PRO-LIFE WARNING TO THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

A 2004 pro-life thread brought back to life | 11-13-04 | Vicomte13

[ScholarWarrior]

Thanks again for your comments.

Ok, that's fair.

Look, we've had to deal with Scottish law Arlen here in Pa for many years. I supported Toomey in the primary and even flirted with voting for Clymer. I held my breath and punched the slot for Arlen. Hated doing it.

Specter knows we're gunning for him and if he yaps too hard in the wrong way right now we'll shoot him. He WANTS Judiciary so bad he can taste it. He also knows that Frist and the President can take it from him.

I just hope that the outcome is three bright young judges for the Court that will support the Constitution get nominated, voted on, and approved by the full Senate. I hope they are not one-issue people so that we can get these people on board.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not looking for Souter. I wanted Bork. I think Ted Olsen would be great. I hope we can get it done without a nuclear war. Maybe a recess appointment or two?

[WestVirginiaRebel]

O.C.: Well, when you're dying from radiation sickness or smallpox, at least you can say to yourself, "My country is gone, but at least I still have my convictions!"

[ScholarWarrior]

Oh, one other thought. If we shoot Arlen now after he backs down a little, we risk losing him, Chafee, and Snow, and the majortiy goes from 55-45 to 52-48. I'd much rather be dealing from 55-45 in the '06 election with the chance of beating Hillary and maybe getting to a 60 seat majority.

We might actually get something done in Washington for the better

[Vicomte13]

Recess appointment won't work: it's not for life, so the Dems can always regain the White House and run the table.

I agree completely that the judges have to be eminently qualified jurists in all senses. We can't have one-issue hacks, even if their issue is pro-life, because this is the Supreme Court of the United States we're talking about.

It's unfortunate, I think, that we Republicans even have to have had this discussion today. And I hope that the Republicans who are not focused on abortion who do read at least what I wrote come away realizing that this Specter business, and the filibusters, are really more serious than just tactical issues.

Every faction of any party has really core issues.
For example, suppose the Republicans started to press for high taxes in order to pay for the war and balance the budget. There were millions of Republicans who voted for Perot because they read George H.W. Bush's lips about "No new taxes", and then felt betrayed by him. Since then, the Republicans have not even played around on tax issues. They understand that they cannot win any elections if they play around on that issues. This focuses their minds, and instead of figuring out ways to maneuver, they make that a hard spot and maneuver elsewhere.
Abortion has been such an issue for so long that Republicans in general have probably gotten complacent about the pro-life vote. The difference this time is the opportunity to get new judges on the courts and actually change things.
That's way pro-lifers are taking this Specter thing as seriously as fiscal conservatives took Bush 41's breach on the tax issues.

I think that all of the caterwauling about not DARING to "threaten" our "betters" and all of that is so much garbage. If George H.W. Bush had been clearly warned by taxpayer's groups in 1990 that if he raised taxes, they would not vote for him, would he have raised taxes anyway?
Well, actually they DID warn him, and he DID raise taxes anyway...and so we got Bill Clinton, because lots of fiscal conservatives did just what they said they would do. Bush and his team back then were arrogant. They did not like being threatened by the rank and file.
Nobody likes being threatened.
But first, telling someone how their actions will affect my vote is not threatening them, it's informing them of reality so that they can perhaps adjust their behavior accordingly.
And second, so damn what if people don't LIKE to be threatened. Politics in Washington is not conducted based on the Marquess of Queensbury rules. Presidents threaten vetoes. Senators threaten filibusters. Donors threaten to withhold donations. Nobody likes to be threatened, but some threats are serious and can do serious damage, and only an idiot takes a defiant stance and gets beaned when he could avoid the problem.

The complaint I've read above is that "We'll get Hillary Clinton." Look, if the Republicans are not really pro-life, if one's core issue is abortion it doesn't make any difference if it's Hillary Clinton or a Republican who won't lift a finger to stop abortion.

