Posted on 10/21/2007 8:10:14 AM PDT by dano1
Jamie Crawford at CNN’s Political Ticker blog reports this about Mike Huckabee:
“Sometimes we talk about why we’re importing so many people in our workforce,” the former Arkansas governor said. “It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our workforce had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973.”
The language is a little imprecise - what Huckabee meant is that in each of the last 32 years more than 1 million abortions have been carried out in America - and the numbers are a little low - the average number of abortions performed since Roe v. Wade is about 1.4 million per year - but his point is clear: abortion is the American holocaust.
(This is not only true of America, of course. Europe’s abortion rate is far higher than ours.)
First I must congratulate Huckabee for standing his ground on this issue. Politically this is not a move that is going to get him any closer to the White House. A cynic might see this as positioning for the vice-presidency. However, I think that it is more likely that Huckabee simply believes this is the correct interpretation of the data.
Personally I agree with him. Abortion is, in the final analysis, after all the shouting and rationalizing are done with, the ultimate illustration of the strong(er) crushing the life out of the helpless.
Does that mean abortion should be illegal? No. It should be limited, as all of our actions are constrained by the codified morality that is the law, but not eliminated.
Americans do mean, heartless things with startling regularity considering that we know better. Abortion is perhaps chief among them; yet the nature of a democratic society demands that couples have the right to control their destiny for right or wrong. A reasonable standard should be set after which abortion should be forbidden, as has been done in Europe, and that should be the end of the matter.
That will undoubtedly not happen. Reading through the comments gives one a fairly good sampling of the views of Americans, for better and worse.
(I assume that CNN filters its comments to remove the repulsive. Historically such on-line debates have been among the filthiest on the Net. Therefore, it would be a mistake to think that the extreme positions are represented at CNN’s site.)
Theme 1:
Once again, someone without a uterus and/or the possible chance of becoming pregnant through rape or incest, takes their fundamentalist beliefs and wants to force feed the rest of the nation their views. These are the real monsters!
Statistically the percent of abortions performed for reasons of rape or incest is < 1%. This is not a rational argument. Is Mike Huckabee a monster? Hardly.
Theme 2:
Mike Huckabee likening abortion to the Holocaust is a slap in the face to every human soul who perished under Hitler.
Is it? 6 million Jewish people were exterminated by little Adolph. But the number of abortions performed world-wide dwarfs that number in a single year. Acknowledging that fact is not disrespectful to the Nazis’ victims.
Theme 3:
are the deaths of US soldiers and thousands of Iraqi civilians in an illegal and unjust war also not a Holocaust.
Again, the numbers don’t add up, do they? With regard to U.S. soldiers, the number of abortions performed in the U.S. in a single day is quite close to the total number of U.S. soldiers killed to-date in Iraq. One day. If we expand our calculation to include an (inflated) estimate of 100,000 Iraqi dead and dismiss the fact that most were killed by other Iraqis we still need only wait one month for the U.S. abortion count to outstrip the entire number of war dead.
Theme 4:
The most important thing we need to establish in this country is a true separation of church and state, and we’re definitely not going to get it with Huckabee. If your reasoning for making a new law or amending the constitution is based on religious grounds then it should be immediately dismissed.
That’s what’s most important? Not defending our borders? Not poverty in America? Not our failing education system? Not race and integration issues? Not an aggressive, insidious form of Islam that threatens freedom everywhere it exists? A bit of perspective would help, I think.
Theme 5:
a woman surely has a right to decide what to do with her body
Not necessarily. While generally true, this statement fails to consider the baby’s right to live after its point of viability and its necessarily feeling pain as a result of being aborted.
This notion also dismisses the rights of the father as if they do not exist. In a just system, however, a woman would not be allowed to abort a child when her partner is willing to compensate her for costs and inconvenience during pregnancy and assumes all responsibility for the child thereafter.
Granted, that situation may be rare these days. Nevertheless it should be represented in the debate.
Theme 6:
I suppose when a man is able to conceive a child, carry it for nine months, deliver it, nurture it, and experience the personal sacrifice of a woman and mother, then and ONLY THEN will his opinion have any credibility. Since it takes two to conceive, maybe we should look at the other side of the coin and insist that if a woman must experience an unwanted pregnancy, then perhaps the man who impregnated her should be castrated.
Another over-estimation of the importance of the female gender and the rights that it engenders. Castration would be equivalent to performing forced hysterectomies on women who have abortions. I haven’t seen that idea anywhere, at least in this country. Ridiculous.
But there is a distorted reflection of a good idea in there, namely that men who fail to live up to the responsibilities of fatherhood should not be allowed to continue to procreate. That’s more reasonable, but unlikely to become a national policy.
