Polemics: The Best of the Brown Daily Squeal

Senate Outlaws Violence Against Unborn Children - Kerry Dissents
By 61 to 38 margin, the Senate yesterday approved the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which provides for separate criminal charges when violent acts against a pregnant mother harm or kill the fetus…. John Kerry voted against the final bill.

In my opinion, the efforts by abortion advocates to block the bill made a mockery of their very important agenda. For me, abortion is a women’s rights issue because it is the woman’s choice to have a child that confers the privilege of life. Once a woman has chosen to go through with her pregnancy, her unborn child acquires a moral and legal value both a priori and to the mother who wants to exercise her right to rear a healthy child. Women don’t just have interests as ‘birth controllers.’ ‘They also have vital interests as mothers, and central to these are the right of their unborn fetus to protection from violence by criminals.’ That women might also have pressing reasons to terminate a pregnancy does not nullify the moral and legal necessity of protecting unborn children from potentially life-threatening harm. The health needs of an unborn child cannot be trumped entirely by the rights of the mother, let alone the sick motives of a violent criminal.

Kerry’s vote, fresh after his recent endorsement by firebrand Howard Dean, smacks of pandering, and will bolster claims by conserVatives that he, like other abortion advocates, recklessly devalues the life of unborn children. The women’s rights agenda is of pressing importance, but don’t do it the dumb way. Rather than play politics with unborn life, Kerry should have taken the honest, balanced approach: that a corollary to a woman’s right to choose is her child’s right to grow and develop healthily, free from violence.

The bill was nicknamed “Laci and Conner’s Law” after Laci Peterson, the California woman allegedly murdered by her husband, Scott Peterson, just weeks before she was due to give birth. Were Laci alive today, she would doubtless be heartbroken at the murder of her unborn son. ‘This law is for her as much as it is for Conner. ‘The right to choose has not one, but two faces. One is the choice of an abortion. ‘The other is the choice of life.
—Nate Goralnik March 26

Sistani Fans Israeli Fire into Iraq
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani, Iraq’s most visible emerging leader and most powerful shiite cleric is purging Muslims to “unite against Israel and restore what he said belongs to Palestinians” according to CNN.

Does anyone else find this guy latently creepy? He came out of nowhere. The emergence of a leader like him wasn’t unexpected—the Shiites just did get from under the thumb of a Sunni minority. But, did anyone expect a leader to so quickly accumulate power? Did anyone expect a leader to oppose the United States—and win?