He didn’t “reject” the platform. Nice spin.
BOGUS HEADLINE ALERT!
So what exactly IS the platform?
IOW, PKB!
In other words, Thompson accepts the Human Life Amendment as a long range Republican goal. Thus, he has not rejected the GOP platform.
Boy, the liberal MSM sure seems upset that Fred got the NRTL endorsement.
The right to life is the bottom line for me, but I have no problem supporting Fed Thompson. All the efforts to undermine his pro-life position have been bogus.
He differs from some pro-lifers on tactics. I happen to agree with him that for a number of reasons a constitutional amendment is not the way to go. Notice that although it has been a Republican plank for many years, not much has been done to implement it—because it would predictably fail, and be counterproductive.
Fred DID mispeak about not wanting to “criminalizing” abortion, and he has said so. I would not view this as a flip flop but as a mistaken comment, which he has since rectified.
I think most Republicans are pro-life in many of the same ways that Fred Thompson is:
1. Abortion is morally wrong - it is the taking of a life (human life begins at conception).
2. Roe-v-Wade was a wrong decision, not just (a) on moral grounds as pro-abortion, but (b) as a judicial dictate whereby the Supreme Court gave “Constitutional law” a “right” that is without Constitutional foundation, and (c) it created a federal mandate over a matter states traditionally, and constitutionally, had the power to decide for themselves.
3. The best way forward must go to the process error, in order to resolve the Constitutional error that Roe is but a symptom of - the Supreme Court cannot manufacture “rights” the Constitution neither identifies, directly, or implies to exist without qualification indirectly. The best way forward is either a Supreme Court decision that sets Roe aside or, with that decision not forthcoming, an amendment that corrects the Constitutional error of Roe - resets “abortion” to a matter that is determined by the states and the states alone. The error of Roe was that there was no “pro-abortion” national public mandate either for a majority of states to have pro-abortion laws or for a pro-abortion federal Constitutional amendment. So the pro-abortion forces went around the people and the Constitution and got friendly judges to dictate something that had no mandate from the people. Were that in fact NOT the case, the stark divisions in the nation over abortion would not continue as they do today.
4. With all that said, and with the many hopes contained therein, many pro-life conservatives, I am sure, join Fred Thompson with concern about criminalization of young women who, regardless of the circumstances, come to make what we feel is the error of choosing an abortion. I think most people hope for some other way forward for the mother who chooses it.
. Liberal pro-abortionists often use the “back alley”, “dirty coat hanger” image of where young women seeking an abortion will land, if the law chases the doctors who perform it underground. One could say that modern methods and technology have made sterile surgical procedures easier to perform outside of a licensed medical clinic. No one should rely on that as an answer. Laws that chase the doctor away from many abortions should at the same time include language that supports and advances the proposition and the means, including support, for the mother to carry the child to term and allow it to be adopted. Why? Because such laws should not be blind to the consequences of the fact that, with or without the law, some women will, somewhere at some time seek an abortion. When all else has failed, just be sure that the law itself extended every hand of charity to help them to another solution. I think that feeling of compassion for the mother who finds herself faced with this moral decision is one of the places Thompson finds himself and wrestles, as most people do, with a perfect solution and cannot find one that would deny charity to the fallen mother.
Since the NRLC endorsed him, I’d say they didn’t have any difficulties with his position.
He didn’t really “reject” the platform. He won’t make HLA a priority because it’s unattainable for the forseeable future and a waste of political capital and resources that could be better spent on getting Roe v Wade overturned via another constructionist Justice on SCOTUS. HLA will remain part of the GOP platform.