Schwarzenegger Criticized for Saying GOP Should be More Pro-Abortion

Sacramento, CA (LifeNews.com) -- First, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger came under fire from pro-life advocates for backing a $6 billion measure using taxpayer funds to destroy human life in cloning and embryonic stem cell research. Now he drawing criticism for suggesting the GOP should become more pro-abortion.

In an interview with Germany's Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily newspaper published Saturday, Schwarzenegger said the Republican Party should move "a little to the left" on issues such as abortion -- a shift he claims would pick up more voters.

Schwarzenegger told the paper that "the Republican Party currently covers only the spectrum from the right wing to the middle."

"I would like the Republican Party to cross this line, move a little further left and place more weight on the center," he said. "This would immediately give the party 5 percent more votes without its losing anything elsewhere."

However, post-election poll of voters shows that a majority of Americans are pro-life and the abortion issue gave pro-life candidates such as President Bush a twelve percent advantage.

Thinking about their own position on abortion, 55 percent said they took a pro-life position and only 40 percent took one of three positions in favor of legal abortions.

That November 2004 Wirthlin poll conforms to others showing pro-life Republican presidential candidates benefiting from that view on abortion.

According to Lydia Saad, Senior Gallup Poll Editor, "national exit polling in every presidential election since 1984 has shown a net advantage to the pro-life side over the pro-choice side, based on the percentage of single-issue abortion voters in the electorate."

Schwarzenegger's comments drew opposition from Karen England of the Capitol Resource Institute, a California group involved in pro-life issues.

"Schwarzenegger's statements that the GOP would not lose its base if it embraces ... abortion rights show extreme arrogance and total ignorance concerning the values and dedication of the party's core constituents," England said.

"Schwarzenegger has spent too much time in Hollywood. He needs to start mingling more with mainstream Californians," she added.

"We are outraged that Schwarzenegger has the audacity to misspeak for the millions of Republicans in this country who believe that abortion is murder," England concluded.

The Worst Constitutional Decision of All Time

"As noted before, the Supreme Court did not invent abortion. There might be plenty of abortion, perhaps authorized or permitted by state laws, even without Roe and Casey. Moreover, the Court is, arguably, not directly responsible for the wrong moral choices of individuals that the Court's decisions permit. Finally, the Court is not responsible - cannot be responsible, consistent with its constitutional role - for correcting all injustices, even grave ones. But the Court is responsible for the injustices that it inflicts on society that are not consistent with, but in fact betray, its constitutional responsibilities. To the extent that the Court has invalidated essentially all legal restriction of abortion, it has authorized private violence on a scale, and of a kind, that unavoidably evokes the memories of American slavery and of the Nazi Holocaust. And by cloaking that authorization in the forms of the law - in the name of the Supreme Law of the Land - the Court has taught the American people that such private violence is a right and, by clear implication, that it is alright. Go ahead. The Constitution is on your side. This is among your most cherished constitutional freedoms. Nobody ought to oppose you in your action. We have said so.

The decision in Casey, reaffirming Roe and itself reaffirmed and extended in Carhart, in my view exposes the Supreme Court, as currently constituted, as a lawless, rogue institution capable of the most monstrous of injustices in the name of law, with a smugness and arrogance worthy of the worst totalitarian dictatorships of all time. The Court, as it stands today, has, with its abortion decisions, forfeited its legal and moral legitimacy as an institution. It has forfeited its claimed authority to speak for the Constitution. It has forfeited its entitlement to have its decisions respected, and followed, by the other branches of government, by the states, and by the People. The enthusiasm of liberal intelligentsia for the Court's abortion decisions, the sycophancy of the law professorate, of the legal profession, and of our elected officials, and the docility of the American people with respect to our lawless, authoritarian Court rivals the pliancy of the most cowardly, servile peoples toward ruinous, brutal, anti-democratic regimes throughout world history. We suffer people to commit despicable acts of private violence and we welcome - some of us revere - a regime that destroys popular government for the sake of perverted, Orwellian notions of "liberty." After a twentieth century that saw some of the worst barbarisms and atrocities ever committed by humankind, at a time when humankind supposedly had progressed to more enlightened states, we still have not learned. The lesson of the Holocaust - "Never Forget" - is lost. We fail to recognize the amazing capacity of human beings to commit unthinkable, barbaric evil, and of others to tolerate it. We remember and are aghast at the atrocities of others, committed in the past, or in distant lands today. But we do not even recognize the similar atrocities that we ourselves commit, and tolerate, today."^{Michael Stokes Paulsen, The Worst Constitutional Decision of All Time, 78 Notre Dame L. Rev. 995, 1003-1007 (2003).}

