A License to Kill

By: Deacon Keith Fournier

© Third Millennium, LLC

I have spent a lot of time in bed lately. It seems like the day I turned fifty, I began to get "the flu", or something like it, repeatedly. I have spent the last few months trying to recover. It has given me more time for prayer. But, alas, it has also led to a lot of time for mindless television. You know the drill, flipping the channels and watching the talking heads. I am a news "junkie" and a "policy wonk". So, when I "zone out", I end up listening to the chattering class.

It was while I was engaged in this latter pursuit that I heard the news about 16-year-old Erica Basoria, the pregnant teenage mother from Texas and boyfriend, 18-year-old Gerardo "Jerry" Flores. Flores now faces capital murder charges for killing two unborn children by beating his girlfriend in the abdomen. The bizarre twist to this horrible act, supported by the mother, was that she actually requested the young man to punch her in the abdomen repeatedly, precisely in order to kill these children.

Jerry Flores has been charged under the Texas Prenatal Protection Act. Erica Basoria has not been charged. The twins, are dead.

The Texas Act was passed in 2003 in order to protect unborn children. It is similar to the "Unborn Victims of Violence Act", or "Conner’s Bill", the Federal legislation named for Conner Peterson, the slain unborn child of Laci Peterson. The Act defines "individual" as, "a human being who is alive, including an unborn child at every stage of gestation from fertilization until birth." The Texas Act is not applicable if the mother chooses to have an abortion.

There is no doubt of the need for such legislation and there is a welcome trend toward protecting children in the womb from violence, such as the growth of vehicular homicide laws that allow prosecutors to charge for the killing of children in the womb when a pregnant woman is injured in an auto accident. This type of legislation has played a vital role in calling public attention to the undeniable truth; children in the first home of the whole human race, the womb of their mother, are human persons. They should be protected from violent acts intended to kill or injure them and the State should prosecute those who commit such evil acts.

Yet, much of this kind of legislation has been carefully crafted to carve out an exception in the case of the killing of a child through an abortion. We all know the obvious insanity that this entails. That child is no less dead. The mother, not told the truth concerning what is really occurring, is the second victim. However, at least for now, the decision in the nefarious Supreme Court decision of Roe v Wade has afforded legal protection to this evil. Worse yet, it has called it a "constitutional right", even though it is nowhere to be found in the Constitution and is clearly wrong.

The twist in this bizarre case out of Texas will help in our efforts to overturn Roe v Wade and stop the killing of children by legal abortion. The mother, Erica Basoria, informed the authorities she had been trying to kill her unborn children for months by punching herself in the abdomen. She filed an affidavit in which she stated: "When I was four months pregnant, I began to show, and at that time I decided that I should have gotten an abortion," The same affidavit also said that her parents wanted her to have an abortion. "They said I was too young to have children," she wrote. "About two weeks before the miscarriage, I started hitting myself…I would do this every other day and I would use both of my fists when I did this. I would hit myself 10 or more times."

I found out about all of this by watching a "debate" on a national news program between two lawyers, concerning the propriety of charging this young man. While I was listening to these two lawyers debate on television, lying in bed, coughing, grieving for the victims, the children, the mother, the misguided killer, our Nation… I was particularly repulsed by these members of my own profession. "Lawyers" I thought to myself, "no wonder they are held in such disrepute." Two members of the profession which is supposed to promote justice were arguing with each other playfully over an egregiously evil act. They repeatedly smiled for the camera, laughing and verbally jabbing at one another over this whole sordid incident in order to entertain. "Two babies were killed!" I thought to myself "Where is the outrage?"

The woman lawyer, a prosecutor, tried very hard to separate the incident in Texas from what occurs in every abortion. She defended the State of Texas for filing the criminal case against the young man who had committed the heinous deed. The other lawyer, a man, was not opposed to abortion at all, but tried to defend the young man, insisting that he should not be prosecuted at all because there was no criminal intent. His position was that this was not an assault or a battery because the young woman consented to the beating and, in fact, requested it. He repeatedly asked his opponent the same question "How is this any different than an abortion?"

The host of this national news program smiled and repeatedly laughed at their playful bantering. He commented concerning the "quandary" that this Texas case presented. I shot up in bed and spoke aloud, even though I was alone in the room, "My God, what has it come to in America? That boy killed two children, his own! That mother became an accomplice! The chattering class laughs."

Then I thought of something even more evil.

While I was watching this surreal theater of the absurd, this contrived debate on television, hundreds of "Doctors", were reaching into the first home of the whole human race, into countless wombs all over America, and dismembering children with precision surgical instruments. In many instances they were killing these children through saline solution, burning them and causing excruciating pain in the process.

In each of these instances, these "Doctors" are not only being protected by the law but being paid thousands of dollars. These "medical professionals" have taken an oath of ancient origin, the Oath of Hippocrates, which includes the words: "I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness, I will guard my life and my art"

On a daily basis they commit unspeakable horrors, causing the death of innocent children whose screams are muffled by the wall of the womb. The mothers are the second victim, lied to concerning the human life they carry within them, and not fully informed concerning the long term consequences to their own physical and emotional health of the abortion they have "chosen."

Perhaps this case will help in some way by bringing the sheer evil of every procured abortion to a full public discussion.

After all, what is the difference between what Gerardo "Jerry" Flores has done and what these Doctors do on a daily basis? Oh, I know, abortion is currently protected by positive law. Well, it shouldn’t be. It is against the Natural Law that can be known by all and is binding upon all. The killing of children in the womb is simply wrong and we all know it. Roe v Wade must go.

There is only one difference between the behavior of this deluded young man and the behavior of an abortionist, a medical license.

Sadly, for abortionists, it has become a license to kill.

__________________________________________________________________

Deacon Keith Fournier is a Roman Catholic Deacon of the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia who also serves the Melkite Greek Catholic Eparchy with permission. He is a graduate of the Franciscan University of Steubenville, the John Paul II Institute of the Lateran University and the University Of Pittsburgh School Of Law. Deacon Fournier is a human rights lawyer and public policy advocate who has practiced law for twenty five years and has been to the U.S. Supreme Court on constitutional cases. An author, he is the Senior Editor of Catholic Online and a Contributing Editor of Traditional Catholic Reports.