I often wonder how many of the hard core prolifer here on FR have ever had any personal experience with the issue. It is easy to stand on the sidelines and throw mud and expect perfection, but life isn’t always that black and white.
I am ardently prolife because of just such a real life experience. Does a mistake I made 36 years ago make me a murder, we’ll let God be the ultimate judge of that. What you do as a scared 19 y/o and how you see life as mature adult can be very different. I would suggest that all of these holier than thous here should spend some time reading some of the heart wrenching stories of remorse written by men and women posted on the “Silent No More” website.
If you are talking about the leaches at PPH that pry on young women and men to make money, the doctors that live in huge estates paid for in the blood of dead babies or women who are proudly working on their 4th or 5th abortion that my friend is a very different story.
I would love to think that we could wave a magic wand and never have another abortion committed in this country again, but realistic I want to work sensibly in a way that makes us as successful as possible in stopping this horrible legacy. Having a Mitt Romney in the WH supported by a agreeable Congress will get a lot more done than letting one issue voters put Hillary and her butchers in control.
Wow, that’s quite a powerful perspective and it sounds like your experience had a profound impact on you. Yes, this is a battle that must be fought at a legislative and judicial level—but much less so than at a personal morality level, IMO. I’m pro-life and have always been so, but I’ve had a really hard time judging women who have had abortions because I know there are so many factors that play into a decision of that magnitude. It’s something I’ve struggled with quite frankly not because I don’t believe in the sanctity of life, but that I realize that there are a lot of women who don’t hold my same beliefs and would end up seeking illegal abortions that could cost them their lives if a safe alternative was not available to them.
Everyone has to come to terms with the level of government intrusion in such decisions. That was definitely Romney’s main dilemma as to how he viewed abortion after witnessing the death of his relative who had obtained an abortion illegally. The issue had touched him personally and influenced his point of view. His pro-choice position was not due to some sick desire to allow millions of babies die because he believed they weren’t living human beings. He obviously knew they were because of his own personally held beliefs about abortion, but he also realized that government can’t dictate morality—it still can’t and never will be able to. I think the cloning and embryonic farming issue that was dumped into his lap as governor of MA finally made him realize that the issue had far greater consequence than just potentially endangering the lives of women and that ultimately caused him to change his point of view.
People can say that the change was politically expedient (having occurred only 2 years ago), but they should also consider that Romney didn’t seek out the cloning and embryonic stem-cell research debate—it literally found him when the researchers at Harvard University started to pursue the issue with reckless abandon. As a result of being forced to deal with the problem head on, he emerged from it a changed man. Is the change sincere? That will be up to the voters to decide, but I think it’s disingenous for people to just discount Romney’s experience as “just another flip-flop” because he is running for president without considering both his personal history with the issue and how his experiences as a governor greatly affected his conversion.
The only real way that we win the battle for life is to change hearts and minds. It’s slowly happening, but we are making progress nonetheless. That’s why I think using the rhetoric that abortion is “murder” because that somehow makes a candidate “more conservative” than another is counterproductive to the goal of ending abortion once and for all. The Supreme Court can overturn Roe vs. Wade, but that won’t stop abortions from taking place because whether abortion is considered “murder” can greatly fluctuate from person-to-person. We need government to put the decision back in the hands of the states (which is Romney’s goal) and then the people need to do the rest in changing the mindset of society. The latter goal has absolutely zero to do with who we elect as president.