"If the opinion of the Supreme Court covered the whole ground of this act, it ought not to control the coordinate authorities of this Government. The Congress, the Executive, and the Court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others. It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval as it is of the supreme judges when it may be brought before them for judicial decision. The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve." ^{The Avalon Project : President Jackson's Veto Message Regarding ...}

House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, July 20, 2000:

"My name is Gianna Jessen. I would like to say thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I count it no small thing to speak the truth. I depend solely on the grace of God to do this. I am 23 years old. I was aborted and I did not die. My biological mother was 7 months pregnant when she went to Planned Parenthood in southern California and they advised her to have a late-term saline abortion.

A saline abortion is a solution of salt saline that is injected into the mothers womb. The baby then gulps the solution, it burns the baby inside and out and then the mother is to deliver a dead baby within 24 hours.

This happened to me! I remained in the solution for approximately 18 hours and was delivered ALIVE on April 6, 1977 at 6:00 am in a California abortion clinic. There were young women in the room who had already been given their injections and were waiting to deliver dead babies. When they saw me they experienced the horror of murder. A nurse called an ambulance, while the abortionist was not yet on duty, and had me transferred to the hospital. I weighed a mere two pounds. I was saved by the sheer power of Jesus Christ.

Ladies and gentleman I should be blind, burned.....I should be dead! And yet, I live! Due to a lack of oxygen supply during the abortion I live with cerebral palsy. [...] Adolph Hitler once said: '"The receptive ability of the great masses is only very limited, their understanding is small; on the other hand their forgetfulness is great. This being so, all effective propaganda should be limited to a very few points which in turn, should be used as slogans until the very last man is able to imagine what is meant by such words.'" Today's slogans are: "'a woman's right to choose"' and "freedom of choice," etcetera. ^{Jessen testimony.wpd}

Extensively discussed @ PL Case .

By monitoring changes in fetal heart rate, psychologist Jean-Pierre Lecanuet, Ph.D., and his colleagues in Paris have found that fetuses can even tell strangers' voices apart. They also seem to like certain stories more than others. The fetal heartbeat will slow down when a familiar French fairy tale such as "La Poulette" ("The Chick") or "Le Petit Crapaud" ("The Little Toad"), is read near the mother's belly. When the same reader delivers another unfamiliar story, the fetal heartbeat stays steady. ^{Fearfully and Wonderfully Made}

State Unborn Victim Laws a summary of the laws of the 30 states that recognize the unlawful killing of an unborn child as homicide in at least some circumstances. The federal Unborn Victims of Violence Act, enacted April 1, 2004, covers unborn victims of federal and military crimes.

stemcellresearch.org - Founding Statement

State: Homicide laws of all 50 states protect human life and the dignity of every human being--especially the vulnerable; laws of many states already specifically protect vulnerable embryonic human beings outside the womb; most prohibit destructive human embryo and human fetal research.
National: The present Congressional ban on federally-funded human embryo research explicitly excludes "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death"; existing laws requiring separation between the death of an unborn child in abortion and research objectives using the unborn child's tissues preclude the destruction of human embryos as a means of achieving research objectives.
International: Documents such as the Nuremburg Code, the World Medical Association's Declaration of Helsinki, and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights reject the use of human beings in experimental research without their informed consent and permit research on incompetent subjects only if there is a legal surrogate, minimal risk, and therapeutic benefit for the human subject.

CBHD: On Human Embryos and Stem Cell Research

It may strike some as surprising that legal protection of embryonic human beings can co-exist with the U.S. Supreme Court's 1973 legalization of abortion.²⁹ However, the Supreme Court has never prevented the government from protecting prenatal life outside the abortion context,³⁰ and public sentiment also seems even more opposed to government funding of embryo experimentation than to the funding of abortion.³¹ The laws of a number of states-including Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Utah-specifically protect embryonic human beings outside the womb. Most of these provisions prohibit experiments on embryos outside the womb.³²

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