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Page 20 September 10, 2023 StarNews www.starnewsgaonline.com
Commentary
Did The Heartbeat Bill really reduce abortions in Georgia?
Duane
hack
West Georgia Right to Life
PRESIDENT
"The Heartbeat of Georgia”
Duanehack46@gmail.com
470-370-2452
A little more than halfway through 2022, a
Federal Appeals Court allowed a new Georgia
law to take effect that was proposed and pre
sented to reduce the number of abortion in the
state to be cut in half. HB 481, “The Heartbeat
Bill”, is a six-week abortion ban, except in cer
tain situations. Physicians practicing medicine
in the State of Georgia would be prohibited
from offering abortion services to pregnant
women if a “fetal heartbeat” is present, which
typically occurs in the 6th week of pregnancy.
According to obstetrics specialists, at about 6
weeks of gestation, the embryo has a tiny tube
that will eventually become part of the heart.
The tube starts to flutter at about 6 weeks and
modem ultrasound machines augment the flut
ter and both doctors and patients have the abil
ity to recognize the sound in this early stage of
the development of the heart.
The exceptions to that law are rape and
nicest, which were never part of Georgia Law
in the past, and represent less than 1% of all
recorded pregnancies in Georgia.
Despite having HB 481 now part of Georgia
Law, the latest reports released from Georgia’s
Department of Health (DPH) are eye-opening.
The number of abortions in 2022 that
occurred on Georgia residents TICKED UP for
the 5th consecutive year! This bill was highly
acclaimed as reducing abortions. Why has the
number of abortion increased for the 5th year
in a row after the enforcement began in the
state once the physician can detect cardiac
activity?!
Recently released records by DPH shows
35,401 abortions were perfonned on Georgia
residents in 2022, a rate 10.4 abortion per
1,000 females between the ages of 15 and 55.
That is 416 more abortions than the previous
year’s recordings of 2021, which were 34,988
per DPH. The is an increase from the 2021
numbers of 10.3 per 1,000 females, or 1.1%
increase over 2021! In addition, the number of
abortions Georgians received in other states
jumped from 287 in 2021 to 4,604 in 2022, a
6% increase!
The numbers are shared between states
though a national agreement, but since it is not
required, not all states participate - meaning the
actual numbers ARE LIKELY HIGHER than
reported! An example, the Atlanta Constitution
has reported that a number of Georgia residents
travel to Florida to get abortions, which have
less restrictive laws than Georgia, but Florida
does not share data with other states.
Planned Parenthood and other abortions
facilities in both Columbus, GA and Augusta,
GA are setting appointment and abortion
records at their respective facilities. Why
would that be? Because like Georgians who are
traveling to less restrictive states for abortions,
our neighboring states, SC and AL, who have
more restrictive laws concerning abortions, are
flocking to Columbus, GA (from AL) and
Augusta, GA (from SC) for their abortion
procedures.
So, did HB 481 deliver to the message we all
heard from its’ authors and legislators that sup
ported the Bill? That HB 481 would reduce
and be a path to eliminating abortions in
Georgia? You make the call. I don’t think so!
But there is a silver lining to HB 481 that we
must not overlook. The “Heartbeat Bill” did
change Georgia laws’ definition of “Natural
Person” to now include “babies in the womb.”
T his change now recognizes Personhood at the
moment of fertilization. T his has been a goal of
Georgia Right to Life (GRTL) since its incep
tion in the early 1970s and West Georgia Right
to Life (WGRTL) since we became a Chapter
here in West Georgia almost 20 years ago. The
See DUANE HACK page 22
“The Infidel and the Professor”: ‘age’ appropriate
Bill
BOURIS
digi@m indspring.com
Adam Smith, the “father of modem
Capitalism”, and David Hume, arguably the
greatest philosopher of the Enlightenment,
were life-long friends. When Hume was about
to die, he asked Smith to be his literary execu
tor and no one else. I’m ahnost done reading a
book that describes that friendship.
According to this book, “The Infidel and the
Professor” (Hume is the Infidel) it was during
their lifetimes that the Scottish university sys
tem transformed itself from a status of obscu
rity to that of being the best in the world. (Inc
identally, to my mind, this unique achievement
also relates to the writing that is in the PBS
comedy series, “Hamish Macbeth”, for in each
case there is a very very strong sense of com
munity and attendant wisdom...but I digress!
My apologies.)
About two weeks before Hume died, he
received a visitor, the great essayist and fellow
Scotsman, James Boswell. Boswell and Hume
both lived in Edinburgh. But, they were not
close friends, probably because Boswell, who
represented the traditional society of Scotland,
particularly the religious side, had often written
with contempt for those new philosophical
ideas that allowed for religious doubt, skepti
cism, even atheism, and Hume had been of that
persuasion. So why did Boswell want to visit
the dying David Hume? Today, we are likely to
answer that question with something like “...
he did it out of morbid curiosity”, but Boswell
was driven by an interesting reason.
Boswell had heard that Hume, who, instead
of anticipating and even dreading the moment
when he’d meet his Maker, as all Christians
did, was quietly reading, studying and having
friends visit him for a last tune. Such behavior
was shocking and Boswell took it upon himself
to verify. His observations during that visit
were soon written and recorded so that other
Christians could have confirmation of the
rumor. According to Boswell, the non-believer
Hume was calm and of
good spirit.
Soon after Hume’s
death, Adam Smith pub
lished a eulogy for his
friend which unleashed a
stonn of reactions from
various Christian writers.
