Posted on 11/13/2004 6:05:41 AM PST by cpforlife.org
I hope honest-minded pro-life FReepers will note the direct connection between those who have reviled Dr. Keyes and those who suddenly want to throw the rest of the pro-lifers over the side.
In our day, it always comes back to the pro-life litmus test.
The protection of innocent human life, or the unwillingness to protect innocent human life, is the bright red dividing line that divides America. And sadly, it divides a small portion of even our own party from the pro-life majority in the GOP.
Don't blame the Church to make your argument. Stalin sent millions to die in gulags, yet, it didnt involve the evolution of weapons.
The key change this time was the CATHOLIC vote.
The Evangelicals always come out.
But never before has the CATHOLIC Church so openly taken sides in an American election, and in doing so, transferred the historical allegiance of a substantial portion of its people from one party to the other.
For this election.
If all that pro-life Catholics get for this is an immediate, election day slap in the face from Arlen Specter, saying that he's not going to let judges get by him who'll overturn Roe, followed by the Senate's decision to keep Specter on track for judiciary, the disillusionment of Catholics will be deep and lasting.
But the issue is narrow: Arlen Specter, and the implications of Specter for the long-term elevation of pro-life judges.
Formally the party is pro-life.
That's what the party campaigns on.
They won on that platform.
Then on election day Specter says that as the head of Judiciary, he'll not let judges past who'll overturn Roe.
His backpedalling and backflipping don't do any good. Specter is a known pro-choice quantity.
So the party has a clear and simple choice to make: alienate Specter, whose position is contrary to the stated party goal, or alienate millions of Christians who came out and voted FOR what the party held itself out as.
OF COURSE the Christians are mad as Hell.
OF COURSE they are vocalizing it.
It would be better for everyone if the Republicans moved Specter off to something else. What is gained by breaking a central promise Republicans have been making for years?
Compared to what is lost, nothing.
This ought to be a no-brainer for the GOP leaders.
That it's still seriously in doubt is seriously demoralizing to pro-lifers.
Let's change the context. Suppose the Treasury Secretary proposed hiking dividends and capital gains taxes to match taxes on wages? Think any Republicans would be out there threatening to bolt the party? You bet your sweet bippy they would! Because that is not what the party said it would do, and it wasn't what the party was elected to do.
The obvious solution in such a case would be to toss the Treasury Secretary and replace him with someone who was going to follow the mandate the People gave to the Party.
This is no different.
It's terribly unfortunate that it all blew up this close to the victory. But it needn't have blown up AT ALL. Specter put his foot in it here. HE should be the one who is asked to shut up and stand aside. Instead, the angry pro-lifers whose vote has been potentially betrayed by this man are the ones told to shut up and sit down. This is lunacy.
The leadership needs to get a grip. Specter is a liability.
Get someone who's not.
I believe that abortion is wrong and ought to be outlawed unless the health of the mother or the baby is in danger.
I do NOT agree that the United States deserves to lose the war on terror over this issue. If the Islamofascists win, we all lose. Saying that we deserve to be destroyed (As some have said) is why many people who would support the pro-life movement think we're all a bunch of nuts.
You make a point, here. I'm sure that John Brown felt the same way.
I am troubled when I consider the deaths of live children each day, of those who are and will be killed by medical experiments in cloning and embry and fetal tissue research. I constantly restrain my wish for immediate force on the part of the government and those of us who stand while the innocents are being led to slaughter.
Your opinion that abortion is less evil is just that, it is an opinion. If you cannot understand that the deaths due to abortion are just as heinous as those in the gulags, then it is only because you do not consider them or you have insufficient imagination.
However, many of us have considered the evil of killing. We have considered the overall harm of waging a war against the abortion clinics and the law enforcement officers who would be called out by the government to protect those clinics and those who work in them. We have discussed civil war and its ramifications.
However, we are attempting to use the republican system by voting for Republicans who will give us relief. We prefer a peaceful resolution.
