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The State of Texas Strips the Veneer off of the Ugly Face of Legal Abortion

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By Deacon Keith Fournier
© Third Millennium, LLC
Catholic Online

On June 6, 2005, in Lufkin, Texas, Gerardo Flores, a nineteen year old, was convicted of two counts of murder. The prosecutors did not seek the death penalty. It could have been sought under Texas legislation, passed in 2003, entitled "The Fetus Protection Law". Gerardo received an automatic life sentence for intentionally killing his twins. They are dead, killed while they were unable to defend themselves in the first home of the whole human race, their mothers womb.

The mother of the children, seventeen year old Erica Basoria, was four months pregnant at the time of the killing. Prior to the trial she repeatedly acknowledged that she wanted Gerardo to help her to kill their children. She also acknowledged that she regretted not getting an abortion. She told police that she had started to aggressively jog, and punch herself repeatedly in the abdomen, all in an effort to induce a miscarriage and cause the death of the children in her womb. She acknowledged that she had asked Flores for help in the intentional killing.

The facts are that Erica Basoria had indeed asked Gerardo Flores to help end her pregnancy and kill the twins. However, she could not be prosecuted; she had a "legal right" to an abortion. The Texas Statute under which she was prosecuted defines an embryo or fetus as an "individual." It allows for both criminal prosecution and civil action for causing intentional injury or death to an unborn child.

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The law contains a "health care" exemption for "medical professionals" who perform a legal medical procedure, such as an abortion. The defense team argued that because Erica had repeatedly punched herself while her boyfriend, the father of the children, stepped on her stomach, the State could not prove who actually killed the children. They lost. Erica stood by Gerardo throughout the entire ordeal and wept at his sentencing.

The Texas Act was passed in 2003. 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 provided by a "medical professional." However, in that instance, the same sad reality occurs, children are brutally killed.

In a "legal" abortion, the mother exercises her so called "right" to end an innocent human life. She pays money to a "health care provider" who, through a variety of methods including dissection in the womb, violent suction, burning with salt, or chemical warfare on the child, intentionally kills the child. No-one bothers to do a thing. The law, in its brutal application, not only exempts them but allows them to be paid and elevates their perfidy to an exalted status, a "right."

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 also 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 drafted, like this Texas law, 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.

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The twist in this bizarre case out of Texas will help us in our efforts to overturn Roe v Wade. That is if we seize the public opportunity and not let it pass by. It is time to 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 first found out about this tragic case 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, 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 and defend life, liberty and true happiness, were arguing with each other playfully over this 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, who was not opposed to abortion at all, 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?"

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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."

This case now presents an opportunity to present the sheer evil of every procured abortion for a full public discussion. We should speak incessantly about this horrible case and repeatedly ask the question, publicly, at every opportunity: "What is the difference between what Gerardo "Jerry" Flores did and what Abortionists do on a daily basis?" Oh, I know, abortion is currently protected by positive law. 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. We all know it.

This case presents an opportunity to strip the veneer off of the ugly face of legal abortion in America and to accelerate the inevitable triumph of the right to life.

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____________________

Deacon Keith Fournier is a Roman Catholic Deacon of the Diocese of Richmond, Virginia.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 was a human rights lawyer and public policy advocate. He is the Senior Editor of Catholic Online and a Contributing Editor of Traditional Catholic Reflections and Reports.