People v. State

– Friedrich Nietzsche, The New Idol

I’ve got to get around to revising my Definitions page. One change I need to make is from George Washington’s “Government is force” to Isabel Paterson’s “Force is what is governed,” quoted in my last post. Another is to subtract my assertion that “ruling is itself intrinsically criminal, and is the essence of the State.” We are each of us necessarily rulers. We are not only the judges but the authors of the law. But this does not imply a subjective chaos:

The great experience of the forest consists of the encounter with the Ego, with the self, with the inviolate core and essence that sustains the temporal and individual appearance. This encounter, so decisive for the conquest of health and for the victory over fear, is also supreme in its moral value. It leads to the primal basis of all social intercourse, to the man whose example defines individuality. In this sphere we will encounter not only community but also identity. This is the symbolic meaning of the embrace: the Ego recognizes itself in the other human being in the saying, ”This is you.” The other can be the beloved, the sufferer, or the helpless victim. In giving help, the Ego helps its own immortal essence and confirms the basic ethical order of the universe.

That leaves as the essence of the State lies and theft.

Here is proof.

I alluded to it today in this comment at Popehat. As is too typical, the published appellate opinion doesn’t accurately reflect the actual facts and arguments at issue as I remember them. But beyond that, I was second chair, and the lawyer who called the shots and I didn’t see eye to eye on the arguments that ultimately made it into the briefs filed in the trial court. I wasn’t involved at all in the appeal. Granted, judging by the opinion the result probably would have been the same even if the arguments I wanted made were made. But I don’t talk much about this case because, given my role, I’m reluctant to accept or disclaim responsibility for it.

The heart of the case, as I saw it, was this: the abortion industry’s widely promulgated claim that abortion is “ten times safer than childbirth” is proved false and misleading by the generally accepted and established scientific fact that childbirth reduces the risk of breast cancer.

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I remember a discussion I had with a law prof after class back in 1999 at the University of Wisconsin. We were discussing my student law review article, which had recently been selected for publication by my peers on law review. I had given it the overly long but descriptive title “The Fit Between the Elements for an Informed Consent Cause of Action and the Scientific Evidence Linking Induced Abortion with Increased Breast Cancer Risk.” I had started the article with the modestly academic goal of simply establishing the legal duty to inform women considering abortion of this scientific evidence, but was told by the editorial staff early on that to make the article interesting and important enough to be published I would need to demonstrate the actual viability of an actual cause of action based on breach of this duty. By the time the article was thoroughly researched and written, I was convinced that I had indeed invented the next big “toxic tort.” Apparently, the editorial staff was similarly if not identically persuaded, because they voted to publish the article.

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In Fargo, North Dakota, getting ready to try my first case.

Roderick Long links to a great cartoon asking: “What if war were treated the way abortion is now, and vice versa?”

Gene Callahan, who in the words of a critic is “apparently a former libertarian turned communitarian,” in a comment on Roderick’s post answers the cartoon’s question thusly: “Then some murder would be easier, and some murder harder.”

Roderick replies to Gene: “Killing a mindless collection of cells isn’t murder. And killing a person in self-defense isn’t murder.”

I replied to Roderick:

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From the Indianapolis Star:

An Indiana Senate panel voted today to eliminate a provision in a pending abortion bill that would require women seeking abortions be told the procedure is linked to breast cancer.

. . .

The Senate Health and Provider Services Committee approved the bill 6-2 with an amendment by Sen. Pat Miller, R-Indianapolis, that eliminated that language.

“We listened to what some physicians has said about the breast cancer issue and decided it would be best to take that out,” said Miller, a co-sponsor of the bill.

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Here’s a quick personal history: I joined the Navy in 1987 at the age of 17. Being in the Navy and reading The Brothers Karamazov led to my conversion to Catholicism. My conversion to Catholicism led to me becoming “pro-life” and leaving the Navy. Leaving the Navy led to law school. Being pro-life led to me becoming aware of the abortion-breast cancer link. Becoming aware of the abortion-breast cancer link led me to write a law review article about it and to become focused on litigation related to it. The outrageously unjust judicial disposal of that litigation led to me becoming an anarchist. Becoming an anarchist coincided with my gradual recognition that I no longer believed in the authority of the Catholic Church and led me to become, not exactly “pro-choice,” but no longer supportive of efforts to legislatively re-criminalize abortion. My rejection of Catholicism led to my discovery of Quakerism.

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The Indianapolis Star has published the following letter I wrote to the editor, under the title Lawmakers were right to include link to abortion:

The Indiana House recently passed legislation that would require women considering abortion to be informed of “the possibility of increased risk of breast cancer following an induced abortion and the natural protective effect of a completed pregnancy in avoiding breast cancer.”

The legislative language quoted is accurate and objective. The “protective effect of a completed pregnancy” is generally undisputed in the scientific community, as is the fact that a woman who has an abortion loses this protective effect and thereby increases her risk of breast cancer relative to what it would have been had she completed the pregnancy.

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House Bill 1210, inter alia, prohibits performing an abortion unless the pregnant woman upon whom the abortion is to be performed is informed orally and in writing at least 18 hours before the abortion of “the possibility of increased risk of breast cancer following an induced abortion and the natural protective effect of a completed pregnancy in avoiding breast cancer.”

The language from the bill quoted above is more than accurate: a “possibility of increased risk” is strictly and practically speaking not a “possibility of increased risk” but an increased risk. And the increased risk of breast cancer following an induced abortion is supported by an overwhelming preponderance of the scientific evidence. See, e.g., my student comment published in the Wisconsin Law Review in 1999, the briefs I submitted to the North Dakota Supreme Court in the case of Kjolsrud v. MKB Management dba Red River Women’s Clinic (including extensive citations to the trial transcripts of my cross-examination of the defendant’s expert witnesses), and the website of the Breast Cancer Prevention Institute (whose board of directors includes Joel Brind, who was my expert witness at trial in the Red River Women’s Clinic case).

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