SOMETHING NEW IN THE LANDFILL THIS TIME

MEDIA HYPOCRISY AND THE UNBORN DEAD

As you may know, they have finally found the body of Lori Hacking, the unfortunate pregnant woman (no, not that one--another one) whose duplicitous husband decided to murder her rather than fathering a child.

But, wait, you say. That's not politics!

Bear with me. We'll get there.

I note on the television in connection with this pregnant woman case that everyone seems to be horrified that her monster of a husband, Mark (and all the more monstrous for having appeared previously so kind and good), not only murdered her in cold blood but put her body in a trash dumpster, like she was so much garbage.

But why be so amazed and outraged? After all, unborn children are consigned to the trash every day in this country, where we've developed a 4000-a day habit for the blood of unwanted babies. Every day, fetal tissue of the kind inside Lori Hacking is scraped and suctioned and sucked down the stainless steel drains of abortion clinics and hospitals across the nation.

America is hopelessly conflicted on abortion.

We accept abortion as a right on the flimsiest of legal reasoning--a function of the procedural due process right of privacy, an interesting inference by the Supreme Court discerned from the "penumbra" of the Bill of Rights. Yet we recoil at the thought of late-term abortions, saline abortions, young girls having them without their parents' knowledge or consent, and women killing their children against the wishes of the father. The fact that Lori Hacking's own husband killed not just his wife--but his child, as well--leaves us trembling with rage and disgust. But if he'd convinced her to have an abortion first and murdered her later, would the case get as much play? Would we give it an honored position in the pantheon of the 24-hour news cycle, with Scott Peterson and Michael Jackson?

A dead woman is a dead woman, but a dead woman WITH CHILD--that's a story.

But why? This from the same news media in which the vast majority of correspondents believe in "a woman's right to choose." This from Katie Couric, who has marched in the annual March for Women's Lives--celebrating the right of women to choose to do what Mark Hacking (and Scott Peterson) effectively did to their children. Is it only okay to treat people like trash if we are women or doctors? Are the dead only trash when they've not been born yet?

John Kerry believes "life begins at conception." He is a father. He is a Catholic. Yet, he has never met an abortion expansion he didn't like--or at least vote for. He didn't even vote for the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban, to make illegal a procedure that more than 70% of the country finds abhorrent. And, as President Bush's ads have pointed out, he voted against the Laci Peterson law, making the murder of a pregnant woman a double homicide. Well, at least he's consistent in some things. His statements conflict, but his actions match perfectly.

President Bush believes abortion is wrong. I don't know that he's ever phrased it the was Kerry has, that "life begins at conception." He is a father, as well. And he's a born-again Methodist. But he has the courage of his convictions. He stands against abortion every chance he gets. One of his first acts was to reinstate his father's "Mexico City Policy," an international ban on federal aid to organizations that promote or provide abortion in nations where the procedure is illegal. Clinton undid the ban on his first day in office. Would Kerry cancel it again?

President Bush stands with the unborn, from conception to birth, and with unwanted children into adoption wherever possible and best. He stands with the old and the weak and the sick, protecting them from those who would take their lives for convenience, or economics, or selfishness. He protects human embryos from experimentation, even though he earns the ire of diseased celebrities and even the opposition of Nancy Reagan for doing so. Kerry promises to strip that protection and harvest the unborn in the name of scientific progress, though the leader of the faith he has chosen to follow sees such research as an unspeakable crime against the innocent.

The President wants to see a nation where Lori Hacking and her child are protected from harm and avenged when it comes to them. He sees them both as victims. John Kerry wants abortion to be (according to the Democratic mantra) "safe, legal, and rare"--but is a "rare" murder less of a murder because it is unusual? Kerry would probably pursue policies to protect Lori Hacking from her husband, physically--but his policy on her child is to fund the instruments that could kill it and to ignore its death even when it occurs as part of an adult homicide. Mark Hacking saw his wife and his child as obstacles to the smooth path of his own life. He probably wouldn't mind repealing the law against murdering people who are in the way.

Yet, rhetorically, even the liberal media are taking the president's side--which shows what unconscionable hypocrites they are. Why are they all up in arms about poor Lori Hacking and her unborn child? Why are they incensed that someone would do such a dastardly thing to a pregnant woman?

The baby inside her is one in 45 million and counting. Every day we throw babies away, and CBS never blinks its eye.

They're just mad because Mark Hacking left the wrapper on this one.