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Abortion war harms decisions on other issues

In the 26 years since the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision, in which the High Court discovered a constitutional right to obtain an abortion, lower courts have been forced to contort themselves into intellectual rigor mortis on unrelated matters lest they tread on certain orthodoxies of what is antiseptically called "choice."

A recent case from Wisconsin underscores the degree of legal gymnastics required to avoid offending long-hardened orthodoxy.

A state appeals court there tossed out a case against a woman who attempted to drink herself and her full-term baby to death on the day of its birth. Deborah Zimmerman was charged with attempted murder under a Wisconsin law that allows a person to be charged if a pregnant woman is harmed and a baby is born alive but later dies as a result of the trauma inflicted upon the mother.

The facts in the case are undisputed. Zimmerman spent the day of her girl's birth in a bar, drinking herself up to a 0.30 blood alcohol level at the time of the girl's birth. Zimmerman stated to a nurse her intent to kill the child: "I'm just going to go home and keep drinking and drink myself to death, and I'm going to kill this thing because I don't want it anyways."

(Fortunately, although the baby was born limp &emdash; more to the point, drunk &emdash; it is healthy, and is now in foster care. Yes, Zimmerman may yet retrieve her parental rights.)

Wisconsin authorities charged Zimmerman with attempted first-degree intentional homicide and first-degree reckless injury.

But the court has decreed that she shall not stand trial, even though the evidence and common sense dictates punishment for her callous actions. Why? "The term 'human being' was not intended to refer to an unborn child and Deborah's prenatal conduct does not constitute attempted first-degree intentional homicide and first-degree reckless injury," the court ruled &emdash; even though the baby was born hours later.

Were abortion not part of the legal equation, the court might have ruled differently. However, the orthodoxy of "choice" forbids legal consideration of the personhood of a child, even hours before natural birth. To treat the child as a child at that late stage of pregnancy, you see, might force the courts to confront such issues as late-term "partial-birth" abortions and other questions that positively empurple the most doctrinaire advocates of abortion.

It is a pity that reasoned thinking has to be set aside in cases such as Zimmerman's only because legal and political positions have become hardened on the unrelated question of abortion.

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