Posted on 11/08/2007 12:00:05 AM PST by Tailgunner Joe
WASHINGTON -- Fred Thompson was well into a prolonged dialogue about abortion with interviewer Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday when he said something stunning for social conservatives: "I do not think it is a wise thing to criminalize young girls and perhaps their parents as aiders and abettors." He then went further: "You can't have a (federal) law" that "would take young, young girls ... and say, basically, we're going to put them in jail."
Those comments sent e-mails flying across the country reflecting astonishment and rage by pro-life Republicans who had turned to Thompson as their best presidential bet for 2008. No anti-abortion legislation ever has proposed criminal penalties against women having abortions, much less their parents. Jailing women is a spurious issue raised by abortion rights activists. What Thompson said could be expected from NARAL.
Thompson's comments revealed astounding lack of sensitivity about the abortion issue. He surely anticipated that Russert would cite Thompson's record favoring state's rights on abortion. Whether the candidate just blurted out what he said or planned it, it reflects failure to realize how much his chances for the presidential nomination depend on social conservatives.
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghlive.com ...
If the "friend" does so by lying to you about the situation, yes. Which is precisely what the pro=abortion types do.
Btw, does anyone running for the GOP nomination support jailing minors for having an abortion? How about their parents?
As Fred said, he doesn’t care what happens to abortion doctors. Prosecute and incarcerate. The Hippocratic oath does mean something.
“So if a friend talks me into hiring a hitman to murder somebody, I’m a victim? That’s a typical liberal abdication of responsibility.”
If the “friend” does so by lying to you about the situation, yes. Which is precisely what the pro=abortion types do.
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Don’t think of it as murder, think of it as a post-term abortion....yeah!...that’s how I can rationalize it. /sarc/
Or how about post-birth abortion? That way we could just de-criminalize murder.
To have federal enforcement officers show up at a home and arrest and handcuff parents and daughter, haul them away, charge and arraign them, and have it published in the news.....yeah that’s a great plan NOT.
However, having ‘State’ law enforcement officers arrest and cite the person performing the abortion without license to do so, or with license but without documented diagnosis and assessment of the health of the mother or child, that is fair game.
Fred is absolutely correct on this.
You've misunderstood what I posted. I never said that young girls should be jailed for obtaining abortions. Nor women who do so. Along with the Republican Party Platform, I'm not for that.
My point was that Fred Thompson was defending his stance against the Human Life Amendment and in the process he characterized those who are for it as consequentially supporting the jailing of "young, young" girls. Rudy Giuliani did the same thing in February and he was soundly condemned here. Let Thompson do it and he gets defended.
You are being arrogant(although not intended)...”the purer than thou wing”.
Why would you slur people who hold fast to a conviction with such a description? It is the same template type slur that the left use...and it is getting so worn and childish.
I agree 100% with you about politics being the art of the possible....For example, Bush did not promise to work to repeal Roe v Wade...but he STRONGLY stood pro-life and supported the platform...as a result he held the pro-life voters...And, apparently while you have been busy sluring 1/3 of the party, you failed to notice that Rasmussen and another poll BOTH reported that 27% of the GOP base will NOT vote for a pro-abort canidate. Rudy would mean DEFEAT.
You claim to be an expert on the GOP...well, Mr. Expert...drive off all those “purer than thou” and see what happens.
Do not misunderstand, I am pragmatic enough to understand that NO president can simply demand a repeal of Rov V Wade, etc....but, if you haven’t noticed Fred is DROPPING daily in the polls...while he may claim to be pro-life (and I believe that he is), the perception he is giving (as the artile on this thread pointed out), is that he doesn’t seem to be very committed to at least being a strong voice to life, and it is this PERCEPTION that is losing him support.
Whether you can stand to be in the same room with these poor ignorant knuckle dragging dolts or not, without them we lose...Fred needs to UNDERSTAND this, and that is what the article was pointing out. And being pragamatic, and undertanding the dynamic of the politics of the possible, the pro-lifers have to understand that without folks like you, we cannot win...
As to my lowly state of understanding of the GOP or our history, I have yet to miss predicting the winner of a presidential contest since Nixon first won....but, since I know nothing, it must have been luck.
A counter-argument one could attempt is that abortion is morally different from those other things. But could a truly pro-life person actually think that gun control is worse than killing someone in his mother's womb?
To use another comparison, the same way racial discrimination and `badges of slavery’ were fought: by using the Commerce Clause.
Any clinics accepting federal funding or involved in any way in interstate commerce cannot perform partial-birth abortions because they deprive the unborn of their lives.
Then your incrementalism, much like the gun-grabbers’ approach.
Another T. Jefferson quote:
“I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.”
