abortion

Nancy Pelosi’s Unethical Quote Of Her Career Proves What An Ethics Villain She Is…But We Knew That Already

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

“Who would ever [have] suspected that a creature like Donald Trump would become president of the United States, waving a list of judges that he would appoint, therefore getting the support of the far right and appointing those anti-freedom justices to the court?”

—Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi on CNN yesterday

Almost exactly four years ago, progressives, Democrats and the news media accused Donald Trump, then President, of racism because he referred to border-jumping MS-13 gang members as “animals.” At that time, Pelosi delivered this pious rebuke:

We believe some of us who are attracted to the political arena and to government and public service that we’re all God’s children. There’s a spark of divinity in every person on Earth and that we all have to recognize that as we respect the dignity and worth of every person. … And so when the president of the United States says about undocumented immigrants, ‘these aren’t people, these are animals,’ you have to wonder, does he not believe in the spark of divinity? The dignity and worth of every person? ‘These are not people, these are animals,’ the president of the United States. … Calling people ‘animals’ is not a good thing.

Of course it was a cheap shot by Pelosi, but she specialized in cheap shots during the Trump years. If one is going to call anyone an animal, the brutal, lawless MS-13 gang members are a good choice. Now, however, Pelosi calls a President of the United States a “creature,” which is even lower than “animal,” evoking slimy insects, reptiles, and this guy…

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Ethics Note To Margaret Atwood: “Oh, Shut Up!”

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

The previous post reminded me that I had intended to comment on Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood, she of “The Handmaiden’s Tale,” issuing a mind-meltingly ignorant essay in The Atlantic claiming that her imagined Hell for women was coming true in the United States. Like so much of the utter offal that has been oozed out by pro-abortion fanatics since Justice Alito’s draft was leaked, the essay does serve as a useful test: anyone who reads it and exclaims, “By Jove! She’s exactly right!” is unfit for any substantive discussion about a topic more challenging than their favorite cookies.

Atwood’s screed, which, as usual,strongly suggests that she either didn’t read the opinion herself or, as a non-American without legal training, couldn’t comprehend it, is one howler after another but still capable of making dumb readers dumber still. In order…

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Today’s Intellectually Dishonest Dobbs Leak Freakout: “A Lot Of Powerful People Seem To Have No Clue What Motherhood Means” (Washington Post)

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

You have to admit, the pro-abortion hysterics and fanatics are doing a bang-up job proclaiming their fury at the possibility that the U.S. Supreme Court may be about to strike down Roe v. Wade without making anything that hints of a good faith argument on the merits. The latest example of this massive exercise in “appeal to emotion” and “let’s keep the American public as dumb as we can, all the better to manipulate them” is an op-ed by Monica Hesse, the Washington Post’s resident gender bigot. Previously, Ethics Alarms had highlighted her fantasy that Mary, Donna Reed’s character in “It’s A Wonderful Life,” is the “real hero” of the classic (Right–she’s the one who gave up her chance at al education and a career to save her father’s rinky-dink savings and loan so Bedford Falls didn’t become a cesspool under the thumb of the richest and meanest man in town) and this article attacking the Trump White House Christmas decorations and using them to excoriate Melania Trump for existing, sneering that any one who referred to Trump’s First Lady as “elegant” meant it as a code word for “White.” Yes, she’s a race bigot too. I would no more have sampled a Hesse column in the Post than tried a fried centipede as a snack, except the Ann Althouse pointed me to it.

[A side note regarding Ann: she’s written 14 posts including the May 2 entry in which she reported on the leak and proclaimed the looming cancellation of Roe “a calamity.” She has never explained why she thinks it’s a calamity, although in 2006 she opined on what the results of Roe going down might be. She’s a law professor, and her blog has no borders, like this one, which is constrained to examine ethics only. Those 14 posts cover everything from her usual linguistic nit-picking to musing about the leak, but there is no explanation of the “calamity” verdict. That’s irresponsible, and, frankly, cowardly. But I digress.]

