Time For Howie To Fess Up – Is Dean An Abortionist?
By William A. Mayer, Publisher - PipeLineNews.org
Howard Dean is a Park Avenue, left-wing Democrat whose claim to fame is having been in the right place [Lt. Governor] when the Republican Governor [Richard Snelling] of Vermont died of a heart attack in 1991.
Dean was born, raised and educated in New York.
Vermont – the “Ben & Jerry” state - is a strange place; arguably the most liberal state in the union. Many of its half-million residents come from either New York or Massachusetts - ”flatlanders” – tugging it ever further left.
That’s correct, you read it right; a half-million residents - much smaller than innumerable moderate sized cities in America.
The reality is that it’s a tiny little enclave holding little sway in the national political scheme [the entire state budget is considerably smaller than that of - let's say - the city of San Jose, California] except for the fact that in this run-up to primary season - in the Democrat party - the farther left and more anti-Bush you are, the more you are taken to the party’s radical bosom.
Forget most everything you read about Dean in the main stream press; it reflects nothing so much as a sanitizing operation that makes the cleanup at ground zero in New York pale by comparison.
Also forget that “fiscally conservative” load of horse excrement that Dean is always touting – the “penny-pinching MD” raised Vermont’s spending 48% from 1997-2000, from 1.6 billion to 2.44 billion.
Dean left Vermont’s fiscal process in shambles and hemorrhaging.
But that is par for the course among the Democrat leadership, trade on your ultra-left bona fides to similarly disposed party activists in order to secure the nomination, and then lie to everyone else that you are a moderate on something…anything.
There is nothing about Dean that is moderate - but he shares that attribute with most of the gang of midgets he has joined up with as they knee and elbow each other across the land, vying to see who will have the honor of being the Bush team’s sacrificial lamb in November, 2004.
But there is one area of the Dean bio that we find of particular interest, his medical degree.
Dean is the only MD running and though Deaniacs love to emphasize the title because of its supposed affirmative effect, they fail to mention that he totally abandoned medicine, in short order, to enter politics. More to the point he has not kept up with developments in the field or medical technology at all, in a Vermont Magazine article, while on a tour of Porter Hospital – where he served his residency – “Doctor” Dean mis-diagnoses a CT scan, wondering aloud if “perhaps they [two circles which were visible] were masses“ when in fact the “ two masses” were merely a tomograph of two sections of a thigh bone - as the technician patiently explained, Dean’s reply?
“This is more advanced than the teaching hospital I trained at 18 years ago, I mean wow…” 1998 - On Call With Howard Dean, by David Sleeper, Vermont Magazine
Wow indeed – like there is not a Doctor in the house.
Unlike many medical professionals - even former ones - Dean has a particularly strong affinity for that most controversial of medical procedures – abortion.
Listening to him in front of a women’s audience you would think abortion was his middle name.
It’s not surprising, really - Howard Dean served on the board of Planned Parenthood of Northern New England for five years. Planned Parenthood has made well over a billion dollars, profiteering on infanticide and members of the organization can be counted as among his strongest supporters.
In a January 21, 2003 speech supposedly decrying extremism - “…and I think if one of us doesn't win, next thing girls won't be able to go to school in America…” - before the most extreme group within the abortion support industry – NARAL – he found no fault with any abortion procedure in existence – “We do not hearken [sic] to the term "partial birth abortion" in my state because, because partial birth abortion is like the word, quota…It's a code word…designed to appeal to people's fears, to divisiveness…”
Something else, deeply disturbing happened during the NARAL speech.
To underscore why he was against the concept of parental notification – of requiring children to get the permission of a parent to have an abortion performed - Dean related a story about a 12 year-old girl:
“As many of you know I'm a doctor. I'm an internist, and I take care of all ages…one time a young lady came into my office who was 12 years old and she thought she might be pregnant. And we did the tests and did the exam and she was pregnant. She didn't know what to do. And after I had talked to her for a while I came to the conclusion that the likely father of her child was her own father.”
Poignant story, and a considerable helping of red meat thrown to the NARAL zealots who think abortion on demand extends to 12 year old girls whose parents should not be notified.
One small problem, Dean’s recitation of the story was a lie, and he knew it at the time.
DEAN: What do you mean?
RUSSERT: To say to people at NARAL...