Regardless of opinion about the "personhood" of unborn vs. born children, the distinction between embryo and fetus, in vitro and in vivo, implanted and pre-implantation, these are members of the human species. The killing of them was used to justify embryonic stem cell research, cloning for research, and "physician assisted suicide' in Oregon and is being used to justify the intentional killing of the deformed and the sick in the US, Britain, and other countries where it is currently illegal. It was used to legalize euthanasia (involuntary as well as requested) in the Netherlands and Belgium. It is the justification for the euthanasia of children under 12 in these last 2 countries.
btw, here's how I spent part of election day, in front of our most Democratic precinct, where the last of the Hispanic Democratic Precinct Judges was beaten by a Black Republican:
http://us.f2.yahoofs.com/users/1f2965f5_m40c364ae/6bfe/__sr_/d9b7.jpg?phvMslBBO8Bx3Fha
I didn't blame the Church for anything. I simply noted that the propensity to kill large numbers of people has nothing to do with which religion one espouses or doesn't espouse, as the case may be. And Stalin certainly took advantage of the gulags to transport his victims.
??? Please explicate.
Look at how mad we got at Specter for his "threat" to President Bush. Everyone will be working toward the same goal, so threats are the worst thing we could do, better to "encourage" and reinforce the faith we have in those who have been elected. Letters of encouragment, telling them we will stand behind them as they fight this battle, are better than nasty letters threatening those who are already on our side.
I'll answer your questions, but they aren't relevant to the current issue. So I will discuss the current issue first.
There was massive turnout on a number of issues.
A particular piece of that turnout, an important electoral shift, was that the religious Catholic vote went solidly for the Republicans this time.
That segment did so because of abortion. Rome practically told Catholics, in so many words, that voting for a pro-choice candidate was a mortal sin when there is a pro-life candidate on the ballot.
Catholics voted for the Republicans in unprecedented numbers because the Republican party has held itself out as pro-life, and as far as anyone knows, IS pro-life.
But Specter suddenly cast all of that into doubt practically on Election Day itself! The obvious thing to do is to cast Specter aside, but the Party might not do that.
This will be a rather strong indication that the pro-life credentials and platform of the Republican party is not SINCERE, and will evaporate even for internal rules issues of term limits on committee chairmanships imposed by the Republicans themselves!
The way that lots of those pro-life voters are going to read Specter's elevation is as the party not being sincere about being pro-life. This will not just turn them off, but will actually free Catholics from the burden of conscience on abortion, specifically, which caused them to alter their historical voting patterns in this election.
Now, maybe the Republicans will pull it out in the end by actually putting the pro-life judges on the bench. Maybe Specter will prove to be harmless.
But in leadership, one has to lead. That means making choices. The choice, now, to keep Specter in spite of a mess caused by Specter himself, and thereby discouraging millions of pro-life voters, is a strange choice.
Perhaps folks like Howlin are right, and the pro-life vote is not as important as it seems. In that case, why bother have a Republican Party pro-life plank at all? The trouble for the Republicans is that the ASSUMPTION of pro-lifers that the party really IS pro-life is being tested, here, now. And if the Republicans fail this test, the assumed pro-life credential will be lost.
Now, as to the rest of your questions and comments.
Reagan lived in a different time, when Congress was controlled by the Democrats and there were fewer Republicans. Back then, the majority of people supported abortion on demand, and partial birth abortion was not an issue. 20 years later, and now the younger generations tend to be more pro-life than pro-choice, and the debate has become much more nuanced, with partial birth abortion emerging as a wedge issue.
As far as your final question...where exactly is the legal line for pro-lifers?...neither I nor anyone else is in a position to answer that. Different pro-lifers have different opinions.
I can only tell you what I think, personally.
My faith tells me that life begins at conception.
And if I were King, there would be no legal abortion at all, except to save the life of the mother.
Since I am not King, I understand that the status of the law is a matter of the political process. I think Roe was bad because it removed a core issue from the democracy, and decided in the wrong direction.
Now, unlike many pro-choicers, I do not believe that human life is a state's rights issue. I think that life is protected by the equal protection and due process clauses of the Constitution, and think that the Supreme Court should overturn Roe by enforcing a complete constitutional ban on abortions. Note that this too removes the issue from the democracy. But since the direction is right, I would be well satisfied with such a decision.
