This video from the Media Research Center is tragic on many levels.
The video portrays MRC's clever attempt to get people to sign a petition in favor of "fourth trimester abortions," using all the same phony-baloney propaganda spewed by advocates for the child killing industry.
And several times on camera it works.
Sure, a couple of people question the petition. One gentleman refuses to sign and asks the MRC staffer if he'll attend his Bible study with him instead. Another young lady says that's killing a live human being so she can't sign on.
But other than those rare exceptions, the propaganda pays off with another signature added to the petition more times than not.
Several of the signers on the video don't even know there's no such thing as a fourth trimester, and that pregnancy culminates in the third trimester.
MRC's staffer tells one signer that as far as he's concerned it's not a human being "until it can pay taxes" and gets no argument for such an assertion. Another lady wonders if it will do harm to the child and the MRC staffer responds with "a woman shouldn't be punished with an unwanted pregnancy," which prompts her to promptly go ahead and sign on the dotted line. A 15-year old girl signs the petition. A gentleman does the math in his head and decides the "4th trimester" isn't too late to kill a child. Even a woman who says she "just had a baby three months ago" signs on to an effort to kill already-born children.
As if all that weren't tragic enough, one young lady was a living, breathing example of low-information voter. She said she does a lot of stuff for Planned Parenthood. To which the MRC staffer replied, "We love Planned Parenthood. Tell everyone there I said hi. Tell them Carlos Danger said hi." The woman, not knowing that was disgraced New York City mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner's online nickname while trolling for some fornication, replied back "wow (that's your name) and that's not even made up."
But even in a video intended to point out the fallacy of the entire child killing movement, one of its advocates reveals the roadmap to ending the plague of infanticide once and for all.
"That's past the first trimester," says one young man who refuses to sign the petition. "I'm fine with abortion in the first trimester, because to me that isn't really a person."
Herein lies the rub.
We will not end child killing in America until we establish when life actually begins. Even the justices in the Roe v. Wade hearing itself acknowledged that if it could be determined the unborn child in the womb is a person, the entire argument for abortion would disintegrate.
"If it could be established the unborn fetus was a 'person' within the protection of the 14th Amendment, (the child killing industry) would have an almost impossible case," Justice Potter Stewart said during the hearing.
"I would have a very difficult case," acknowledged pro-child killing attorney Sarah Weddington.
For decades we have attacked the practice of child killing to no avail. We're not only not any closer to ending the scourge of infanticide, but MRC's video shows the next generation isn't even sure of when pregnancy ends let alone when life begins.
If we're going to shut down the slaughtering houses, we have to attack the premise of child killing. This whole debate is really centered around the question when is the child a 'person' entitled to legal protection? Anytime we pursue arguments or policies that don't beg that question we may be successfully regulating abortion, but we're not drawing any closer to actually ending it once and for all.
Sadly, there are some claiming to be pro-life that don't really want to end child killing, or lack a strategy to actually do so, as a recent feature in Time Magazine profiled. It seems to me the only successful strategy is to beg the question of when is a person a person, and pursue policy initiatives that reinforce that premise.
This is why I am a proponent of the so-called "personhood" strategy.
"No person...shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law."
5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution