Commentary

The Governor of Florida announced with great fanfare this month that he was signing a “heartbeat bill” to ban abortions in that state once a heartbeat was detected.  Of course, this is progress – given that Florida now bans abortions after fifteen weeks.  And we don’t know all the politics of the Florida Legislature.  Maybe this is the best that Desantis can do under the circumstances.

Yet, in looking at legislation, we are disturbed by the fact that it does not protect life from conception.  Florida’s old 15-week ban was done prior to Roe being overturned.  States are now free of that bondage to do what is right.  So why did Desantis not fight for babies from conception – which is the only logical, moral and legally-sound point at which life should be recognized and protected in law?

We have been unable to find any statements from Desantis in which he defended the proposition that babies don’t earn their right to live by reaching some developmental stage.  This leads us to wonder if the Governor appreciates or understands the most basic pro-Life principle: Life is to be protected because we are created in God’s image.  And it is He who grants us this great and wonderful gift.

To defend life at some arbitrary point of development undermines this principle by accepting some of the thinking and values of the Left.

We are also troubled by the Florida legislation because it provides for a number of “exceptions” – that is, it provides various licenses to kill the baby: There is the standard rape, incest and life of the mother provisions.  But it also includes a physical health exception.  This is difficult to accept because it necessarily implies that the baby’s life is worth less than another’s. Under this ethic, it is perfectly fine to trade away one person’s life for the physical comfort of another. But under what moral or Constitutional authority can a government impose this?

Those sorts of accommodations might have been necessary during the dark days when federal courts imposed a tyrannical agenda upon the people of this country.  But those days are over.  And people like Governor Desantis must help lead the nation into recovering a value system in which every life is regarded as inviolable.