But it ain't gonna happen in a million years. The Republicans speak of strict constructionists. The hypothetical Supreme Court decision I have spoken of is judicially activist. What Republican judges might do is overrule Roe, returning the issue of abortion to the democracy.
That does not perforce mean the States alone. There are commerce clause and civil rights issues that, in my opinion, give Congress every bit as much authority to rule on abortion as it did on partial birth abortion. I prefer a federal law banning abortion, after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, over a simple return to the states, where half of them will legalize abortion. But that federal law is very unlikely to pass, because most Republicans, again, are federalists, and would view such sweeping legislation as an encroachment on state's rights.
So, what I envision would be possible would be the federal ban on partial birth abortion in the latter two trimesters, and state laws that would either allow, or prohibit, abortion in the first trimester.
Since I believe in the doctrine of lesser evils, in those states hellbent on first term abortions, I would argue that the line after which abortion becomes particularly monstrous is the point at which the nervous system has developed and the baby feels pain, which is at about the 10 or 11 week mark, perhaps a little before.
Accordingly, I would seek to persuade, through political literature showing ultrasounds of abortions in the early term, that the point abortion on demand should end in those states insisting upon it, ought to be after two months, not three, so that the aborted children feel no pain before their deaths.
Obviously I don't want to compromise at all.
But if a temporary compromise will save many thousands of babies, I will make it, and then persist in driving for the full ban.
I hope that answers your question.
What question?
There are several pointless, empty threats, but no questions.
Fine.
Look, I agree.
The problem is that right now is not an abstract demand of pro-lifers for some sort of fealty.
There was just a massive conservative Republican win in America. And on the day of the big win, the prospective head of the Senate Judiciary Committee comes out militantly pro-choice, threatening the PRESIDENT not to send up pro-life judicial candidates.
What "compromise" do you propose we make with this man?
This is a distinct and clear issue, and we most certainly didn't start it. All that we are demanding is that the Republican party do what it just won an election saying it was going to do.
Specter said that the party was NOT going to do what it said it was going to do in his committee. We are demanding that the party say "This shall not stand" and shunt the guy aside.
This is not only not unreasonable, but really, Republican ire should be focused on HIM as the numbskull who went off script, not US for demanding in no uncertain terms that the party adhere to the script that it just won on THE DAY BEFORE.
Jeez.
What are we supposed to do? Shut up and go to the back of the bus and understand that one temperamental Senator's views outweigh both the party platform and one of our own reasons for voting Republican in the first place?
Come on.
Focus your fire on HIM, not us!
If the Party puts him in office, that will RATIFY what he said, and make it clear that he is more important in the party's eyes than we are. If that's so, what's the use in us hanging around? To not rain on other folks' parade?
Then it's real easy: move Specter aside and put someone in the position that millions of pro-life voters can trust. This ends the dispute and ends the potential rift.
Why is that so damned hard?
Yes, it is, but I am still against killing someone and the eye for the eye on that one. They get more punishment sitting in prison the rest of their lives.
You may have a point. I would reserve the death penalty for the stone sociopaths...Dahmer, Bundy, etc. As it is, I think it is applied much too freely.
If I understand correctly, you're correct that the greatest therapeutic benefits (and perhaps the only ones to date) have come from adult and placental stem cells.
I don't think they should sacrifice any more fetuses to make more stem cells - however, when I die, I hope whatever parts I have that are still good can be used to improve someone else's quality of life, and I do see something of this logic in making use of lives that would otherwise be completely wasted.
I certainly don't think babies should be conceived for this purpose, I don't believe in abortion under most circumstances, definitely not after the first trimester, and one would think that with all the methods of birth control available today, abortion should be extremely rare for any purpose.
I think we need strict constructionist judges, but I also think we need to work on hearts and minds...until we change hearts and minds, I'm not sure the law could be changed even if Roe V. Wade was overturned.
Still waiting for an answer to #274.
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