DEAN: I don't think it's... (CROSSTALK)
DEAN: A pretty big omission, you mean?
RUSSERT: Omission, yes. That's a...
DEAN: I don't think it is at all.
RUSSERT: To suggest her father may have been...
DEAN: I thought it was. At the time, I thought it was.
RUSSERT: But when you told that story, you knew otherwise.
DEAN: That's right.
RUSSERT: Why didn't you say that?
DEAN: Because it didn't make any difference.” Meet The Press with Tim Russert, Jan 22, 2003.
The truth “didn’t make any difference” it was inconvenient, and aside from that slight correction the lack of veracity of the statement is further underlined by the fact that Dean doesn’t treat anyone anymore, let alone 12 year-old girls.
Howard Dean lied
“Dean told a powerful story but left out a key fact. What Dean didn’t say was he knew the father was not responsible, someone else was convicted.” USA Today
The left is always the group that raises the issue of reproduction first and, code word or not, Dean is going to have to deal with the ramifications of his position on that issue.
As a medical student Dean did his OB-GYN rotation at a Planned Parenthood clinic, as governor [oh and by the way, Dean sealed his gubernatorial records upon leaving office for the period of 10 years – he had requested 20 - curious?] he made changes in state law that caused all “family planning” to be contracted through Planned Parenthood’s abortion mill.
And yet he refuses to answer one simple question.
Dean is a gung-ho supporter of abortion including late trimester and partial birth abortions - his state, Vermont, even allows abortions to be performed by non-doctors.
According to CDC statistics, Vermont had one of the highest abortion/live birth ratios in the nation. In 1992 - during Dean’s second year of stewardship - it had 359 abortions for every 1000 live births.
For every 1000 children born, 359 were ripped from their mother’s wombs and unceremoniously flushed down the toilet.
Most puzzling - damning really - is Dean’s refusal to say whether or not he has personally performed abortions.
Since - in Dean’s way of looking at the issue - the unborn are mere tissue and since he has made abundantly clear that there is no abortion procedure that he opposes up to the actual moment of birth, why would he play a semantic game involving one of his core principals?
You would think that he would want to prove his commitment to the procedure, to the “right” of every female to receive abortion on demand, to loudly trumpet:
“Yes I have performed abortions of every type, first trimester, second and third trimester, suction curettage, dilation and evacuation, manual vacuum aspiration, partial birth, the whole enchilada. I have done them in back seats, with coat-hangers [sterile of course] hell I’ve even done them in my garage with my wife assisting me. Dammit, I’m Howard Dean, I’m PRO-ABORTION and I’m damned proud of it.”
But he doesn’t say that.
Even more curiously, he won’t say that he hasn’t performed abortions either.
Now lets think about that for a moment.
Either he has, or he hasn’t, but he won’t say either way.
Now this is a funny state of affairs.
One must assume that he does remember whether or not he did, or did not perform these procedures and it certainly seems odd that such a rabid supporter would not personally provide what he obviously considers sound medical treatment in line with the modern version of Hippocratic Oath - the classical oath of course is a little more tricky to navigate containing the following language:
“…I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it…Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art…”
What could be the harm in stating clearly and plainly that though he totally supports the procedure, he did not personally perform them, unless such a claim would be rendered a lie at some point hence, coming back to doubly harm him – first for denying it, second for performing a procedure he thought so shameful he felt the necessity to lie about it in the first place.
And it is that thought process that really leads in only one logical direction, the supposition that Dean probably did indeed perform abortions either at Planned Parenthood or at some other clinic, hospital or wherever else locations these “procedures” get done and that now he can’t admit it.
He can’t admit it because of the dirty little secret that despite what the radical feminists represent as being the “sense of the nation” an abortionist could never be elected president.
Most of the public considers it an odious procedure and the overwhelming percentage of medical professionals feel the same. That is why they need specialized “clinics” to perform them. OB-Gyn doctors simply will not sully themselves or the hospitals in which they practice.
Howard Dean is an extremist.
His positions on homosexual marriage, on the role of government, on defense and on abortion are far outside those of the mainstream of American voters.
Driven by what seems - from the outside anyway - a lemming-like rush to commit political suicide, Democrat party powerbrokers seem intent on selecting him as their standard bearer.
We on the right should be so lucky, because in that role he is exactly what the doctor ordered.
© 2003; PipeLineNews, all rights reserved.