Posted on 02/28/2006 6:36:43 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
US President George W. Bush signalled his opposition to a South Dakota abortion ban that forbids the procedure even in cases of rape or incest, saying he favors such exceptions.
But Bush declined to predict the outcome of any legal challenges to the legislation, which would make it illegal to terminate a pregnancy except in rare cases when it may be necessary to save the life of the mother.
"That, of course, is a state law, but my position has always been three exceptions: Rape, incest, and the life of the mother," the US president told ABC news in an interview.
Asked whether he would include "health" of the mother, Bush replied: "I said life of the mother, and health is a very vague term, but my position has been clear on that ever since I started running for office."
The bill, which recently gained final approval from South Dakota's House of Representatives, directly contradicts the precedent set in 1973 when the US Supreme Court ruled that bans on abortion violate a woman's constitutional right to privacy.
The bill grants no allowances for women who have been raped or are victims of incest. Doctors who perform abortion would be charged with a crime. It also prohibits the sale of emergency contraception and asserts that life begins at fertilization.
The governor of South Dakota has indicated he is likely to sign the bill.
A leading pro-choice advocacy group has already vowed to challenge the ban in federal court. But that seems to be exactly what many promoters of the legislation seek.
Advocates of the ban do not deny they aim much higher than South Dakota, a rural and socially conservative state, which even today has only one abortion clinic.
Instead, they are hoping the bill will offer a full frontal assault on legal abortions now that the balance of power in the Supreme Court appears to have shifted with the confirmation of conservative jurists John Roberts and Samuel Alito, both of whom are seen as pro-life.
See my post 960.
No. That's an asinine question.
I'm reading through the Bible this year, and am currently in Leviticus in the Old Testament. In the 20th chapter, the 9th verse, I read this....."If anyone curses his father or mother, he must be put to death...." Do you believe that cursing your Dad should be a captital offense, too, Truth? It's God's law, isn't it? And you ascribe to God's law, don't you?
I repeat. Jesus' death changed the punishment, in that he fulfilled the law, and took our punishment on Him.
Talking of stoning adulterers here is irresponsible.........especially for a Christian. I deserve death for lies and for disobedience to God at all levels. But I can be forgiven through the blood of Jesus, the Risen and Regnant Lord, if I confess. That's the whole story.
I'll be honest, ohioWfan, I'm still sorting through all this, though I do think that we have written off more in the OT than we should.
Christ eradicated the requirement for sacrifies to pay for sins as He became the ultimate sacrifice through His innocent blood shed on the cross. But I don't believe that His sacrifice eradicated the need for earthly punishment. I believe that He gave that responsibility to government.
I could however be convinced that His mercy in the NT toward the sinner would allow him to live in order to give him a chance for repentance and eternal life. But if that is the case then I couldn't believe in capital punishment at all, even for the murderer.
Christians have always and will always disagree on how much of the OT to take literally today. Please don't write me off as a nutcase. :) I'm just another Christian trying to sort through my own understanding of Scripture.
BTW, good for you for reading through the Bible this year! I've done this for quite a few years and it truly does help to give a larger picture of things. It's just way too easy to read our favorite Scriptures over and over and miss some of the more "dry" parts, but they're important, too, and I've found some real nuggets in the midst of some of those passages.
The only reason for a "suspension" was that you complained to a moderator you knew would listen to you.
Remember, this is a public board and each and every poster can be responded to quite directly, right here, up front.
Still, since there are some who always want blood when a pregnancy is a result of a rape, what do you think about sacrificing the rapist instead of the kid?
Anyone want to bring back the death penalty for rape?
Now, on with the debate.
BTW, almost missed your little note.
LOL! Yourself. You don't listen very well.
Take a look at just the last two months (and it has been frequent and often if you know how to listen). Try the State of the Union speech.
Just who do you think he was castigating when called those he disagrees with over defending free enterprise here in the United States, and our industrial infrastructure to defend our nation..."protectionists", "isolationists" "retreaters" and so on?
