The Supreme Court turned down an appeal Monday from a county sheriff who objects to transporting jail inmates for elective abortions.
An Arizona sheriff wanted the justices to allow him to enforce a jail policy that bars transporting inmates for abortions without a court order. Arizona courts said the policy violated the inmates’ constitutional right to an abortion.
So the prison has to take a woman to get an abortion but meanwhile in a federal prison, there’s a man named Jason Yaeger who has nearly a year left to serve on a 5½-year sentence for a methamphetamine conviction. But Jason’s 10 year old daughter is dying of brain cancer and is not expected to live long enough to see her father be released from prison. The girl’s health is rapidly declining and her doctors say that nothing can be done to save her.
The girl’s wish is to have her father by her side before she passes.
Although this request seems simple enough, the warden has denied repeated requests.
Said the father in news reports: “I am sorry for what I have done…I’m not asking to get out of my sentence — just to go from one place of imprisonment to another so I can be with my family. Jayci is sitting in a hospice fighting for her life and [her mother] thinks she is holding on for me to get there. She wants me and needs me and I want to be there with her on her last day.”
Look, you’re not going to find a more law and order guy than me but give me a little break here. Can’t we admit that the world has turned upside down when a woman inmate is given the right by court order to go get an abortion while a non-violent offender who’s going to be released to a halfway house in August is refused the right to visit his dying daughter.
March 25, 2008 at 1:33 pm
When many of our laws were long ago turned on their heads and largely eroded in the names of “exceptions” and “mercy”, those verysame concepts, exception and mercy have lost their real meaning and application in the law.
“Mercy” means allowing Jack Kevorkian to kill people by lethal injection when they have nothing but psychological problems or are living with pain. “Hey, that’s merciful” says the new “morality”.
In the case of “Exceptions,” take the following reasoning to mind: abortions are only allowed during the first trimester because, in the first trimester, a woman’s right to “choose” yet outweighs the state’s legitimate interest in preserving and protecting life. Abortions are not allowed in the second and third trimesters because the states’ interest outweights the mother’s right, EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF THE HEALTH or life of the mother.
Woman: “Ouch, a hangnail!”
Abortionist: “Here let me take care of that. Oh, I see you’re pregnant. I can take care of that too.”
When mercy and exceptions are so redefined that they lose their exceptional natures, situations that truly call for mercy or truly call for an exception fail to move the authorities to action. They must be thinking in their conflicted brains, “mercy means killing people we don’t need and exceptions mean letting guilty murderers off or terminating pregnancies. This guy’s situation (the inmate who wants to be with his daughter as she dies) doesn’t fit into either definition.
DENIED.
March 25, 2008 at 2:42 pm
I’m not sure what else can be done, but I’ve contacted the offices of both U. S. senators from South Dakota: Tim Johnson and John Thune, asking them to get personally involved.
Anybody else have any ideas? Perhaps if there’s enough of a national uproar, South Dakota will be embarrassed into action.
Bob Hunt
Knoxville, TN
March 25, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Why do I have the frightening feeling that giving a women in prison the “right” to an abortion is only a few steps up the slippery slope from
“required abortions for prisoners?”
After all, is it really in the state’s best interest to have to pay for maternity care for prisoners?
And since we care so much for the welfare of the unborn that we abort them (every child a wanted one yadda yadda yadda..) can we really argue that a child with a convict for a mom has a life worth living?
I mean, if Downs kids don’t have lives worth living, how can the kids of impoverished criminal types?
I’m just saying… this is seriously creepy.
March 26, 2008 at 12:23 am
Wholesomeness makes the Pro-Abort politicians, media, lawyers and judges nauseated. Evidence is glaring!
Our country’s teens are sexually emancipated for abortion surgery and artificial contraception, which doesn’t prevent STDs (genital herpes and warts are condom permeable); TV is saturated with vulgar toilet “humor”; monogamy is not a serious oath to many a married couple; over priced insurance run medical care is doctor prescribed pharmaceutical homicide; tree hugging, MTBE solution environmentalist have yet to be heard of or seen in regards to the exorbitant amount of packaging waste filling our landfills (no amount of recycling will solution the gigantic garbage glut); male fashion-gangster smurf motif, is demoralizing, while female fashion- just try to differentiate a street walker on a Saturday night, is reverse sexual harassment.
Pro-Aborts are the foundation of an attributable pernicious emptiness; an intentional legacy of deception to have God bowing to Darkness.
Wholesome America is missing in action on the most part. What a joy it would be to FEEL that STRENGTH and FREEDOM of PURITY of VALUES celebrated in ernest anew!