Here’s the crux of Hesse’s argument, if you can call it that: the supply chain-triggered shortage in baby formula shows how cruel and ignorant the Supreme Court majority is. She writes,

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Ethics Dunce Flashback, Abortion Division: Pete Buttigieg

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments

This is the second time I’ve used that photo in a post this week. It’s a third-trimester fetus, and it’s up because it is important to remember what we’re talking about, or, in this case, what current Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was talking about in his usual intellectually lazy, ethically-inert manner in a 2019 exchange with Chris Wallace.

Most of my Facebook friends block me from seeing their political blatherings because I have a tendency to call them on badly-reasoned pandering to the woke, and they can’t handle it. They just want “likes” on their regurgitated talking points and usually aren’t equipped to defend them. I was just scrolling down to see if anyone had left a substantive post on my feed, and to my horror, an old friend whom I regard as generally sharp and perceptive had tracked down the interview (from a Fox News town hall) and pronounced it “the only acceptable answer” regarding late term abortions. Here is what he called “acceptable”:

Whereupon my head exploded.

As he has proven repeatedly, Buttigieg is a facile, intellectually lazy, platitude-mouthing pandering phony, and this is vintage Pete. In matters of law and lives, the government draws the line: that’s called “civilization.” The “fundamental question” in late term abortion is how society balances the competing interests of two parties. “I trust women to draw the line when it’s their own health” is a deceitful and offensive statement, ducking the issue and muddying vital considerations. No one, and no law, denies a woman the right to place her own survival over that of her unborn child. The question of balancing interests only comes into play when the mother’s “health” involves lesser factors that might reasonably be considered subordinate to another human life. “I trust women” is just flag-waving: I don’t trust anyone to make a decision involving their personal interests and the competing interests of someone else. Such decision-makers have a conflict of interest; that why we have laws.

Tellingly, Buttigieg tries to escape dealing with substance by dismissing late-term abortions as “hypotheticals.” They aren’t hypothetical, they are real, and they are important because ending a pregnancy when the fetus is viable compels consideration of what abortions involve Extreme pro-abortion activists really hate that. It is hard to pretend the baby isn’t there in late-term abortions, and pretending there is no life being ended is crucial to the “choice” deception. Continue reading →

I Don’t Understand: Why Is This News, Newsworthy, Or Even Twitter-Worthy?

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Huh? Why wouldn’t they remain not just “mostly silent,” but entirely and forever silent? What does abortion have to do with gaming? What possible justification would there be for the video game industry to take a position on the legal and Constitutional issues relating to Roe? What can they add to a productive discussion besides noise and ignorance? Why should the U.S. Supreme Court pay any attention at all to uninformed opinions by those who are brick-ignorant about the law?

This isn’t just an example of “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” This is “If all you care about is a nail, everything looks like a hammer.”

Oh…and it’s not “repeal” you ignoramuses. Laws are repealed. Roe v Wade isn’t a law. SCOTUS rulings are overturned.

The Dishonesty And Desperation Of “Pro-Choice” Advocates In The Wake Of The Dobbs Leak, Part I: Anything But The Issues

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments

Another one of the ironic boons from the despicable Supreme Court leak of Justice Alito’s draft majority opinion portending that Roe v. Wade is about to be overruled is how vividly it has exposed the intellectually dishonest and unethical nature of “pro choice” arguments. This comes as no surprise to anyone who has been following the abortion debate diligently, but in their fury and panic, abortion advocates are revealing just how weak their case is. They are also revealing that those who are willing to sacrifice nascent human lives for other objectives tend to have no compunction about using rationalizations, ad hominem attacks, classic logical fallacies and fearmongering as well as outright lies, when they finally have to defend their positions.

The reappearance of the costumes from “The Handmaiden’s Tale” is a neat symbol of the whole phenomenon. (How many of such protesters haven’t read Roe, the Alito draft, or Margaret Atwood’s novel? My guess: most of them.) To be fair, prominent Democrats like this guy endorsed the hysteria:

That delusion was apiece with the suggestion that women could force men to support abortion on demand by going on a sex strike. Similarly ducking the issues are the illegal demonstrations at the homes of Justices before it is even known who voted to end Roe, and President Biden’s moronic declaration in response to the leak that “this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history—-in recent American history.”