This lasted for years, and
typically Adam Smith was
the object of that vitriol,
probably payback for the
eulogy.
The text and author’s
notes for this episode are very engaging, espe
cially because neither side, Christian or agnos
tic, presented ignorant or unreasonable argu
ments. It seems that at least on some level of
society, reason and reasonableness were part of
the foundation for any social discourse. It
makes me wonder if the great achievement of
the Scottish universities, mentioned earlier, was
also a product of such a society.
It’s worth mentioning, that Hume had been
permanently rejected
for faculty status by
the university system
early in his life,
because of his views
on religion. But that
rejection did not cost
him from becoming
one of the greatest phi
losophers, recognized
and praised, both at
home and abroad,
sought after by such
people as our own
Benjamin Franklin and France’s Voltaire.
Franklin and his son were Hume’s house
guests, at least twice. Voltaire hosted Hume for
several months.
See BILL BOURIS page 22
His observations during that visit
were soon written and recorded
so that other Christians could
have confirmation of the rumor...
non-believer Hume was calm and
of good spirit. Soon after Hume’s
death, Adam Smith published a
eulogy for his friend which
unleashed a storm of reactions
from various Christian writers.
River Rambles: The Albanian Blues
Getting to know the Chattahoochee River
through these River Rambles has opened my
eyes to the lives of all rivers. So I would be
remiss in not writing this month about the riv
ers of Albania (that’s not a typo; I mean
Albania, not Albany), which I had the great
good fortune to visit for the month of July.
Occupying a southwest comer of the Balkan
peninsula, Albania is bordered to the south by
Greece, to the east by Macedonia, to the north
by Kosova and Montenegro, and along its
western coast by the Adriatic and Ionian Seas,
which belong to the greater Mediterranean Sea.
A steep, mountainous country (in Albania
you are always walking either up or down),
with ranges plunging directly into the sea,
Albania lies on the boundary of the Eurasian
and African tectonic plates. Only slightly larger
than the state of Maryland, it has a population
of about 4 million (they think; the country has
remote highlands where the census still does
not reach).
For this traveler, wild Albania will always be
remembered as a land of blues: A cloudless
cerulean sky, a wash of shimmering mist at its
watery hem; a vast sea painted with an aston
ishing palette of indigo, cobalt, aquamarine, tur
quoise, slate-blue, and a pale iridescent azure,
each vibrant hue responding to the depth of the
water, the sunlight, and the wind; and of course
the rivers, which are also, amazingly, many
shades of blue. The land is, in fact, crisscrossed
by rivers which flow from the high mountains
through steep gorges before making their way
through the plains to the sea.
The rivers I saw varied from a soft baby-blue
in the rushing streams of the north to shades of
peacock in the narrow river gorges to a sizzling
neon aqua in a geologic phenomenon known as
the Blue Eye. There are two Blue Eyes in
Albania, north and south; the one we visited
was in the south, not far from where we were
staying in the coastal town of Qeparo (CHUH-
par-oh). A popular tourist draw, the Blue Eye
can be reached by a drive off the main road
through forested countryside for several wisting
miles before arriving at a parking lot and gate.
Then follows a long (but completely worth it)
walk to the wondrous underground spring set in
thick woods. Here, frigid water shoots up pow
erfully through a pool so deep - more than 45
meters [147 feet] below the surface - its bottom
has never been reached nor fully explored.
At the surface, the pool assumes a curious
shape, lapis lazuli at its center with electric
sapphire encircling it, like the pupil and iris of
an eye. Oaks and oleander grow on the banks,
fringing the pool and the streams that emanate
from it. Further on, there’s a place to swim in
the fteezingly cold water where the fast current,
buoyed by the momentum of the Blue Eye
underwater fount, will carry you along its
shallow channel. The day we were there was
very hot, and though my feet turned instantly to
blocks of ice, the temperature and swiftness of
the water were startling and refreshing.
Weeks later, traveling to Thethi, the main
outpost of the northern Albanian Alps, we took
a ferry down Lake Komani, a narrow
serpentine aterbody set between sheer cliffs
whose stone feet dangle in the water and within
the dark caves brooding at the base of the rock.
The ride boasts of breathtakingly high
waterfalls, but that day, between the heat and
the drought, the falls were dry. The water of
Komani is a deep luminous jade. On a side trip
up the Shala River, we were also dazzled by the
diaphonous teal of those sparkled waters. Here
golden eagles soared above the crags, a sight
we’d been waiting for, since the Albanian
people themselves call their country Shiperia
(SHIP-ah-REE-ah, phoneticly translated from
the Albanian word Shqitje), meaning “Land of
Eagles.”
Though I diligently sought an explanation
for why the water of Albania has such a pleas
ingly blue array, no one answer alone sufficed.
Some believe a bedrock of limestone, particu
larly in the elevated north, contributes to the
color. Others maintain that the clarity of the icy
waters rising from deep aquifers in the remote,
largely unpeopled mountains is free of the
usual obscuring factors so familiar to us here -
hydroelectric dams, wastewater, commerce,
and human recreation. Still others simply smile
and throw up their hands to exclaim, “That’s
Shqitje!” I prefer the latter explanation.
Today, many of Albania’s rivers, especially
those that flow through the plains, have been
tamed to bring electricity to its people. Yet
there remains a purity and a magic - some
ineffable confluence of latitude, light, and land
- that render the water and the rivers
unforgettably blue, drenching the soul in the
cold clear mysterious pool of an Albanian Blue
Eye.
River Rambles
syllabil 17@aol.com