U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf said the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, was “unreasonable and not supported by substantial evidence.”

What the headlines do not say, and what you have to read further to find out is that, “his ruling applied only to abortions involving a fetus that was not viable outside the womb. He did not take a stand on whether the law was constitutional for abortions involving fetuses that would be “indisputably viable.”

My guess is that if abortion is legal, then it would follow that this sort of procedure on a baby who isn’t “viable” outside of the womb is no different than any other abortion.

Yet, this procedure is performed mostly for late-term abortions. A form of labor must be induced in order to remove the baby.

Define “viable”. Every day, it seems that babies have an better chance of surviving. For example, my cousins – Katherine and Jonathan – were born nearly 2 months early. The Bissell twins were 3 1/2 months early : they were still in the second trimester of gestation! Though the Bissell twins do have birth defects, many children who are born just as prematurely — many who even have websites as testimonies to their amazing journey entering this world — are now healthy, normal children. Furthermore, many “defects” are now treatable through various forms of therapy. Viable is often diminished from “life” to a human-defined standard for “quality of life. ”

“Mother’s health in danger.” This term, too, has become very broad. In a society where you can easily put preschoolers on mind-altering drugs to control their yet un-trained behavior to make them easier for parents and educators to manage, it is just as easy for a doctor to say that a woman’s “mental” health would be endangered by a baby. It is quite easy to come up with “health issues” these days.

“Unconstitutional”. What about the rights of a baby? Not to have scissors stuck in their skull and their brains sucked out? How come the “blessings of liberty” do not apply to them?