Abortion Regulation: Anti-Discrimination Law

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* 2014 UPDATE & UNAUTHORIZED RECORDING: Georgia Right To Life has been kicked out of the morally corrupt National Right To Life. To get a sense of the tension inside of a NRTL board meeting when they are about to vote to kick out a state chapter, listen to this unauthorized 9-minute recording.

In this closed-door session the NRTL board voted to kick out Colorado RTL, but not before they heard testimony about their own failed and immoral strategy of regulating child killing.

Georgia Right To Life's anti-discrimination abortion regulation essentially states: Make sure that there is no racial discrimination involved, and then you can kill the baby. American RTL demonstrates below, and at our Abortion Regulations and Good vs. Bad Abortion Incrementalism articles, that this legislative effort is immoral and therefore will certainly backfire.

Just because a law is promoted by a pro-life group does not make it inherently helpful and good. Actions, statements, and laws are not judged right or wrong by who did them, said them, or proposed them, but by a higher standard. Negotiating with a terrorist is not morally valid just because of one's sincerity. Consenting to terrorists killing the younger kids if only they will spare the older kids is worse than merely immoral. Pro-lifers not repulsed by such negotiations have turned the child to be killed into an abstraction and have reduced the right to life to a second-tier negotiable instrument. Foolish things, and even evil things, are often done, sadly, by otherwise good people. Pro-life leaders are among those who do wrong, including the leaders at Georgia Right To Life. (And it should go without saying that immunity to doing wrong exists nowhere on Earth, including not here at ARTL.)

Principled abortion incrementalism includes insurance coverage prohibition, principled parental involvement, principled unborn victims of crime bills, divsesting pension funds from the abortion industry, born-alive infant protection, embryonic stem-cell research bans, and funding prohibitions. Compromised abortion incrementalism includes informed consent, waiting periods, the partial-birth abortion "ban", late-term bans, fetal pain bills, heartbeat bills, parental notification or consent, and any legislation that effectively ends with, "and then you can kill the baby."

Georgia RTL's Compromised Ban on Discriminatory Abortions: Dan Becker, president of Georgia Right To Life, thankfully promotes personhood and operates the great website personhood.net. And like ARTL's own position, Dan opposes the regulation of abortion in principle (as at AmericanRTL.org/regulations, because such efforts are immoral and inevitably backfire). However in practice, Becker has opened up an unfortunate new front in the pro-life battle: denying that regulations are regulations. Consider this example, as supported by Dan and GRTL, Georgia's 2011 SB 529 (see also the 2009-2010 version at ga.gov):

  • contains the words, "relating to when abortion is legal"
  • creates an anti-discrimination abortion regulation for clinics to comply with
  • incorporates and thereby reaffirms existing "exceptions"
  • incorporates and reaffirms existing regulations (notification, informed consent, PBA, etc.)
  • has the official description of providing "prohibitions on the circumstances under which an abortion may be performed."

The GRTL-supported bill unequivocally indicates that if the abortion is not racially motivated, then you can kill the baby. As it passed the state senate with GRTL's support, the 2011 text of SB 529 (see also the 2009-2010 version) states:

Section 1. … "(b) A person commits the offense of criminal abortion when that person performs an abortion:

(2) With the intent to prevent an unborn child from being born based upon the race...

(4) In violation of any of the following: Code Section 15-11-112 [parental notification], subsection (b) or (c) of Code Section 16-12-141 [late term OK if in hospital, for health], Code Section 31-9A-3 [informed consent, ultrasound available], or Code Section 31-9A-5 [medically necessary]. ...

(d) …any physician performing an abortion who personally confirms by direct inquiry that such abortion is not being sought with the intent to prevent an unborn child from being born based upon unlawful coercion or the race… of the unborn child… shall not be criminally responsible...

Section 2. Said title is further amended by revising subsection (a) of Code Section 16-12-141, relating to when abortion is legal and the filing of certificate of abortion by performing physician, as follows:

"(a) Nothing in this article shall be construed to prohibit an abortion performed by a physician duly licensed to practice medicine and surgery pursuant to Chapter 34 of Title 43, based upon his or her best clinical judgment that an abortion is necessary, except that subsection (b) of Code Section 16-12-140 [this Act] is a prohibition on the circumstances under which an abortion may be performed which shall apply to both duly licensed physicians and laypersons, and Code Section 16-12-144 [PBA] is a prohibition of a particular abortion method…

Tellingly, Upholding Personhood Would Nullify Georgia's SB 529: Incorporating existing abortion regulations and exceptions into new law is an attempt at an end-run around principled objections. And building upon that already broken foundation by legislating a new "anti-discrimation regulation" for abortionists to comply with is itself incompatible with personhood. Thus Georgia's SB 529, which ARTL successfully urged Georgia legislators to oppose, would be nullified when the government begins to enforce the child's God-given right to life.

A Parallel from U.S. History: As pointed out in ARTL's celebrated Burning Buildings and Half a Loaf article, a tragic U.S. Supreme Court opinion helps expose Georgia RTL's immorality. Consider America's crime against humanity in our forced sterilization of over 60,000 people. In 1942 the U.S. Supreme Court absurdly ruled in Skinner v. Oklahoma that the equal protection clause of the constitution would not be violated as long as forced sterilization of prisoners included white-collar criminals. This more-distant historical example should help pro-lifers better recognize the immorality of various current "pro-life" negotiating tactics, including GRTL's "and then you can kill the baby" law, as long as the child killers assert that the decision to dismember the little boy or girl is not racially motivated.

GRTL's Discrimination Bill Creates Obviously Unprotected Classes of Children: By supporting both personhood and regulations, a contradictory stance which undermines personhood itself, Georgia RTL places itself in Tier 2 at Pro-life Profiles, a classification system which helps us identify the strengths and weaknesses of organizations and helps pro-lifers know how to pray for our leaders. In his otherwise wonderful Personhood book, GRTL president Dan Becker denies that regulations are regulations by using the concept of protecting various "classes" of human beings (such as black children being racially targeted). However, a law protecting a "class" of human beings is inherently immoral if it creates an "obviously unprotected class." Thus just as a German law against aborting Aryan babies would be immoral, a Georgia law against aborting babies for racial reasons creates an obviously unprotected class of babies who are not aborted because they are black (or white or mixed) but merely because they are unwanted. Consider this further at AmericanRTL.org/basic-page/good-vs-bad-abortion-incrementalism#esther where eight verses from the Hebrew Scriptures help us to think even more clearly about such matters.

See Also: ARTL's letter to Georgia Rep. Bobby Franklin urging him to continue opposing GRTL's racial fairness abortion law.

"The law condemns and punishes only actions
within certain definite and narrow limits;
it thereby justifies, in a way,
all similar actions that lie outside those limits."
- Leo Tolstoy widely attributed

This page deals with a single abortion regulation. Please make an effort to see our full Abortion Regulations page and our full Abortion Incrementalism page.