In an item yesterday, we noted a curious quote from Jerry Edwards, an Arkansas aborter who was offering to evacuate the wombs of women who evacuated New Orleans free of charge. "If we didn't provide it now," Edwards said, "they would get it later--a late-term abortion that would give greater risk to the mother's health."
Needless to say, we were flummoxed. "How would the timing of a woman's choice affect her mother's health?" we asked. But several readers have written with a theory that, if true, is shocking: that by "the mother," Edwards meant the woman who is exercising her constitutional right to choose.
The implications are chilling. Of course it's possible that some of these women are mothers, as a result of previous pregnancies during which, tragically, they were too poor or uneducated to make a choice. But Edwards is sweepingly characterizing all women exercising their constitutional rights as "mothers." And think about what that means: If a woman availing herself of her right to choose is a "mother," then the fetus is a "child" rather than what science has definitively proved it to be, which is just a clump of cells.
Now if people want to reject science and believe in superstitious nonsense like this, they are entitled to do so. After all, the same Constitution that guarantees the right to choose also provides for a limited "freedom of religion." But when even abortion clinics are being run by antichoice fanatics, American women, and even enlightened male-Americans, should be afraid--very afraid.
(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Dan O'Shea, Fred Worth, Dennis Ainger, Mark Taylor, Mark Van Der Molen, Paul Dyck, Brian Kalt, Tony Gill, Ron Ackert, Sharon Langworthy, Ethel Fenig, Monty Krieger, Chris Scibelli, John Hartness, John Williamson, Bob Batts, Andy Hefty, Bill Breuer, Jon Bateman, Mark Murray, Chuck Lipsig, George Mitchell, Ruth Papazian, Lyman Epp, John Dubas, Randall Smith, Jeffrey Techentin, Buck Gashler, William Still, Douglas Welsh, Gaylen Webb, Charles Kalina, Glen Caldwell, Jim Peterson, Tim Morgan, Bill Congdon, John Whetstone, Rob Saker, Mordecai Bobrowsky, David Blanchette, Michael Newton, Chris Morris, John Forsberg and Stephen Sayeedi. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
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