And then just last week in AirForceOne he played the "race" card over the Dubai Ports World deal, threatening to veto any Congressional prohibition, implying that it was Anti-Arab xenophonic or bigoted to oppose the deal. Both Laura Ingraham, Bill Bennett, Michelle Malkin, Dennis Prager, Hugh Hewitt, all agreed that was a clear and inescapable inference. For you not to have 'heard' that is preposterous.
And to underline that it was not 'accidental mispeak'...The White House pushed that line immediately, getting David Brooks (NYT), Robert Novak, the Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, Reuters, ABC News, etc to pursue that slant of the story.
There have been many other previous instances when he has reached for the Liberal castigatory tool to challenge his opposition on the Right. From Gay issues (Don't Ask, Don't Tell)...to Bloated Unconstitutional Kennedy bill further Federalizing of Education...belittling the opponents as "perpetuating the soft bigotry of low expectations."
This is an indirect way of calling small government republican conservatives...bigots. The RATS try to criminalize policy differences. The President tries to demonize his conservative critics. There are many examples. If I thought it was worth the time, I would do a book on it.
btw, I listen VERY well, and I'm a very conservative Christian. I'm just apparently not as sensitive and easily offended as you are, and at the ready to attack OUR side.
Praise the Lord for the morality and integrity of President Bush. Praise the Lord that he stands firmly for life and family and human dignity. Praise the Lord that he is standing strong for America, and for freedom, and as President Reagan before him, believes in peace through strength. Praise the Lord!
The problem with the death penalty for rape is that many juries would not convict, even when they thought the perp was guilty, because they did not feel right about the death penalty for a case where the victim herself, though brutalized and assaulted, did not die. The Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for rape in, I think, 1977, and victims groups were actually glad, because too many rapists were found not guilty by juries unwilling to affix the death penalty.
I'm not writing you off as a 'nutcase,' but I would suggest that you be more circumspect about declaring what 'God's law' declares and prescribing stoning for offenses such as rape and adultery in our present law.
btw, dry parts, indeed. I'm not that fond of reading about festering sores and infectious diseases, but it does give perspective on what grace is really all about. I'm using "The One Year Bible"........where you read an OT passage, a NT passage, a Psalm and some Proverbs every day. I find it very useful in not getting 'bogged down' and giving up sometime in March :).
The solution, now that we have DNA to work with, is to put all of 'em down, and to select hanging juries.
We don't impose capital punishment on rapists. Why should we impose capital punishment on the rapist's innocent child?
Actually, I view it as unlikely that this law will result in a reaffirmation of Roe. 4 justices must agree to hear the case. Unless the 4 supposed anti-Roe justices believe they can convert Kennedy, they won't take the case.
I'd be happy to do so but haven't figured that out yet.
So sorry.
Perhaps both reasons played a part in the 1977 Supreme Court decision; I don't recall the debate about rape convictions being unfairly handed down based on race. I remember the decision only because I was a liberal feminist at the time, (I was 19, young, stupid and highly influenced by my college profs) and didn't believe in the death penalty. But I had mixed feelings because I hated the rapists too! Well, I still think rapists are the scum of the earth, but I have no longer have a problem with the death penalty.
Just add the screen name of the person you are trashing to the name of the person you are responding to--use a semi-colon to separate the names.
I do hope you'll agree that what I posted was accurate as far as what the Bible tells us was God's Law given to the Israelites. Just to clarify, as far as this thread today, I was asked if I believe in stoning for adulterers; how can I say I don't when God declared it? Now whether it's for today or not, I did not say and do not claim to know. I do think we can learn principles from the OT, if nothing else, and one of those is that God holds adultery and rape on equal grounds with murder.
"I'm using "The One Year Bible"........where you read an OT passage, a NT passage, a Psalm and some Proverbs every day. I find it very useful in not getting 'bogged down' and giving up sometime in March :)."
I used The One Year Bible one year, also - it was the first time I actually made it the whole way through the Bible! :) I had tried before but would get behind and gave up. I like how it's set up with each day's readings together.
