Restrictions on abortions and the law.

Send out an all-points bulletin

WHO WAS missing from the oh-so-solemn hearing before three appellate judges called on to consider this state’s law that’s supposed to govern abortions? Answer: Almost nobody who’s anybody in legal circles.

Last year, Her Honor Kristine Baker, a federal judge, had enjoined Arkansas from carrying out a law that was supposed to cover abortions in this state, effectively aborting the law itself. The law placed restrictions on medication-induced abortion.

One of the judges hearing the case before the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, The Hon. James Gritzner of Des Moines, put the most questions to this state’s deputy solicitor general, Nicholas Bronni, questioning just what benefit the state of Arkansas could have in preventing abortions. Really? If a judge has to ask such a question, what’s to be gained by answering it? Except to prolong a discussion about a point of law and life that in any civilized society should be self-explanatory.

So let’s suppose for (endless) argument’s sake that human life itself has no value, as some learned counsel have indeed supposed in this landmark case in the making. “If the law supposes that,” said Charles Dickens’ unforgettable Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass—a idiot.” He really should have been around now to see his conclusion validated by current events.

Let us then call good old Satchmo to the stand in order to give us a slightly different take on a slightly different subject—not the definition of life, but of jazz. Asked to define jazz, the talented Mr. Armstrong replied: “If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.” And if you have to ask what life is, and whether it should be held sacred and inviolate, it’s doubtful you’ll ever know. Although, as in life, there’s always hope.

It’s an open secret that this state has set out to oppose the equivalent of a death sentence on the most innocent and vulnerable among us, the not yet born, and any step Arkansas can take in that blessed direction deserves congratulation, not condemnation. This state has adopted a pro-life stance, but for the purpose of that solemn ass called the law, Arkansas’ counsel must act as if the state has done its best to provide surgical abortions. Just as everyone in his day knew that a thoughtful legislator named Lincoln was against slavery, but he had to acknowledge that the infamous Dred Scott decision was the law of the land— till somehow he and other lovers of freedom would find a way to overturn it. And the better angels of our nature would bring us together again.

But what’s the use of a single, solitary life on this already crowded planet? In her original 70-page preliminary injunction, the Hon. Kristine Baker noted the poverty of those women seeking abortions in this country. To stand in their way would seem a futile gesture at best. Why, call it discrimination against the poor to do whatever can be done to save a prospective mother from having to bear a son with a sad fate like this one ahead of him:

He was born in an obscure village, the son of a peasant woman. He grew up in another village, where he worked in a carpenter’s shop until he was 30. Then for three years he became a wandering preacher. He never wrote a book. never held an office. He never had a family or owned a house. He didn’t go to college. He never visited a big city. He never traveled 200 miles from the place where he was born. He did none of those things one usually associates with greatness. He had no credentials but himself. He was only 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. He was turned over to his enemies and went through a mockery of a trial. He was executed by the state. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave, through the pity of a friend. Twenty centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind’s progress. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, are absolutely picayune in their influence on mankind compared with that of this one solitary life.

—Dr. James Allan Francis

WHO WILL tell us the value of such a life? Perhaps it will be the Hon. Kristine Baker with a whole supply of statistics at her imperious command, or maybe learned counsel for Planned Parenthood, who seem to have a cure for all of society’s ills—except possibly the deep-seated sickness of the soul that still besets society even with all its updated versions of Pharisees, Sadducees and just folks who have come out to see a darned good show. Whether it’s a courtroom drama or an execution that may or may not come off without a hitch or three.

But who’s the missing person in this whole sanguinary spectacle? The same one who seems to have gone unmentioned from start till now in this matter of life and death: the microcosmic creature who is programmed as if by divine inspiration to emerge as the living, breathing human being he was all along. His life’s a miracle from the moment of conception till he gives up the ghost and lets the angel of death take him. But his life’s a miracle nevertheless, and no amount of legalistic bombast can hide that fact and saving fate, no matter what our finest legal minds may assert to the contrary. So here’s a toast and battle cry: L’chaim! To life!