But we are not there.
Where we are now, I think, is that the Senators know they have a problem with Spector, and they and the President think they can work it out. The danger is that their political calculations within Washington will fail to appreciate the real damage, demoralization and demotivation that will hit the newly mobilized pro-lifer ranks if Specter is allowed to prevail. It's our job, I think, to make the danger clear to them, so that they will "get it".
I did not consider my initial missive to be a THREAT, but a WARNING, sort of like a hurricane warning. The Senators will, I hope, comprehend the danger and chart a course that avoids it.

[hocndoc]

Read Singer for a discussion about why it's no worse to kill a newborn than a child who hasn't been born.

Here's some information:
http://members.aol.com/wutsamada2/ethics/euthan.htm

The Netherlands and Belgium have legalized euthanasia. The Netherlands ignores euthanasia, even for children under 12 and Belgium is following the same line.


http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/9945816.htm?1c
(The Kansas City newspaper requires free registration)


Posted on Mon, Oct. 18, 2004
Click here to find out more!

Europe wrestles with child euthanasia

By MATTHEW SCHOFIELD

The Star's foreign correspondent

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — Four times in recent months, Dutch doctors have pumped lethal doses of drugs into newborns they think are terminally ill.

The actions have set off a new phase in a growing European debate over when, if ever, it is acceptable to hasten death for the critically ill.

Few details of the four newborns' deaths have been made public. Official investigations have found that the doctors made appropriate and professional decisions under an experimental policy allowing child euthanasia that is known as the Groningen University Hospital protocol.

But the children's deaths, and the possibility that the protocol will become standard practice throughout the Netherlands, have sparked heated discussion about whether the idea of assisting adults who seek to die should ever be applied to children and others who are incapable of making, or understanding, such a request.

“Applying euthanasia to children is another step down the slope in this debate,” said Henk Jochemsen, director of the Lindeboom Institute, which studies medical ethics. “Not everybody agrees, obviously, but when we broaden the application from those who actively and repeatedly seek to end their lives to those for whom someone else determines death is a better option, we are treading in dangerous territory.”

The Dutch debate is being closely watched throughout the continent. Belgium has laws similar to those in the Netherlands, and a bill permitting child euthanasia is before its Parliament. No date has been set for debate.

Great Britain is considering legalizing assisted suicide for the terminally ill, amid reports that doctors already may be helping thousands of patients to die each year.

“Assisted dying is a fact,” said Hazel Biggs, director of medical law at the University of Kent, who is about to publish a report estimating the number of assisted deaths in Britain at 18,000 annually. “We have to regulate it, to ensure that vulnerable people are being protected.”

Under the Groningen protocol, if doctors at the hospital think a child is suffering unbearably from a terminal condition, they have the authority to end the child's life. The protocol is likely to be used primarily for newborns, but it covers any child up to age 12.

The hospital, beyond confirming the protocol in general terms, refused to discuss its details.

“It is for very sad cases,” said a hospital spokesman, who declined to be identified. “After years of discussions, we made our own protocol to cover the small number of infants born with such severe disabilities that doctors can see they have extreme pain and no hope for life. Our estimate is that it will not be used but 10 to 15 times a year.”

A parent's role is limited under the protocol. While experts and critics familiar with the policy said a parent's wishes to let a child live or die naturally most likely would be considered, they note that the decision must be professional, so it rests with doctors.

The protocol was written by hospital doctors and officials, with help from Dutch prosecutors. It is being studied by lawmakers as potential law.

Under the protocol, assisted infant deaths are investigated, but so far all of them have been determined to have been in the patients' best interests.

Euthanasia has been legal in the Netherlands since 1994. Under the law, any critically ill patient over age 12 can request an assisted death, including adults in the early stages of dementia.

The law doesn't allow involuntary euthanasia, nor does it apply to children under age 12, who aren't considered aware enough to make a life-or-death choice.

Dutch doctors have some intentional role in 3.4 percent of all deaths, according to statistics published in The Lancet medical journal. About 0.6 percent are patients who didn't ask to be euthanized, the journal said.

Dutch courts often treat those cases leniently if an investigation determines that the doctor acted out of concern for the patient's well-being.

