolute.”

Further, he concludes that “the State’s legitimate interest in fetal life does not allow the imposition of an additional medical procedure on the D&E—a procedure not driven by medical necessity.” He’s right. Requiring the expedient death of babies prior to dismemberment is not a medical necessity. It’s a moral necessity incumbent on even semi-civilized humans.

Pro-dismemberment-choicers object to the indelicate term “dismemberment abortion,” which lacks the euphemistic euphony of “dilation and evacuation” (D&E) upon which their anti-culture, anti-maternal savagery depends. Just as the movement to normalize deviant sexuality relies on language butchery, so too does the baby-butchery movement. “Dismemberment abortion,” though not technical medical language, is truthful plain-speaking that everyone understands, and linguistic clarity advances the cause of moral clarity.

One of the features that distinguishes humans from animals is our capacity to make moral choices—free decisions not driven by instinct. But some choices humans make render them less like humans and more like animals:

[M]other bears, felines, canids, primates, and many species of rodents—from rats to prairie dogs—have all been seen killing and eating their young. Insects, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds also have been implicated in killing, and sometimes devouring, the young of their own kind.

Humans find this behavior repellent in animals and then rationalize and celebrate it in humans.

Immediately after Yeakel’s decision was issued, Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, filed an appeal with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, making it the third state to have a dismemberment ban pending in an appellate court. Many believe this case will end up before the U.S. Supreme Court. Let’s pray for wisdom at all judicial levels.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Pro-Choicers-Choose-Live-Dismemberment.mp3

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“boldly bring a biblical perspective to public policy” in Illinois.

A federal judge in Texas has ruled that a Christian pastor can pray in the name of Jesus at a Memorial Day ceremony. As a result of the judge’s decision, Pastor Scott Rainey did just that Monday at a Memorial Day Service at the National Cemetery in Houston.

Reverend Rainey, the pastor of Living Word Church of the Nazarene, has offered an invocation the last two years at the Memorial Day observance in Houston. But this year cemetery director Arleen Occasio asked to review his prayer prior to the ceremony.

Occasio then informed Pastor Rainey that he would not be allowed to participate in the ceremony unless he removed the name of Jesus from his prayer. Occasio said that the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which has jurisdiction over the cemetery, “cannot be exclusive at a ceremony meant to be inclusive for all the nation’s veterans.”

Pastor Rainey appealed the decision to the Office of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, and when unsuccessful, enlisted the Liberty Institute to file a lawsuit in federal court citing his First Amendment rights.

U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes ruled that the Veterans Affairs policy was an unconstitutional infringement of free speech. “The government cannot gag citizens when it says it is in the interest of national security, and it cannot do it in some bureaucrat’s notion of cultural homogeneity. The right to free expression ranges from the dignity of Abraham Lincoln’s speeches to the rants of Charlie Sheen.”

Liberty Institute attorney Jeff Mateer hailed the judge’s decision. “Our veterans fought for and many died for our religious freedom; to have it stripped away under the facade of inclusiveness is the height of offense to those who have served our country.”

A local veteran expressed dismay at the controversy, saying “I don’t know how far they want to go with all this. What is next? Removing the crosses from the graves and headstones?”