Judge Wilkinson in the CTA4 partial-birth-abortion case

On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (barely) upheld that state's partial-birth-abortion ban.  (Or, as the Washington Post puts it, the "'partial birth' ban".)  The widely respected and not-at-all-prone-to-partisan-hackery Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson had a few choice lines, in his concurring opinion:

“The fact is that we—civilized people—are retreating to the haven of our Constitution to justify dismembering a partly born child and crushing its skull[.] . . .  Surely centuries hence, people will look back on this gruesome practice done in the name of fundamental law by a society of high achievement. And they will shudder.

 

[I] is unsettling to tamper with the most sacred of life’s cycles and disquieting for those here on earth to pull the ladder up on those who would join the human company.