Late in pregnancy the baby's body is removed from the mother except for its head. Scissors are then inserted into the base of the skull, killing the child. The brains are then vacuumed out, the head is crushed, and removed from the mother.
This is called dilation and extraction or partial-birth abortion.
Most people, if they understood the details, would call it infanticide, but it had been legal until 2003 when President Bush signed legislation that banned it. Challenges to the law wound their way through the courts until finally yesterday the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the law prohibiting this barbaric practice was constitutional.
How did the major candidates for President respond? All of the Republican candidates - McCain, Giuliani and Romney - praised the decision. All of the Democrats deplored it. Senator Clinton saw it as an erosion of our constitutional rights. Senator Obama said that he strongly disagreed with the Court's ruling. John Edwards said he could not disagree more strongly and that "This hard right turn [!] is a stark reminder of why Democrats cannot afford to lose the 2008 election. Too much is at stake - starting with, as the Court made all too clear today, a woman's right to choose."
Indeed. In the last year from which statistics are available, 2000, there were 2200 of these gruesome procedures. Edwards is telling us that if a Democrat is elected president in '08 the next Supreme Court justice to be nominated will be one who thinks partial-birth abortion is just fine. Perhaps this is why some people are saying that the Democrats have embraced the culture of death.
This is also why elections matter and why it matters whether Republicans or Democrats control the levers of power. Both of George Bush's Supreme Court appointees voted to uphold the law banning this procedure but now that the Democrats control the judiciary committee there's very little chance that a like-minded justice will be appointed to fill the next opening.
RLC