Ever since the crematorium scandal tainted our image across the country, making us appear backward and incompetent in the eyes of many, I have fervently hoped that Walker Countians would fight back by becoming even more widely known for something else, something particularly good.
Everyone in the county would agree, I think, that life, for example, is particularly good; and, as it so happens, a particularly good opportunity for us to shout our respect for life across the land is before us.
Here in this county, where scandal has given us a new awareness of the respect due the departed, we can now erase that tainted image by demanding of our leaders a renewed respect for the sanctity of life.
Senate Bill 23 presents us with that particularly good opportunity. The bill’s title, the Woman’s Right to Know Act, states an obvious truth. It was passed 34-18 by our state Senate last year, and it would no doubt pass in the House of Representatives as well, if only…
The problem is, in the House, certain leaders need reminding they are, after all, respectful of life in the womb, of a woman’s right to know, of obvious truth. If they were not, they have no business being leaders.
Rep. Tom Bordeaux, for example. He chairs the Judiciary Committee where SB 23 — which simply requires physicians to give women seeking abortions all the facts — will itself be aborted unless the chairman can be persuaded to bring the bill to the House floor for discussion.
Abortion, by the way, is the only medical procedure in the state of Georgia which does not require informed consent. Why not? I do not know.
I do know that, again, women who opt for abortions should not be kept purposely ignorant of the physical and psychological complications that could well result from the procedure. An uniformed abortion is not too distant from barbarism.
I do not know why abortion is so sacred — more so than the Bible, the Commandments, the family, life and even God himself — to apologists and their political functionaries, some of whom dominate the Georgia House of Representatives.
For now, Roe vs. Wade is the law of the land, but abortionist organizations are not consent. The leaders of Planned Parenthood, for example, oppose allowing a women to see an ultrasound picture of her unborn child. They call it “using medical technology as political propaganda.”
Progress to such organizations, it would seem, is to do away with ultrasound — which pictures life astir — and get on with the abortions. They are opposed, sometimes bitterly, to information which contradicts them.
As it stands now, our own state legislature is also against such information, in effect, because a few leaders set the tone for the entire body — most of whom, I am convinced, would vote for SB 23 if given the chance.
I am also convinced these leaders are not nearly so adamantly anti-information as Planned Parenthood. That is where Walker Countians can come in and strike a blow for life, and, in the process, show the country that we will not allow scandal to define us.
Call Rep. Bordeaux (pronounced Bor-dough) at (404) 656-5125 and leave a message with his secretary, Elaine Myers, asking him to release SB 23 from committee before this 2004 session of the General Assembly ends in just a few days.
As of this writing, having already sent letters to the editors of every daily newspaper in the state, I am contacting every weekly paper with the help of a borrowed computer. In addition, I have written Rep. Bordeaux, House Speaker Terry Coleman, Majority Leader Jimmy Skipper, and representatives of the other four counties in which I spend some time.
The more phone calls Bordeaux receives, the more likely he is to relent, thereby allowing those House members who are pro-life or pro-information to vote accordingly, just as a large majority of their constituents would have them vote.
In a dream, I have seen news stories all over the state, and even across the country, proclaiming:
“In an outpouring of public support for a bill in the state legislature which would require doctors to provide women seeking abortions with certain relevant facts, citizens in the northwest Georgia county of Walker have bombarded the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee with phone calls.
“This bombardment, the likes of which we have never before seen, has resulted in the release of Senate Bill 23 from committee by the chairman, Rep. Tom Bordeaux of Savannah, who had vowed to bury it without allowing debate.
“Walker County, you may recall, is the scene of the infamous crematorium spectacle. It was as though the hundreds of calls to Atlanta by citizens were in retaliation against the sullying of the county’s reputation by that tragic and embarrassing scandal.
“The abortion information is expected to pass in the House by a comfortable margin, as it did in the Senate.”
Tom Theus, a LaFayette resident, is a freelance writer
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