Barbara Boxer: Pro-Choice 'Until You Bring Baby Home'

If you play the video (from 1996) above, you will see and hear a 35-second clip of a debate between former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) and Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) on the subject of partial-birth abortion.

In an effort to pin down when, exactly, a rabidly “pro-choice” senator like Boxer would consent to give a human baby the constitutional right not to be killed, Santorum asks:

“You agree, once a child is born, is separated from the mother, that that child is protected by the Constitution and cannot be killed? Do you agree with that?”

Boxer responds:

“I think when you bring your baby home, when your baby is born … the baby belongs to your family and has all the rights.”

Is this merely a slip of the tongue and an unfair representation of Senator Boxer’s views taken out of context? I would like to think so, but the fact that she refused to clarify, even when Senator Santorum pressed her for a clearer description of her views, makes that difficult to believe.

She said only, “I don’t want to engage in this.”

Well, of course she wouldn’t. Who would want to “engage in” attempting to defend the indefensible? Who would want to be the one left on the side of arguing that a baby has the right to life only when its family accepts it and brings it home? It’s inhuman and even Boxer knows it. But it’s the ugly place her “pro-choice without limits” convictions bring her.

Those who want to be sure to hear the entire conversation in context can. Thanks to C-Span, the entire exchange is now available on YouTube:

Part 1 and Part 2

I think George Will assesses Boxer’s uncomfortable position accurately when he writes:

Boxer is caught in the intellectual chaos created by the Supreme Court’s slipshod 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. In it the court was squeamish about a stark fact: Abortion kills. Flinching from that, the court called a fetus “potential life.” But it is elementary biology that when the chromosomes of sperm fuse with those of an ovum, a new DNA complex is formed that directs the organism’s subsequent development. The serious argument about abortion, concerning which decent people differ, is about the moral significance and proper legal status of fetal life at various stages of the gestational continuum.

Sad. Very sad.

Let’s pray for Senator Barbara Boxer and the mothers and babies she speaks for.