7/21/00 5:25 p.m.
Live Issue
Democrats defend the indefensible — again.

By NR's John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

n Thursday, a subcommittee of the House held hearings on the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. The bill, sponsored by Republican Charles Canady, would extend legal protections to infants who survive abortions; their status is currently unclear because of the courts' abortion jurisprudence. The hearings got off to a rocky start: Gianna Jensen, who survived an attempt to abort her 23 years ago, yelled at the committee about Jesus Christ and American decadence. When Hadley Arkes attempted to answer a legal question by making an analogy about Lincoln's policy toward the Supreme Court, congressman Melvin Watt played the race card: Just because I'm a black congressman, he said, doesn't mean you have to give a black answer. He sounded mightily offended, and is stupid enough that he may have been.

Pro-abortionists aren't quite sure what to do about the bill. Jerrold Nadler, a stalwart pro-abortion congressman, seemed to be suggesting to his allies that it would be a mistake to get into a big fight on the bill. He argued that existing law already protected abortion survivors: It is illegal to shoot a baby, he said, even one delivered at three months. Nobody would argue otherwise. Oh really? NARAL has come out against the bill on the grounds that it recognizes fetal personhood before viability. In its press release, killing the surviving child, or at least withholding ordinary medical care, is a "personal and private decision about medical treatment."

The hearing made it pretty clear what the main tactic of opponents to the bill will be: changing the subject. Thus we saw Maxine Waters, medicine woman, spinning a preposterous scenario that one of the witnesses was easily able to show would never happen. Witnesses testifying against the bill argued that it would require doctors to take heroic measures for these children, overriding parental judgments. (NARAL makes the same argument.) Canady responded that the bill wouldn't alter standards of medical care. Under the law, the abortion survivor would receive the same standard of medical care as an ailing eight-month old infant — whatever that standard happens to be. All the bill does is clarify that this being is a legal person. That's what NARAL can't abide, and why it's happy to slide a little further down the slippery slope.

A Tax Victory
Earlier this week, the House voted 401-25 to liberalize IRAs and 401(k)s, even though the White House "strongly opposes" the bill. The 25 naysayers consisted of the Democratic leadership (Dick Gephardt and David Bonior) and the hard Left (Barney Frank, Jesse Jackson Jr.); Charles Rangel, who would be chairman of the tax-writing committee if the Democrats take the House, falls into both categories.

We can't resist noting in passing that one of the principal arguments Republicans are making against Al Gore's retirement accounts — that workers would have to come up with money to enjoy its benefits — apply with equal force to this bill. But the main point is that tax cuts are still a popular issue, especially when they are pro-investor. Democrats are not afraid to vote against bills that cut income-tax rates. They are manifestly afraid to vote against tax cuts for investors.

Correction
Yesterday we reported that Zell Miller, the former governor of Georgia and a Democrat, was not interested in the open Senate seat created by Paul Coverdell's death. A Miller associate has called to tell us that much to his own surprise, Miller does appear to be interested. If so, the Republicans are going to have trouble keeping that seat.

On the Site
Michael Fumento on how Jesse Jackson fabricated a lynching. . . and Matthew Feeney on how the Washington Post invented a hate crime.