Opponents of expanding euthanasia to the young cite a recent Dutch court ruling against punishment for a doctor who injected fatal drugs into an elderly woman after she told him she didn't want to die.

The court determined that he had made “an error of judgment,” but had acted “honorably and according to conscience.”

[Vicomte13]

He can't back down "a little", in the face of 8 million angry voters. He has to cave.
This is comparable to "Read my lips, no new taxes."
Republican leaders simply cannot demand more deference from the Republican electorate than they are realistically going to get.
It's just not going to happen that all the firebrands such as we saw on this thread today are going to be appeased by a Specter "trust me".
The Republicans can go ahead anyway, on the calculation you proposed, but if they do and don't get the judges anyway because they are blocked, the pro-lifers are not going to forgive them, or shrug their shoulders and say "Them's the breaks." Because the wiser thing to do would be to buy off Chaffee and Snowe with whatever they want, and send Specter elsewhere.
It is simply asking too much of a vast electorate that they be content seeing their hopes dashed by a guy on election night, and then just accept a "trust me". Specter can back down, because he's one man. But 8 million people cannot back down, because of animal spirits. Specter created this problem, he should bear the burden of it, and whatever is needed to buy off the two liberal Republicans should be offered.

[ScholarWarrior]

I am in complete agreement. Well said.

By the way, welcome to Free Republic. Good night.

[cpforlife.org]

President Bush never said he'd "make sure" Roe v. Wade would be overturned.

But don't tell me that he never said that we must work to that day when all children are welcomed in life and protected in law. He repeats that all the time.

He was the final authority on the GOP Constitution, the book with all the planks in it. It is absolutely Pro-Life Pro-Tradiotional Family and Christian.

I am part of the Pro-Life Pro-Tradiotional Family and Christian wing of the party.

You are part of the NARAL - PP wing of the party.

My wing is about to do a D & E on your wing. But not in the murderous way abortionists do D&E's on innocent children waiting to be born.

Abortion is The great contradiction to everything this Republic stands for.

Turn away from the industry of death Hildy. God loves you and wants you to be His daughter again. He wants you to love the unborn as He does--not allow their slaughter.

[hocndoc]

Telling the politicians that we will not vote for them if they do not act as we expect them to is not a "threat." It is the way a republic works.

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

But, they're "less than human"... they're "property". Where have we heard that before?

It's like the devil plays the same damn trick on every generation.

[ApesForEvolution]

Doesn't your child have a heartbeat as early as 18 days, or is it 23 days?

[Howlin]

It appeared from the context he was referring to fetal stem cell research

No, it didn't.

You just assumed that and went off on a judgmental rant.

[ApesForEvolution]

Now you went and *did it*! :o

[hocndoc]

This is 2004, not 1970. I could not vote then. R v W had not been decreed. Today, the Republican Platform is prolife.

We in the Republican party have worked for at least the last 20 years to elect pro-life candidates. This year, we turned out in record numbers to vote for a President we believe to be pro-life, and sent prolife Senators from South Dakota and Oklahoma, pro-life Representatives from Texas to increase our Party's dominance in the House and Senate with pro-life legislators.

[Howlin]

He later claimed I had said his sister had "lived too long" or some such nonsense. Neither is true.

Exactly how else is one to interpret the following statement, which YOU made:

How many babies were killed so that your sister could have a few more years of life?

[ApesForEvolution]

We need to break the generational curse. Our generation (I'm whistling too brother) needs to fade away and the next couple generations need to continue to remind people that ... they aren't just flushing the goldfish down the toilet or drowning puppies down at the Humane Society. The death culture's time has come and America must breathe and cleanse itself of this Holocaust of Cowardice...

[Howlin]

unless I was certain that the donor wasn't killed to obtain such an organ (as is often the practice).

OMG, we've entered a whole new realm here, haven't we?

[ApesForEvolution]

Amen

[Spiff]

Doesn't your child have a heartbeat as early as 18 days, or is it 23 days?

My source says 14-28 days. My statement was based upon 28 days - but I did say "at least" to allow for heartbeats at 14 days.

[ApesForEvolution]

I haven't said thanks yet.

"Thanks!"