The last number of years I've been using a chronological schedule, which takes you through both the OT and the NT simultaneously, but the OT especially is read in the order of how things happened, not just straight through from Genesis to Malachi. That also keeps it more interesting. If you're interested in it for another year you can find it here.
God's grace is indeed all through the Bible, along with His mercy and love and faithfulness. We serve an awesome God!
No kidding. Just take a look how he attempted to demonize the opponents of his lawless Border non-enforcement...calling the Minuteman group..."Vigilantes." Rhetorically just a hairsbreadth from saying they are a lynch mob.
But in the areas of life and the judiciary he is.
Harriet Meiers would have been a Trojan Horse in that regard. At all points. Thank God her speech to that Texas Women's Bar Assn "outed her"...supporting the "privacy right" underpinning the Roe decision...and the last support for her collapsed. Meiers was responsible for torpedoing...from within the White House...the Solicitor General's positions in a number of cases. From affirmative action in Michigan's Law School to Texas's sodomy laws.
To say the least, the Meiers nomination, justified "because she was a woman", castigating the "glass ceiling"...as if the conservative opponents were somehow sexist.... casts grave doubts on this president. His sincerity. His political integrity. And clearly, he is no conservative.
Remember how Mark Twain opined that "The thirteenth stroke of a clock is not only false of itself, but it casts exceedingly grave doubts about the veracity of the preceding twelve!"
And to me this is the most conservative, and important thing that any President can do.
So long as he is not handing that Court a fait accomplice with a whole new slew of constituional abdications, surrenders and contradictions of limited government. The Prescription Drug Benefit, an $18 Trillion Unfunded Liability. The Social Security Unfunded Liability is itself only what, $10 billion? Campaign Finance Reform which throttles political free speech...among the most essential areas of speech freedom!
The $48 billion in Pork fund earmarks he went along with to bribe Congress to approve CAFTA: An agreement which is inimical to the free enterprise of small businesses in the U.S., but does heartily favor massive BIG business to relocate to those nations and re-export to us. A trade deal which needed to be passed as a treaty, but was passed as an agreement. A trade deal which abdicated our Constitutional protections of our own court system, and deferred to rulings by an Intl Panel.
And guess what else he has been pushing? The Law Of the Sea Treaty! Reagan rejected this for a whole raft of solid conservative reasons...it inherently conflicted with our national sovereignty and interests, and fired all of the State Dept. cronies who had pushed for it. Xlinton hired them all back. Bush has kept them on and is teetering over it...indicating he would sign it! Another massive infringement on U.S. Sovereignty...that would allow the UN to tax the US and all its seaborne activities directly, setting itself up as the long-delayed World Government. So it can promptly start redistributing our wealth to...who knows...Africa? India? China? (Like they're not getting it fast enough already!)
Remember how Karl Rove famously told us off, "Where will you go?" As if the RATS were the only alternative. No. The option never mentioned is that we reject his either/or choice, and instead move to recapture the Party for true conservatives. No more Xlintonian 'triangulation'. We need to go to the polls in a sufficiently nationally-organized way...and flush down the toilet every single blasted RINO and get true conservatives on the ballot and take back this government!
Actually, I am generally against the death penalty, abortion and war. On the other hand I do believe that you are entitled to protect yourself from the attacks of foreign nations.
Dr. Dean (the DNC ghoul in charge) was being interviewed a few years back and the death penalty thing came up. Dean said that as Governor he was immediately made aware of the fact that when you have a convicted murderer (not just one on death row) the odds are very good that if he or she is released, or a sentence is commuted, they are going to kill somebody else ~ and if they are not released, the odds are good they are going to kill a guard or a fellow prisoner.
When it came to the death row guys, he was certain that it was dangerous to keep them around because they ALWAYS kill ~ that is, the probability was 100% with that class of killer.
As a consequence, he changed from a opponent of the death penalty to a supporter of that penalty.
Bet your professors never told you, way back when, about the proclivities of killers to kill.
My alternative to the death penalty is simply the administration of doses of ether sufficient to snuff the "personality" and most of the memory of the killer. Then, keep'em chained up so they can't hurt anyone.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.