Posted on 08/13/2003 11:18:06 PM PDT by tallhappy
An open letter to Arnold Schwarzenegger
By Jane Chastain
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
Dear Arnold,
I love your movies and your enthusiasm for the things for which you care deeply.
However, some of the positions you have staked out in the past are inconsistent with the concern you have expressed for children and families. I urge you to revisit these issues, get the facts and restate your position to the people of California as you campaign for governor of our state.
You say that you support abortion rights. You have stated, "Women should have the choice."
Arnold, imagine going to a restaurant where you are asked to choose between meal "A" and meal "B" but there is no further explanation of what is on the menu. A blind choice is no choice at all.
Unfortunately, that is the position that most women with crisis pregnancies are in. A woman, who shows up at an abortion clinic will not be briefed on the status of her pregnancy or shown pictures of fetal development. She will not be given an opportunity to see her child on ultrasound, even though the abortionist likely will use that device when he ends the life of her baby.
Because of pressure from radical feminists and the abortion industry, this is the only surgery that is preformed today without any meaningful "informed consent." If you go in for any other surgery – from a hernia to a hangnail – a physician must inform you of all risks associated with the procedure and any alternative treatment (help) that is available. But not an abortion. Abortion proponents want to keep women in the dark for one simple reason: It's better for business.
In California, if a woman wants to have a tubal ligation, she must wait three days. This is most reasonable because that choice will affect the rest of her life – just like the choice to abort a child!
However, there is no waiting period for an abortion. A woman with a crisis pregnancy meets with a salesperson – often called a counselor – whose job is to hustle her into the backroom as quickly as possible before she has time to reconsider.
Is it any wonder that – according to a study published just last year in the prestigious British Medical Journal – women who abort their first unintended pregnancy are more prone to suicide, increased substance abuse and clinical depression than women who carry their unintended pregnancy to term?
Technology has given us a window to the womb. As a result, public opinion on abortion is changing. On June 24, the Center for the Advancement of Women announced the results of a new poll that shows how women feel on a variety of issues. Center president Faye Wattleton, lamented that preserving "reproductive rights," code for abortion, "is far down on the list of women's priorities."
In fact, 51 percent of these women said abortion should not be permitted except to save the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest, or not at all. Seventeen percent said "it should be available but under stricter limits than it is now." Only 30 percent said "it should be generally available to those who want it."
Arnold, if your support for abortion is to ease a guilty conscience, I can understand. However, if it is out of genuine concern for women or for what women want, it is misplaced.
Also, Arnold you have expressed your support for homosexual rights, including the rights of "gays" to adopt children. However, all studies have shown that children do better in a home with a mother and a father, even if that marriage isn't perfect. Children in a family with a mother and a father are much less likely to be poor. They attain higher levels of education and have lower rates of substance abuse, emotional and psychological problems, out-of-wedlock births and criminal behavior.
Marriage between a man and a woman – the kind favored by an overwhelming majority of Californians – was not created to discriminate against homosexuals, but to provide a stable environment for the creation and rearing of children.
According to the Census Bureau, same-sex partners make up only 0.5 percent of households.
Are you truly ready to accept the responsibility for sacrificing some of California's children to please a very vocal but small minority group?
Think long and hard before you speak on these issues again, Arnold, because what you say will either set you apart as a man of virtue and honor, or cast you in the undesirable role of just another political hack.
Jane Chastain is a WorldNetDaily columnist and host of the Judicial Watch Report radio show, heard daily from 4 to 5 p.m. EST on the USA Radio Network.
I think his movies are pretty much garbage myself.
Gay people are wealthier than average couples. So, children in those households would be, on average, wealthier than children in other heterosexual households with one parent or two. And in any of the studies she cites, were children from gay households studied?
Cop out. At the very least he can take a firm moral stand against it. Capitulating amidst the carnage, pandering to the killers by remaining silent, is the coward's way.
Slavery was once an issue "no one could do anything about." Men of courage spoke up and out until the unbreakable was shattered.
But I suspect Schwarzenegger won't speak out, won't take a moral stand, because at his self-obsessed narcissist's core he supports the slaughter of the innocents.
I want to hear him speak clearly and unambiguously. Is this man's core sterling or tin? All the evidence I have seen is that it is tin. His remaining silent and ambiguous on this important matter only tends to confirm it.
Then by all means let's leave him a movie star--not make him governor of the most powerful state in the union.
Why take him from an arena of pretend power that gives you (and presumably other fans) harmless pleasure and give him genuine power to spoil and cramp your life--and the lives of tens of millions--on important social and cultural issues?
Your own statement proves that voting for him is the least rational thing you can do.
Yes, I imagine that many do prefer such an outcome. However, in winning he will either fail in governing in a manner to produce prompt solutions to a decade old decline in direction, thereby earning a failed grade for California's brand of "republicanism" in general in the eyes of the voters, or, if enthusiasm for change produces some results without social program change, he will chart the course for the next downturn by built in cost.
If California voters, in general, had to make a choice that implied overall change in government's direction, they might then find the choice worthwhile or not. With Arnold, they don't have to make a choice. A vote for him will be satisfying from voting the Ins out and yet implies little hard change in direction to the great raft of social programs keeping the high cost of state government afloat.
We have much the same problem in my neighboring state of Kansas. There the Republicans stay divided and self-cannibalizing.
I wish you guys well, but Arnold solves nothing and may even leave many feeling that they tried "conservatism" without results even though Arnold will give them a bare taste of the true brew.
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