Here is my full column that ran earlier in the week in the Washington County Daily News:

In the same week that the United States Supreme Court heard arguments about a challenge to the Mississippi ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, Gov. Tony Evers wielded his veto pen to demonstrate just how radical abortion supporters have become. We have come a long way from the time when abortion supporters advocated that they be safe, legal, and rare.

One cannot rationally support human rights and also support abortion. While there was a time when the period between conception and birth was filled with mystery and myth, modern medical science has opened the womb for all to see. We know that from the time of conception, the child is a unique human with unique DNA.

 

Eventually, the child will develop a heart, lungs, skin, eyes, bones, and become ready for birth, but it all starts with a blueprint in a single cell. To assign the origin of life to any point after conception is to do so based on arbitrary distinctions that are designed more to assuage the consciences of older humans than on science or logic. Once a human exists, they are, “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” That being the case, we who are able are responsible to defend the rights of those who cannot defend themselves.

 

But the Supreme Court is not deciding if unborn humans have a right to life or whether abortion should be outlawed. They are potentially deciding which level of government gets to decide. The court could uphold Roe v. Wade, thus making it a federal court decision; the court could completely overturn Roe, thus making abortion a state issue; or the court could find a narrow middle road.

 

Should the Supreme Court overturn Roe and return the power to regulate abortion to the states, Wisconsin has an existing statute that makes it a felony for doctors to perform abortions. Time will tell if Wisconsin’s Legislature would rescind that law to replace it with a statutory infrastructure that permits and regulates abortions.

 

As we await the Supreme Court’s decision, the Republican Legislature passed several bills to enhance regulation of abortions and Governor Evers vetoed them all. In doing so, he demonstrated how extreme Democrats have become in their support for abortion and how difficult it will be to create a new abortion regulatory structure should Roe be overturned.

 

One of the bills would have made it a crime for a doctor to withhold medical care from a baby who survived an abortion and was born alive. While very rare, it happens. It is more common than an infant dying of COVID. As I wrote above, to assign the beginning of a life at any point after conception is arbitrary, but as a society, we at least once agreed that children who were born were considered human and worthy of protection. There is no logical distinction in the rights of a baby born during a failed abortion and a baby born in other circumstances. It is a living, breathing, feeling baby. And there is no logical distinction between a doctor letting a baby die for lack of care and a parent doing the same thing. In vetoing this bill, Evers has sanctioned infanticide.

 

Another bill would have banned women from aborting their baby based on the baby’s sex, race, or national origin. It would have given the same protections against discrimination that our laws extend to the born. It is a logical extension of the recognition that unborn people have human rights too. In a logical extension of his unscientific opinion that unborn humans are not humans at all, Evers vetoed this bill too. In Evers’ Wisconsin, a woman may abort her child if she doesn’t want a girl or a brown son at her discretion. In-utero discrimination is the law of the land.

 

While I strongly advocate for the end of all abortions, at the very least, we should not be using abortion as a way to curate the population for favored races and sexes. We should also all be able to agree that once a baby is born, it deserves protection from being killed through intentional neglect. Unfortunately, there is no such agreement anymore.