Heavy Stuff in the Fish Bowl

Once upon a time, there was a great nation. A people who had wonderful ideals of human rights and democracy. But there was a deep dark secret in the nation, where a segment of people were not extended basic human rights. It took years of effort, but the people finally joined forces and rose up against this travesty and abolished slavery. It was a proud time. But it took years of hard work to ensure that civil rights were extended equally to this part of the population. But after generations and generations, we overcame it and came to a place of social acceptance, opportunity, and prosperity for people of all kinds.

Years later, the great, great, great, great, great, grand children of those slaves and those champions who fought to abolish slavery and to ensure enforcement of civil rights had forgotten about protecting the rights of those who could not protect themselves. And they elected a leader who seemed to be like them, but who supported conditional extension of basic human rights. Under his government, you are only entitled to basic human rights if you are born under certain circumstances.

Let me be more specific, the leader held the opinion that tiny babies who were born alive--in spite of attempts to abort them late in the pregnancy--should not be extended the same basic human rights as other human beings. (This is not a matter of opinion--it is a matter of public record. Google Illinois Born Alive Infants Act.) How do people even justify the abandonment of infants born alive in any context? If I were a woman carrying an unwanted pregnancy, and I gave birth in a bathroom at a bus station to a baby prematurely and left it in a trash can or in the bathroom in my home let it die in my bathtub, I would be tried as a criminal. But if this is done in a clinic or hospital, it's not a crime. What the hell?

Once upon a time there was a great nation that welcomed the tired, the weak, the poor, and the storm-tossed. Now we are a nation who welcomes the tired, the weak, ONLY if they are born wanted. The irony of this is on so many levels. How do Obama supporters gloss over this fact?

How do people not see the danger of disavowing any segment of the population because of any given condition of their birth? How is that fact converted into hope? Or freedom? I'm simply dumbfounded.