Posted on 08/21/2006 1:50:58 PM PDT by Pyro7480
President Bush Approves Over the Counter Early Abortion Pill, Pro-Life Base Decries Move
By John-Henry Westen
WASHINGTON, August 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - For his pro-life supporter base, President George W. Bush stepped into one of the biggest political landmines of his Presidential career today with his approval of over the counter status for the abortion-causing morning after pill Plan B.
A press release by Human Life International underscored the seriousness of the move as it was titled, "President Bush Files for Divorce with Catholic Base." Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, president of Human Life International commented, "President Bush's implied support for the abortion-causing drug Plan B is completely inconsistent with his recent veto of the embryonic stem cell research (ESCR) funding bill. What the president apparently fails to realize is that Plan B kills the same innocent unborn children that the ESCR process does."
At a White House press conference this morning, the President was asked by Bill Sammon a reporter from the Washington Examiner about Plan B and his new FDA commissioner who supports its over the counter status. "Mr. President, some pro-life groups are worried that your choice of FDA Commissioner will approve over the counter sales of Plan B, a pill that, they say, essentially can cause early-term abortions," said the reporter. "Do you stand by this choice, and how do you feel about Plan B in general?"
The President replied, "I believe that Plan B ought to be -- ought to require a prescription for minors, is what I believe. And I support Andy's decision."
Andy, as the President referred to him, is the new Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach. Pro-life groups last week called for von Eschenbach's resignation over his deal with a drug company to make a high-dose of a drug (Plan B, a morning-after pill) available without a prescription to women 18 year of age and older.
Concerned Women for America (CWA) blasted the decision noting that it is ludicrous to allow Plan B without medical supervision when a low-dose of the same drug (birth control pills) requires medical oversight to protect women from serious health complications.
"It is deplorable that the head of the FDA would put his career ambitions and a drug company's interests above women's health," said Wendy Wright, CWA's President. "CWA provided legal and regulatory evidence that the FDA does not have the authority to do what it is proposing and medical evidence that any dose of the drug requires medical oversight to protect women's health. The drug is known to cause serious complications such as blood clots and stroke."
Rev. Euteneuer added, "The president must demonstrate a consistent respect for the sanctity of all human life or he risks provoking a great divorce with the conservative Catholics that compromise a large part of his support base. Human beings in the embryonic stage of development deserve equal protection under the law and the president's position falls far short of that mark."
That's only a POSSIBILITY, not a probability. And be sure that you don't take aspirin; it can kill you.
I'm saying extra prayers of gratitude right now that people like you aren't in charge.
All good points.
IMHO, I find it utterly appalling that President Bush would allow this. Don't get me wrong, Dubya is a good guy and a man of principle.
But I'm seriously wondering what he's got up his sleeve--and if I'm missing something down the line.
It is plainly evident there now exists a glowing inconsistency in the President's platform. Much to his credit, he's spent a lot of time working to end the throwing away of embryos via stem-cell research.
But to explicitly sanction the use of drugs to throw away an embryo that's a few hours old because it's either unwanted or an "inconvenience" is just over the top. That's exactly what Plan B is.
The truth is that one of the biggest reasons why Bush won the White House over sKerry was the gains in the Catholic vote the Republicans made in the 2004 races. Coupled with a stronger conservative and pro-life base, we had a clear majority when the dust cleared. That gave him a clear political mandate--specifically that America wants a conservative leader who will stick to his guns.
Neither Bush nor the Republican Party can politically afford to lose those gains--or to deviate from his political mandate. IMHO, this decision is going to have a negative impact on the conservative political scene as we move closer to the election cycle. Which, in turn can have devastating consequences for Republicans--and conservatives in general.
Why? What he's done here is a kick in the teeth to the conservative, pro-life, and Catholic votes--further alienating these voters when we as conservatives and Republicans need them the most. He's alienating the support of his vital base just as conservative groups and even the RNC are working overtime to unite the conservative movement and keep it together.
IOW, it's three steps forward, two steps back. And if we continue that trend, we're going to get beaten big in this fall's political races. Clearly this is something our nation, nay, the world simply cannot afford.
And you guys...
I keep seeing this "you guys" phraseology. It seems an awfully convenient moniker for an opposition that you cannot otherwise name. So, who's "you guys"?
...will never, ever, ever have a president who will ban a pill that prevents the implantation of a fertilized egg.
Your vote not to protect the unborn from destruction is truly abominable. I'm greived before YHVH that it is in your heart to choose such a thing; to stand before The Author of Life and, before His very face, argue to allow the Death of His newly-created ones...
Maybe you should learn the difference between the morning after pill and RU-486, a completely different drug, before you make such statements. A little accuracy couldn't hurt. Really, it couldn't. :)
They are absolutely welcome, and free, to decide that they are against birth control. What they cannot do is decide that for anyone besides themselves.
Aye, there's the rub.
I find it amusing that people can personally attack me and call my posts ridiculous but are unable to actually say what they disagree with. It's not the science, that's indisputable.
God Bless.
On the contrary. I feel sorry for you.
I'm still waiting for an answer from Peach as to why my previous post was "ridiculous and absurd."
Don't hold your breath or anything ;)
http://www.all.org/article.php?id=10742
I had no idea that we had so many men who must feel such a lack of control over their own lives that they would try to interfere and mislead in this way. It's pathetic, really.
Maybe the Republican Party will end up like the Democrat Party. Interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal today:
The Fertility Gap Liberal politics will prove fruitless as long as liberals refuse to multiply.
