The American Spectator

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Special Report

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So determined is the ACLU to promote abortion that it opposes allowing religious hospitals that collect tax dollars to refuse to carry out the procedure or to make abortion referrals. And it opposes making the killing of a fetus a crime. After all, the latter "is in reality a dangerous attempt to separate a woman from her fetus in the eyes of the law" -- as if they are not in fact distinct human beings, each of unique moral value.

ALSO TROUBLING IS THE ACLU's intervention in the "right-to-die" case of Terri Schindler Schiavo, who suffers from a debilitating brain injury. Her husband and parents disagree on her wishes and how best to carry them out.

One would normally rely upon a spouse's decision, but Michael Schiavo may be thinking of more than his wife. (Money from a medical malpractice verdict was supposedly set aside for her care, which he now claims is exhausted; he waited until years after the malpractice verdict to claim that his wife had said she wanted no treatment in such circumstances; he is engaged to be married to a woman with whom he has had one child and has another one on the way.) So the Florida legislature and Gov. Jeb Bush acted to force doctors to reconnect her feeding tube. Now the Florida ACLU has jumped in on Michael Schiavo's side to force his wife's death.

It would be one thing to defend a person's clearly expressed desire to choose death in such circumstances. It is quite another to step into the middle of a family dispute, whether or not state officials have intervened. After all, whose civil liberties among those of Terri Schindler Schiavo, her husband, and her parents should be protected, and how?

Join the ACLU? The organization works hard to stop censorship of speech, limit abusive government searches, and ensure proper criminal procedures. These things all need to be defended and defended stoutly.

But protecting these freedoms shouldn't require locking kids in dangerous public schools that don't teach, requiring religious taxpayers to fund public institutions and programs stripped of all religious values, and sacrificing the lives of children and the disabled in the name of choice. I'm afraid I'm not ready to join the ACLU just yet.

topics:
Education, Religion, Abortion, Constitution, Law, Military