When the Supreme Court upheld the Federal law against
partial-birth abortion, I let out a breath inhaled over eleven
years ago. From the first Congressional attempt to enact the ban,
and the various blocking moves — Clinton’s veto, Federal judges’
injunctions, I have been haunted by the thought we were a country
where rhetoric had overtaken conscience. In 1996, I was hired to
write campaign materials for Rob L. Verga, running for Congress
against Charles Schumer. The following was written for distribution
among the Jewish constituents of that district. The candidate
vetoed it because its excessive passion did not comport with the
decibel level usually assigned for political dialogue. Do you
agree?
WHEN CHARLES SCHUMER, the social and moral
counterpart of Stephen Solarz, stands this year for reelection to
his umpteenth term, he does so in the shadow of his most immoral
and vicious vote.
When he voted to allow the partial-birth abortion, over the
implorings of the bishops that this was “tampering with the moral
consensus which binds us as a nation,” over the courage of 73
fellow Democrats (including Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Richard
Gephardt, David Bonior and Patrick Kennedy) who broke party lines
to follow their consciences, he charted new zones of morally
outrageous behavior.
Never in the thirty-eight hundred years since Abraham, in the
thirty-three hundred years since Sinai, nor even in almost two
millennia of exile, has it been recorded that a Jew in a position
of power voted to allow the gruesome murder of infants. If general
votes by Jews favoring abortion — be they Schumer, Garry Ackerman
or Israeli Knesset members — can in small measure be understood as
assuming the fetus to be less than a life, a vote on behalf of
partial-birth abortion finds no such rationale.
A child, a human being, created in the image of God, a person
like you and me, all of him born into this world except his head,
his legs kicking, his hands clenching. This creature turns in vain
to Charles Schumer, to the Jewish People, to the nation of Sinai,
for protection.
Betrayed by its own mother, betrayed by the President of the
United States, this child opens and closes his hands, clutching at
the prospect of being saved by a majority of just citizens. Yes,
the majority of Congress has voted to save this child. But do they
have the two thirds required to override the Presidential veto?
The Polish Catholic from Illinois is fighting to save this child
— be it black or white, male or female, Jew or Gentile. So, too,
the Irish Catholic in Rhode Island, the Protestant in Kansas, the
Evangelical in Indiana, the Baptist in Tennessee and the Mormon in
Utah.
But just as hope seems to dawn for humanity, as our child
struggles to make its last valiant push for freedom, here come the
new Jews of modernity. The liberal Jews, the progressive Jews, the
Jews of sophistication and education and futuristic vision. Charles
Schumer, Garry Ackerman and friends have arrived on the scene.
Quickly, before our little Maimonides or Einstein or Beethoven
can draw breath, the forces of enlightenment pounce. The scissors
are inserted into the skull, the suction machine vacuums the brain.
The hands open and close one last time. The legs kick in one last
spasm of protest against the betrayal, the ruthlessness, the
brutality.
As a Jew, I look upon Charles Schumer and his ilk with unadorned
horror. His crime is so unspeakable, so far beyond the pale of
Jewish — or even human — behavior that the well of words upon
which we draw was never stocked in mind of such an eventuality. I
turn away from him in mute disgust, shaken that in our own time a
descendant of Abraham could have plumbed a new depth in vicious
brutalization of conscience and culture.
Yet even more poignant and unsettling is the thought that
Charles Schumer practices his crass philosophy not only in his own
name. He does so as the nominal, the titular, representative of
many fine Jews, including some of the greatest rabbis and Jewish
scholars of our time.
Well, perhaps it is a bit strong. You know how it is with
youthful spirit — and youthful prose. Still, I have not rested
easily from that day to this. Even if practitioners find loopholes,
the law as written upholds the nobility of our nation. This
choosing of life will stand us in good stead in the great moral
trials of our time.
