Juncture of Events: Apology for Eugenics, Defending Abortion

At first I thought that I'd merely learned something new about my Indiana home state's past. We apparently were the medical community's cutting edge at the beginning of the last century, and made what we now acknowledge were huge mistakes.
There were several pages of Yahoo! search results for the AP-Ken Kusmer article, almost all of which were titled "Indiana Apologizes For Role In Eugenics." The Fort Wayne (Indiana) News-Sentinel thought this was catchier..." Indiana apologizes for its sterilization of ‘imbeciles.’ "
Whilst looking around for names and places mentioned, I somehow came across a NARAL letter protesting "Bush's Abortion Ban." I'd never heard of it, surprise, because there is no such thing.

I care a lot about what the Supreme Court has to say about President Bush's Federal Abortion Ban. The same day I decided to terminate my pregnancy, lawmakers gathered in Washington, DC to discuss the ban, which could outlaw abortion as early as 12 weeks and has no exception for a woman's health.

The South Dakota legislature passed a law in 2005 requiring abortionists to advise their patients that the "procedure" will end the life of a human being. Planned (un)Parenthood won an injunction to delay enforcement until a court decides whether or not to allow the law. PP's objection is not that the statement is untrue, but that it infringes on the "free speech" of the doctor. That's the scary "Bush Abortion Ban."

(A) lower court said the legislation infringes doctors' First Amendment rights by requiring them to promote the state's ideology on an "unsettled medical, philosophical, theological, and scientific issue, that is, whether a fetus is a human being."
It is this injunction that the law's supporters are seeking to have overturned. Earlier, a three-judge panel of the 8th Circuit upheld the lower court's injunction, but now the full 11-judge panel will rehear the case.

Humanity has shown over and again that it will run into trouble every time it tries to differentiate between "human beings" and "persons." The United States had its issue with slaves and Germany with Jews (and others with a "life not worth living"). Eugenics tried to eliminate our responsibility to "imbeciles and paupers," as does abortion with the unborn. Instead of regarding our less fortunate brethren as guilt-inspiring, party-ending burdens, scripture reveals them to be God given opportunities for doing good deeds. Then Governor Hanly, devout Methodist by all accounts (in 1905 that meant something), should have seen that.
The lower court mentioned above does the same thing that Roe did in '73. We are, of course, only interested in what science and medicine have to say about the facts as they are known regarding any surgery, including abortion. The subject is obfuscated by the insertion and elevation of irrelevant opinions from the fields of "philosophy" and "theology" as if any other law on our books depended on pastor jimbo's acquiescence. The question in Law isn't whether the baby is a human being, it's whether the human being in the womb is a "person" and worthy of rights under the constitution. The '73 SCOTUS disingenuously asserted that since theologians and philosophers and scientists and doctors couldn't agree on when life begins then all we can do throw up our hands leave it to the doctor and the patient. Never mind that by the time we know something is in there, it's a human being, and it is definately alive.
Few of us can escape the charge of being offensive or burdensome to someone else. If an unborn child can be separated from personhood, if an "imbecile" can be likewise separated, if also a Jew or a Gypsy or a pauper, black skinned or Chinese or homosexual, then who can't?
Which brings us full circle back to eugenics. The unfortunate thing for its promoters was that the patient survived, and can as a "person" press charges.

Coleman was 17, married and eager to have children when she learned the truth about her surgery.
"Oh gosh, I didn't want to live. I hated my mother. I hated everybody that did this to me," she said.
Coleman sued her mother, the doctor and the judge in a case that went to the U.S. Supreme Court and resulted in a landmark 1978 decision granting judges immunity in official actions. Duh!!

A shock worthy of Imus! Lawyers, judges and politicians exempt themselves from the more fearful consequences of their playground activities! Amazing.