One In A Roe

While the President made decent jokes about salmon and TSA pat-downs in his State-Of-Delusion speech Tuesday night, the real howler came out on Monday, when he released the following statement on abortion:   

“Today marks the 38th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that protects women's health and reproductive freedom, and affirms a fundamental principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters. I am committed to protecting this constitutional right.”

Committed to not intrude on private family matters?  There’s one in a Roe.  

Now, don’t think this a post about abortion; that is a serious subject and it is getting harder and harder to take anything the President says seriously anymore. This is about the hypocrisy of inventing a constitutional right for that one solitary purpose, while totally disregarding the explicit constitutional protections that govern all other matters; the absurdity of being pro-choice on only one thing, and choosing the termination of life as your one thing.

Did the President really say with a straight face that he is committed to the fundamental principle of keeping the government from intruding on private family matters?  How about invoking that fundamental principle on such private family matters as what we choose to eat, drink, smoke, drive, buy, sell, own, shoot, carry, pray, earn, save, drive, ride, wear, teach, grow, insure, say, pay, contribute, hunt, fish, advertise, marry, listen to, access on-line, heat our homes with, travel to, or pass to our heirs?  

Abortion is a decision that the majority of women and all of us men will never have to face; and those women who do will visit it only once or twice in their lifetimes.  But in all other areas of our lives, unwelcome and unconstitutional government intrusions are a daily occurrence and growing more frequent each time one of Obama’s Czars picks up a pen. 

His “commitment” to constitutional rights must have a provision for some of those infamous Obama waivers, because I cannot think of any three Presidents combined who have sought to intrude on private family matters as much as this guy has.  And when he runs out of us people to lord over, he moves on to the critters - according to his State of the Union speech, we now have three agencies “in charge of the salmon”.  In charge?  If I was a salmon, I would be already be organizing a tea party and fitting Sarah Palin with scuba gear out of spite.    

Pro-lifers believe that life begins at conception.  Pro-choicers believe life begins at the point of viability independent of the mother.  Statists believe that life begins at the moment they can register one more living thing to regulate the crap out of and it ends when there is nothing left to tax.

Mr. Obama’s support for abortion rights is not surprising; the unborn child is not yet available to the State anyway so it is of no use to those of his ideological bent. His government can afford to wait for the next one; it claims ownership of the CO₂ in the newborn’s first wail, and it is all downhill from there.  To demand that an individual be protected from government interference for his/her first nine months of life, and then be subjugated for the hundreds of months that will follow is the kind of irrational thinking that appeals to people who prefer to do very little of it – people who require two sittings to take in “hope and change”.

There was nothing newsworthy in the President’s SOTU speech.  But I wish he wouldn’t have called for science to receive as much attention as the Super Bowl, because now Brett Favre will probably try to come out of retirement and play quarterback for that Science Fairs team Mr. Obama referred to, if his agent can find out what city they play in.  Or maybe not.  Or maybe. Depends.  Kinda.

The House repealed ObamaCare last week, and in 2012 the rest of us will get our turn to repeal its namesake at the polls.   In the meantime, we will have to endure a few more rambling repetitions of the liberal mantra – trains, taxes, and tenure.  And a few more moments of bald-faced hooey like “the government should not intrude on private family matters”, which will remind me to thank my son for teaching me what ROTFLMAO means in text-speak.          

“Moment Of Clarity” is a weekly commentary by Libertarian writer and speaker Tim Nerenz, Ph.D.  Visit Tim’s website www.timnerenz.com to find your moment and order his new book, “Tooth Fairy Government.”