Since Roe v. Wade has been almost unanimously regarded in legal and academic circles as a badly reasoned opinion (even Ruth Bader Ginsburg conceded it was a botch), the epitome of flagrant judicial activism and legislation by judges, those trying to defend the decision now have had to resort to distractions, diversions, straw men and fictional slippery slopes. “Next those fascists will ban inter-racial marriage and Brown v. Board of Education!” more than a few Democratic officials and pundits have proclaimed, apparently forgetting that just a few weeks ago they were demanding that Justice Thomas, the dean of the Court’s conservatives, recuse himself because of the activities of his very white wife.

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Unethical Website Of The Year: Ruth Sent Us

/ Jack Marshall / 13 Comments

Ruth Sent Us, a smugly ignorant and unethical website of recent vintage by–what’s your guess, teenagers? Woke undergrads who never read a SCOTUS opinion? The editorial staff of The Nation? Mean satirists?—anyway, people up to no good, has suddenly been getting publicity because it posted the home addresses of the six non-progressive Supreme Court justices. They want people to “protest” outside of their houses.

The Stupid is strong with this one, so naturally it will appeal to the stupid who walk among us. It is generally illegal for more than two protesters to “demonstrate” in front of a residence, and also illegal for them to demonstrate in a neighborhood off private property without a permit. Never mind: Ruth Sent Us has announced a “Walk-by” of SCOTUS homes on May 11. The mob is being urged to wear red “Handmaid’s Tale” robes. Of course they are: referencing the dystopian science fiction novel is signature significance for someone who hasn’t given two thoughts to the issues involved in abortion and couldn’t comprehend Alito’s draft opinion if it were accompanied by pictures and ana interpretive dance troupe. Continue reading →

Ethics Observations On The Dobbs SCOTUS Opinion Draft Leak And Reactions To It

/ Jack Marshall / 29 Comments

Ethics Alarms posted briefly on the stunning leak of what appears to be a draft of a majority opinion striking down Roe v. Wade and the related Casey decision. [The link to the draft is in that article.] The position here is that any analysis based on the draft itself is premature and irresponsible, since the document is 1) a draft 2) not even necessarily the latest draft, and 3) the opinion as well as the support for it on the Court could change materially before the actual opinion is released.

The only ethics issue immediately clear is that regarding the leak itself, and, by extension, the leaker. Leaks always constitute a unethical breaches of trust; only in the rare cases where they reveal actual criminal activity can they be justified. For a lawyer to leak any information related to a professional obligation or representation is grounds for disbarment, and permanent infamy within the profession. This leak cannot be defended, and pundits, politicians or activists who praise the leaker reveal their own ethics bankruptcy. Keep a watch out for the leak apologists. Then relegate them to your “Untrustworthy” file.

Now the focus shifts to the reactions to the draft, and it is fair to say they constitute a freak-out. Prime among them is the hypocritical and hysterical joint statement by Sen. Schumer and Speaker Pelosi. Imagine: these are leaders of the party that has accused Donald Trump of undermining core American institutions.

The statement is breathtakingly dishonest. None of the members of the Court ever stated that they would not vote to overrule Roe. They said it was the law of the land, which is true, and stated their support for the principle of stare decisus. That did not preclude their voting to reverse Roe later based on a case that hadn’t been briefed or argued yet. I have read enough of the draft to know that Justice Alito clearly explains that stare decisus has always had exceptions (but I knew that) where a wrongfully decided Constitutional case had to be reversed, writing.

“We have long recognized, however, that stare decisis is ‘not an inexorable command,’ and it ‘is at its weakest when we interpret the Constitution.’ It has been said that it is sometimes more important that an issue ‘be settled than that it be settled right.’ But when it comes to the interpretation of the Constitution — the ‘great charter of our liberties,’ which was meant ‘to endure through a long lapse of ages,’ we place a high value on having the matter ‘settled right….On many other occasions, this Court has overruled important constitutional decisions. … Without these decisions, American constitutional law as we know it would be unrecognizable, and this would be a different country.”

It should be very easy for Republicans and anyone else to explain the demise of Roe to the public. It was, as Alito says, a bad decision from the beginning, and it was time for the rights of the unborn to be considered, and not just the imaginary right of mothers to have their children snuffed out.

