An interesting Op-Ed piece was published today, arguing that Democrats, should they want to win the White House in 2008, need to listen to and show greater respect for pro-life women and women of faith. The most intriguing part about this op-ed was where it was published... the New York Times!.

Here are some juicy excerpts from the Op-Ed...

Even in the real world, a pro-choice Republican nominee would be a gift to the Democrats, because the Republican Party wins over so many swing voters on abortion alone....

Over 18 months, I traveled to 20 states listening to women of all ages, races, tax brackets and points of view speak at length on the issues they care about heading into ’08. They convinced me that the conventional wisdom was wrong about the last presidential contest, that Democrats did not lose support among women because “security moms” saw President Bush as the better protector against terrorism. What first-time defectors mentioned most often was abortion.

The standard response from Democratic leaders has been that anyone lost to them over this issue is not coming back — and that regrettable as that might be, there is nothing to be done. But that is not what I heard from these voters.

I did not respond, immediately, to the Supreme Court's ruling on Partial-birth Abortion. I avoided commenting because I first wanted a chance to read the ruling, as well as both the consenting and dissenting opinions.

I would be lying if I said I were not happy the Court upheld the Bill banning partial-birth abortions. I am thrilled at any check to the immoral claim that there is a right to murder infants.

Having said that, this ruling is, in my personal observation from reading Supreme Court rulings I care about, among the most boring and the most poorly-written set of legal opinions ever issued by the Supreme Court of the United States.

To begin with, those who wrote the ruling opinion contradicted themselves by opposing partial-birth abortion while, at the same time, allowing abortion for the same victims, provided the victims were aborted prior to the partial-birth state. Using this Court's language, it is acceptable to murder the infant provided the labor of the infant did not reach a "particular anatomical landmark." What a crock! The infant is the same infant, regardless of what "anatomical landmark" is reached in any attempt of inducing labor.

So here we have Catholic judges attempting to sound as if they are Catholic who are the same judges arguing in such a way as to compromise all rational thought in terms of this debate. They would have done better, and would have been more rational in their legal argument, had they undone Roe v. Wade altogether.

Here they only established a political position; while undermining the legitimacy of their own legal thought. While I am not a lawyer myself, I am extremely disappointed in the weakness of the legal arguments presented by both the ruling and the consenting opinions of this Court.

I should so have gone to bed hours ago, but I have to share this:
The Womb of Peace

By the way, I was also really impressed the online Catholic journal GodSpy that I just came across in a google search. Check it out!