In a 5-0 decision the New Jersey Supreme Court declared that a doctor does not have a duty to inform an expectant mother that her preborn child is an "existing human being." The judges relied, as usual, on the same old argument that there is no "consensus" in the medical community on the question of when a human being begins.
I found this latest ruling particularly unnerving because the justices in question claimed that they could not drive public policy in one particular direction, thus giving anyone who learns of this decision the impression that the existence of the human person prior to birth is no longer a matter of scientific fact but rather a question of politics, which is precisely what the term "public policy" means. In other words, the personhood of the preborn is a social question, a matter of opinion.
In the nearly 35 years since Roe v. Wade/Doe v. Bolton were decided, there has yet to be a set of judges who will examine the medical evidence, hear from the experts on the question of human embryology, and make a ruling based on fact rather than polling data. Further it is becoming increasingly clear that judicial opinions when it comes to abortion are more about consensus than they are about uncovering the actual facts and adhering to what I would describe as common sense.
The mother who aborted her child in this particular case has made it clear, throughout the years this case has been in litigation, that the abortionist misled her. She has repeated, over and over again, that after her doctor told her she needed an abortion for health reasons, she asked a simple question, "Is the baby already there?" The abortionist replied, "Don't be stupid, it's only blood."
This mother was in her sixth or seventh week of pregnancy, and it is likely that if she had received treatment from an honest obstetrician/gynecologist, her baby would have been born and her kidneys would have been fine as well, but we will never know. What we do know is that the fact that this mother made it clear to the court that she suffered emotional distress upon learning that her doctor lied to her is totally irrelevant to the opining of at least these five judges.
Rose Acuna's case is not unique in the history of pro-life litigation that has failed to acquire the attention of the judiciary in this nation, but it does once again make a point that far too few are willing to admit. Quite simply, the only way to reverse abortion in America is to demand a law or an amendment to the Constitution that establishes personhood from the moment a preborn child's life begins.
This is not a question of whether or not society would accept such a law; this is a question of how much longer this nation can exist when the blood of the babies continues to be spilled due to the moral blindness of those who craft our laws and and those who rule on them.