BY ARTHUR C. BROOKS Tuesday, August 22, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT
The midterm election looms, and once again efforts begin afresh to increase voter participation. It has become standard wisdom in American politics that voter turnout is synonymous with good citizenship, justifying just about any scheme to get people to the polls. Arizona is even considering a voter lottery, in which all voters are automatically registered for a $1 million giveaway. Polling places and liquor stores in Arizona will now have something in common.
On the political left, raising the youth vote is one of the most common goals. This implicitly plays to the tired old axiom that a person under 30 who is not a liberal has no heart (whereas one who is still a liberal after 30 has no head). The trouble is, while most "get out the vote" campaigns targeting young people are proxies for the Democratic Party, these efforts haven't apparently done much to win elections for the Democrats. The explanation we often hear from the left is that the new young Democrats are more than counterbalanced by voters scared up by the Republicans on "cultural issues" like abortion, gun rights and gay marriage.
But the data on young Americans tell a different story. Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20%--explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today.
Alarmingly for the Democrats, the gap is widening at a bit more than half a percentage point per year, meaning that today's problem is nothing compared to what the future will most likely hold. Consider future presidential elections in a swing state (like Ohio), and assume that the current patterns in fertility continue. A state that was split 50-50 between left and right in 2004 will tilt right by 2012, 54% to 46%. By 2020, it will be certifiably right-wing, 59% to 41%. A state that is currently 55-45 in favor of liberals (like California) will be 54-46 in favor of conservatives by 2020--and all for no other reason than babies.
The fertility gap doesn't budge when we correct for factors like age, income, education, sex, race--or even religion. Indeed, if a conservative and a liberal are identical in all these ways, the liberal will still be 19 percentage points more likely to be childless than the conservative. Some believe the gap reflects an authentic cultural difference between left and right in America today. As one liberal columnist in a major paper graphically put it, "Maybe the scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and the dire effects of overpopulation." It would appear liberals have been quite successful controlling overpopulation--in the Democratic Party.
Of course, politics depends on a lot more than underlying ideology. People vote for politicians, not parties. Lots of people are neither liberal nor conservative, but rather vote on the basis of personalities and specific issues. But all things considered, if the Democrats continue to appeal to liberals and the Republicans to conservatives, getting out the youth vote may be increasingly an exercise in futility for the American left.
Democratic politicians may have no more babies left to kiss.
I'm saying extra prayers of gratitude right now that people like you aren't in charge."
While you're at it, you might want to include in your prayers all those lives that will be snuffed out thanks to positions like yours!
I disagree he is being completely consistent by being inconsistent which is what he has Been ever since he has been in office.
He acts just like the average career politician by straddling the fence. First one side and then the other.
These career politicians have no solid indwelling moral compass of right and wrong.
It has been eroded over time and replaced with a flexible career driven, party owned, donor sponsored, poll driven one.
A compass that does not point to a reliable fixed position based on truth, but one which focuses on and allows him to follow the constantly changing political winds.
Our career politicans where born ,raised and they live in a world that sings the praises of compromise.
So when they run head on into the sometimes harsh reality of uncompromising truth, such as a deadly fascists movement disguised as a so called religion, which calls for the destruction of all who do not accept it's barbarian rule over them, they do not know how to deal with it.
With leaders like this the terrorists could walk into a negotiating room with a tablet of stone with the words more land , more money and death to Israel carved into it, place it on the table and leave.
They could come back in a few weeks say nothing pick up their tablet and their new treaty with concessions of land, money and then leave and continue their attacks on Israel while our leaders/negotiators extol the progress made by them in the peace talks.
Bush has been fairly consistent with a pro-life stance. He nominated pro-life Supremes. He would not allow federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. He signed a ban on partial birth abortion. This is an inconsistent vote compared to his consistency on life. Sorry. We can quibble with him on some other issues, but he has been life-friendly by and large.
Hey, L_M, give it up.
Your opposition has had the plain facts about Plan B put right smack in front of their faces TWICE already (posts 131 & 132) but cannot find the moral fiber to bend their opinion into alignment with the manifest Truth. To wit: Plan B CAN prevent inplantation of a fertilized egg in which case a living human life will be snuffed.
Still the cry appears over and over "this is no different than The Pill", yada-yada-yada.
In the face of that kind of blindness, there can be no successful or meaningful debate. Console yourself that you tried; you did your due diligence and that's all you can be expected to do. Once the truth is out there, if people can't bring themselves to accept it, there's not much else you can do to make 'em.
Move on. Judgement's comin' and there are lotsa other ears out there that are still open.
That's rich, accusing others of misleading when you've lied repeatedly about this drug and how it works.
I could really care less about your position on this if you were truthful.
You believe, as harcore pro-abortionists do, that life beigins at an arbitrary point in time when you find it convenient. Explain to me why you believe it's acceptable to kill an embryo at 48 hours, but not at 10 weeks?
I did post 259 to clarify but not back off that the radical left anti-war people are Karl Marx following traitors, not "good decent people" or "patriotic Americans."
I also brought into the traitor picture terrorist sympathizers like the Council on American Islamic Relations.
Some people who oppose wars in general and this war in particular are motivated by moral convictions that may be legalistic, but understandable.
But there are radical traitors leading the pack including dozens of radical left members of Congress like Conyers and others with a radical past like John Kerry.
Hey there's a war going on and which side are the people on.
That's my question.
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