Posted on 09/05/2008 11:46:50 AM PDT by pissant
Three major advocates of abortion rights are planning to spend nearly $30 million to defeat John McCain’s run for president, citing his new running mate as the core reason.
NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood and EMILY’s List have Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) in their crosshairs, calling her a staunch opponent of abortion rights.
“This is the most anti-choice ticket in history of the Republican Party,” said Beth Shipp, the political director of NARAL. “McCain put someone as outside the mainstream as you can on his ticket, which is Sarah Palin,” Shipp added.
Hoping to drive a wedge between the pro-life GOP base and party centrists who favor abortion rights, NARAL Pro-Choice America plans to raise and spend $10 million to communicate to voters in 34 to 35 congressional districts and battleground states. The group is also targeting independents.
Planned Parenthood, another liberal group, plans to spend $10 million on its One Million Strong campaign, an effort to mobilize “pro-choice voters in battleground states,” said spokesman Tait Sye.
And EMILY’s List, a group that backs female Democratic candidates who support abortion, will spend nearly as much as the other groups on its Women Vote! program.
The McCain campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
NARAL sent out an alert to more than 500,000 of its supporters immediately after Sen. McCain (Ariz.) chose Palin as his running mate. The alert highlighted Palin’s opposition to abortion in cases of rape or incest.
The Planned Parenthood campaign began in January and will pick up intensity in the wake of Palin’s selection.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
You're very close, but I don't think most of those people believe, whether at the intellectual or gut level, that repentance is the path to atonement. Instead they believe, at the gut level, (and possibly the intellectual level as well) that the only path to atonement is to make abortion not be wrong. They insist that abortion be considered "okay" because they believe, in the strongest possible way, that they absolutely, positively, urgently, and critically need for it to be "okay".
Were it not for the fact that some "pro-life" people would almost certainly mess things up, I would suggest that t-shirts saying "I regret my abortion" could trigger a major sea change. In practice, I'd be very worried that people wearing such shirts would get harassed as evil-doers by people who call themselves "pro-life", but if pro-life people would refrain from such harassment (or even excessive unsolicited efforts at consolation), I would think it could start a movement that would totally bury the "pro-choice" camp.
If the "pro-life" people were willing to support the wearers of such shirts when asked to do so, but otherwise refrained from bothering them, I would think many wearers would quickly found that the shirts made them feel better. They would no doubt be attacked by so-called "pro-choice" people, but if they were warned of such attacks beforehand and told that braving such attacks by evil people is a mark of honor, I would think those that stood firm could find themselves freer of guilt than they'd been for years.
And when bright smiling people wearing such shirts are asked by others who have had abortions why they're smiling so much if they're plagued with guilt from their abortion, they could reply that their shirts brought them a freedom they'd been searching for but never found.
Note that there's no need to bring religion into this. Religious teaching can be offered if requested, but keeping the shirts secular would avoid triggering the "anti-religion" reflex of the people who most need redemption.
Sarah and Elizabeth have the distinction of being the only two names to make the Social Security Administration's top-ten list for girls in both 1880 and 2000. Elizabeth made the list in 1900, but Sarah did not. Emma made the list in 1880 and also in 2002 and every year since, but did not make the list in 2000 or 2001. Sarah has not made the list since 2002; in 2007 it was #18. Elizabeth has been on the list intermittently since 2000; in 2007 it was #10.
I never understood lumping the "rape or incest" exception into one catergory either. You can't use just "incest" by itself to justify abortion -- if someone is having a consentual relationship with their own cousin and ends up pregnant as a result, they wouldn't get an OK from me to kill their own kid. Anyone who's dumb enough to sleep with their own cousin and doesn't use protection has only themselves to blame.
And in the extremely rare example of a girl getting raped by her father and a pregnancy resulting, why bring up incest in the first place? The fact she was raped already places it into the "unconsentual sex" category.
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