That’s a filthy lie.
In fact, we managed to get one law through without the “rape and incest” exception, just this year.
The “rape or incest” exceptions limit the size of our lifeboat. However, it’s the lifeboat that we have, it’s bigger than it was 10 years ago and we’re making trip after trip to rescue babies and their mothers.
Until Roe v. Wade is overturned, I don’t know how successful we will be in getting rid of these exceptions. This is the hardest barrier to break, because the people who cite them believe they’re compassionate and pro-life. We in the pro-life community who have won parental notification, parental consent, prenatal protection and informed consent (Texas Alliance for Life, Texas Right to Life, Texas Life Alliance, etc.) do try to educate our Legislators, as we’re able.
Our parental consent laws are among the strictest in the Nation and have cut off the non-parental abuser.
I congratulate the Texas legislature on passing pro-life legislation. My concerns aren’t with the Texas legislature, but with Perry’s intellect and political philosophy. Most conservatives I’ve known use “states’ rights” to mean devolving power from the federal level to a more responsive, locally controlled level. Perry seems to use it to mean that the state should replace the federal government as an all-powerful tyrant. While that’s consistent with overturning the legal logic of Roe v Wade, it’s highly troubling to me, as someone who believes in the principle of subsidiarity. However, I’d be highly concerned that Perry’s political philosophy, if adopted by a nominee of his to provide the swing vote in the USSC might overturn Roe v Wade, but using a “states’ rights” logic that prevents Congress from any reasonable restriction of abortion.
OTHERS on this thread pointed out Perry’s “rape and incest” exceptions to me, which were not in terms of, “this is the best we could do for now, but let’s go out and do better,” but rather “I oppose doing better.” If you can show me any evidence that Perry has now decided that those unfortunate enough to be conceived of incest don’t deserve to be viciously ripped apart and slaughtered, please do so.
Also, I’d be very interested in hearing if Perry has done any of the following:
1. Cut funding to Planned Parenthood.
2. Made it a crime for an abortion worker to fail to report underage pregnancies to the police, to allow prosecution of statutory rapists, pedophiles (actually, the term in this case would be ephibophiles), and molesters.
3. Prohibited state employees from helping children receive abortions.
PLEASE NOTE: I am NOT implying Perry has not taken any of these steps. Just, since this thread is moving towards abortion, an issue of great concern for me, I’d like to know what steps Perry has taken on the issue. I don’t trust Perry, partly because he was once a groupie for Al Gore and a Democrat activist and fundraiser, long after the Democrats became hyper-partisan and rigidly mandated allegiance to the Party of Death. (I can readily forgive Reagan, Gingrich, et al for having been Democrats before Ted Kennedy’s purge of moderates).
On the other hand, I know personally people who claim first-hand knowledge of Perry having a born-again experience since those days. I’ll never support Perry in a primary because of condemnation of all those who support conservative immigration enforcement policies. But I would be much at ease to discover that his “pro-life” positions aren’t merely Texas political posturing, along the lines of Elizabeth Dole who ran as a pro-lifer in the bible belt, was defeated for re-election, and went on to co-found (with notorious liberal Republican Christine Todd Whitman) a political movement to exclude pro-lifers and Christians from the Republican Party, called “It’s MY Party” and “It’s MY Party PAC.”
Any examples of Perry going beyond the usual red-state template for restricting abortion would actually put me at ease.