I’m going to spend most of my time devoted to this episode reading the draft, but here are links to various news reports and commentary: ABC News, The Daily Beast, HuffPost, CNN, New York Times, CBS News, Reuters, Washington Examiner, Associated Press, Fox News, NPR, Townhall, Slate, The Guardian, CNSNews, Al Jazeera, Outside the Beltway, Washington Post, De Civitate, Insider, Bloomberg, NewsOne, USA Today, A Lawyer Writes, emptywheel, pjmedia.com, The Nation, Breitbart, Los Angeles Times, The Daily Signal, Vox, Washington Times, The Comity Channel, Deadline, KLAS, The Daily Caller, Men Yell at Me, PennLive, The Hill, The Moderate Voice, littlegreenfootballs.com, NBC New York, Ninja Smith & Friends, WCMH-TV, HotAir, Variety, Deseret News, BuzzFeed News, NBC News, RedState, Mississippi Free Press, Mediaite, Things Worth Thinking About, thot pudding, homeculture, National Review, Big League Politics, WCTX-TV, Twitchy, Talking Points Memo, SCOTUSblog, CNBC, Jill Filipovic, Lawyers, Guns & Money, The Daily Wire, Maxwell’s Newsletter, A Propensity …, Gem State, Louder With Crowder, PharmaHeretic’s Newsletter, First We Think, Vanity Fair, New York Post, Law & Crime, Raw Story, The 19th, The Texas Tribune, Dana Loesch’s Chapter …, Power Line, The Racket News, New York Magazine, Fortune, Hennessy’s View, Trash Chair Thoughts, VICE, UPI, The Gateway Pundit, GC News, Instapundit, Watch Night News, Rolling Stone, Sacramento Bee, The Even Place, Let’s Get Politigal, WPRI-TV, Daily Insurrection, Mother Jones, Super-Probably Relevant …, Mercury News, The Right News, The Western Journal, TheBlaze, Althouse, Unfogged, Ace of Spades HQ, Teresa L’s Newsletter, Boing Boing, CBS Denver, IJR and Progress Report

Further observations:

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Maryland Leaps On The Deadly Abortion Slippery Slope

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

When you think about it, this shouldn’t surprise us, as horrible and unethical as it is. The steps from abortion, to late-term abortion, to legal infanticide have always been smaller than abortion advocates have been willing to admit.

In one of the efforts underway in several Democratic-controlled legislatures to protect abortion rights if the Supreme Court alters or strikes down Roe v. Wade, Maryland is considering Senate Bill 669. The bill’s language states, in addition to protecting abortions themselves from prosecution, that no person can be investigated or charged for “experiencing a miscarriage, perinatal death related to failure to act, or stillbirth.”

The perinatal period consists of “the period shortly before and after birth, from the 20th to 29th week of gestation to one to four weeks after birth.” Mark Tapscott concludes,

In other words, it’s anywhere up to four weeks after the birth of the child you and your sexual partner conceived, and you decide you really don’t want the child, hey, no problem, just don’t feed it, don’t get medical care, don’t do a thing. Eventually, the child will die.

And that, under the meaning of the bill’s text, is OK.

The bill, which Tapscott believes is certain to pass and withstand a veto by Maryland’s Republican governor, also bans any investigations into perinatal infant death while creating the private right the right to sue for civil damages if one is investigated for causing a perinatal death through neglect. Continue reading →

The Ethics Corruption Of The Democratic Party Is Apparently Complete

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

The fact that the radical feminist and pro abortion lobbies did it is no excuse. The party has allowed abortion to corrupt it. There need to be consequences.

The Women’s Health Protection Act would codify Roe v. Wade and make all abortion restrictions illegal. Every Democratic Senator except one—Joe Manchin, of course—voted for the bill yesterday in lockstep with party leaders, despite its brutal, unethical and radical objective. [In the House as well, only one Democrat thought that the lives of full term unborn human babies were worth protecting.] The bill would allow doctors to abort unborn babies at any point in a pregnancy if they determine that allowing the pregnancy to continue to birth “would pose a risk to the pregnant patient’s life or health.”

Note the woke weasel words in that proposed law. Although the title of the bill and the long introductory argument for the law mention women prominently, the proposed wording of the law itself doesn’t mention women anywhere, as an obvious sop to the trans community, which seeks to erase all gender distinctions.

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