—
Given the tenor of the discussion here and other places it seems unlikely that the U.S. will come to any sort of final conclusion to the issue of abortion any time soon.
I admire Mike Huckabee’s beliefs and willingness to stick to them regardless of the criticism they will bring down on him. I agree whole-heartedly that abortion is a plague on western civilization and I think it will ultimately prove to be our downfall because of higher birth rates in other, less-developed parts of the world.
Yet I am not willing to attempt to dictate to others on the issue. Ultimately we have to be free to pursue life on our own terms, whatever those might be, respecting only the spirit of the law.
Just as freedom of religion does not mean freedom from religion, the pursuit of happiness does not mean that we shall be happy with every law of the land. It’s time more people accepted that.
This is true.
Why do you think that Huckabee would be easy for Hillary to beat?
Cheer up Hickabee. Those illegal immigrants you want to let in will have plenty of kids to make up for the abortions. Get lost.
The MSM would love for Huckabee to win the nomination .
The MSM will start by making him out to be a religious zealot to scare the moderates .
Next they will highlight his Open Borders policy , which will in turn , alienate a good majority of what would normally be his base .
Then they will harp relentlessly about his name - yes the MSM is that petty and yes it will have an impact on our shallow electorate .
Then the MSM will parade out the gushing compliments that Huckster had for the Klintons a while back .
This is only a sample of what they would do to the Huckster .
Given Huckabee's stance on this issue, do you really think that Hillary can beat Huckabee in this area?
For that matter, with maybe 20 million people in the U.S. illegally now, I don't see how any politician can run on their record as having been effective at controlling the borders in the past.
Anybody but Giuliani.
That's his stand now. What about before? You can't run and hide from your record.
I'll say this though: Huckabee has really came out swinging against terrorism. I like the way he said "one of us is going to lose this war", for example. His moral clarity on the WOT is impressive, too bad he's a big gov't socon who'll never get the independent & swing vote though.
Another thing is that the MSM is shilling for Huckabee to take down Fred and elect Giuliani by proxy.
Mr. Huckabee mouths a few platitudes for the rubes in Hot Springs who believe shysters like The Rapist and then goes off and doles out cash to illegals and buddies alike.
Why would anyone term him a "Republican"? He's a standard issue Solid South Blue Dog Democrat, nothing more.
As far as his nanny state label goes, I salute him for trying to get more fat a$$ americans off their butts and go out and exercise and lose some weight. You know how to spot an american tourist in europe? look for all the fat people.
Keep going back further, excluding Ford you left out Georgia, California, California, Texas. That's trend and I think it'll continue to Huckabee's favor or may be Tennessee. The sun belter's hold a lot more power now. I think running a NorEaster seems to alienate the rest of the country.
The mainstream media is in bed with NARAL and Planned Parenthood. Rudy or Hillary are the only two candidates they will accept. It’s going to be a very tough year ahead, listening to all of these feminazi news anchors shilling for their favorite contenders; those being the ones who will allow for the most unborn babies to be killed in the ole clinic. They ridicule and diminish anyone who wants to save the babies, and it’s sad. Take the instance of former Fox News anchor Kiran Chetry. When Judge Sam Alito was up for consideration on the Supreme Court, Chetry practically ridiculed Alito’s mom for telling reporters that her son was pro-life. I remember her laughing about it on the air one day while she was still at Fox, and I’ve never thought too much of her since then. Very tacky. Katie Couric and Meredith Vieira are the same way. All of these women are just a bunch of hardened and bitter people. What else could explain such lack of compassion from the gender who was designed to nurture and love?
Great song too!
“Huckabee is also for amnesty, illegal aliens, and big government nanny state. Nobody who is for amnesty is a conservative. “
Nuff said....bye Huck!
Yes, it's too bad that the Republican sheeple are too lazy to educate themselves, allowing the drive by media to pick their leaders for them.
Sad, really.
“Unlike other “top tier” Republicans, he didn’t used to be much of a “household name” at the national level.”
That’s exactly it... Name recognition.
His comments here are so common sense, so indisputably true, that I’m sure someone somewhere had a heart attack over how “mean” he is.
It’s been a reality for a long, long time. Most of the electorate pays zero attention to politics until it gets close to an election — and, then, 60% or so still don’t pay any attention.
If you’re not a celebrity, you have no chance at the top job. Sad, but true.
The liberals and socialists are succeeding in their plan of “dumbing down America”.
And the RINO’s are their accomplices.
“And the RINO’s are their accomplices.”
Most politicians, not just leftists and RINO’s count on a dumbed down electorate.
http://www.mikehuckabee.com/index.cfm?FuseAction=Issues.View&Issue_id=4
So he is lying in his website, I ask because I do not know his history.
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