John Valentine wrote:
Your Fred could have said qoute actually is the Fred Thompson position, as far as I understand it. But you won’t find it expressed that way in one compact sound bite.
. x . x . x .
If Senator Thompson believes that protecting federalism means allowing one or more states to adopt abortion (post-Roe v. Wade), thereby violating the singlemost basic human right secured by the United States Constitution, then what I stated is not his position.
As I said, the importance of federalism trumps nearly everything — but it doesn’t trump the most basic human rights.
If, next year, one of the 50 states enacted a law allowing parents to kill (for whatever reasons) any of their children under the age of seven years, the federal government would be constitutionally obliged to step in and protect that child’s civil rights, federalism be damned.
If abortion is murder — and the decision-making devolves back to the states, the same thing would apply.
At present, it’s the federal government (courts) preventing the states from making abortion illegal. Reversing the error doesn’t address the violation of rights. It merely rips the unborn child from the womb with the left hand rather than the right.
Some conservatives forget that federalism is not itself a goal. It is a means — a means to protecting the rights of the people. It permits them to also govern themselves in a somewhat parallel manner at the state level. That provides some balance against the massive power of the federal government.
If federalism is worshipped as a goal and not a means, it can come into conflict with the very goal it was meant to help secure and protect.
I find that some pro-abortion Republicans like to hide behind the fig leaf of federalism as if it, in and of itself, is sacred. It’s not. What’s sacred is what federalism is intended to protect. And that is what makes federalism so very important — but its importance is derived.
Federalism is like a individual standing guard at Fort Knox. The security guard isn’t what’s valuable. The gold is what’s valuable. We wouldn’t even need the guard if the gold wasn’t valuable and human nature so corrupt that the gold is threatened. As a result, the guard becomes very important.
And Sen. Thompson’s sound bite was not compact. It was fairly long and rambling as he tried to find the trail of bread crumbs that would lead him back out of the forest into which he had wandered. He didn’t make it out of the woods. He kept stumbling through the maze until he arrived at a gingerbread house with a big sign over it that read: “The doctrine of federalism trumps the right to life.”
That said, I would prefer him to some of the other candidates.
Oh, it's definitely murder---but the murderer isn't the mother--it's the guy with the knife, saline syringe, vacuum suction, or whatever.
We don't throw 13-year olds in jail for killing already-born human beings...
If one believes abortion is an act of murder, one believe the punishment should fit the crime.
Fred's position is absurd. He would never call for the repeal of the 15th amendment, which forced states to allow all citizens regardless of race to vote. But, he doesn't think an amendment requiring all states to recognize the right to life of all citizens is something that should be forced on the states.
The polls show he has blown it. And, that is too bad because it likely leaves us those opposed to Giuliani with a choice of Romney or Huckabee.
You sound just like every pro-"choicer" I have ever debated.
If one is truly pro-life, one believes abortion is an act of murder.
And, the purpose of the criminal justice is enact punishment that deters the taking of innocent lives, just as virtually ever state in the union did before Roe.
Exactly. We generally don't throw 13-year olds in jail for killing adults.
Thompson is literally using the same arguments pro-abortion groups use.
And, he is a hypocrite. He would never support repealing countless Constitutional amendments that take power away from the states. Yet, doesn't believe the right to life for all human beings is worthy of Constitutional amendment.
“You would have to change 20 to 25 votes in the Senate,” says Osteen. “You’d have to replace 20 to 25 senators to pass an amendment even there. It takes two-thirds of both houses of Congress [and] three-fourths of the states to ratify [an amendment to the Constitutional], so it’s not practical to think that there would be a human life amendment passing Congress during the next presidential term — and of course, the president doesn’t have a vote.”
So the plan here is to attack Fred for something that won't be accomplished in the foreseeable future AND is out of his hands anyway, and all in support of a slippery governor of a liberal state with a 35 year pro-abortion history AND a convenient Road to Ames conversion.
THAT is the definition of sleazy.
But in a society that had outlawed abortion as murder, ignorance of the law would be no excuse.
Let’s see the Mitt folks try and leverage the really staunch Pro Lifers against Fred, then screw them over later because our guy has been solidly pro life BOTH in word AND deed for about 24 months longer than he has been an NRA member...
Not at all. I heard you loud and clear. This is not about what you believe. Its about your attempt to obfuscate what Fred said in the MTP interview.
Even after McGruff posted the relevant passage to you [#126], showing what Fred said in context concerning the abortion issue. You had the audacity to come back linking Fred to the abortionist Giuliani. You even had even more audacity to then link Fred with NARAL! Now that is a fabrication of the first order. Especially since we all know Fred received a "0" (zero) rating from NARAL when he was in the Senate.
You are a huge hypocrite! You're guy Mitt Romney is the candidate most like Rudy Giuliani. Again, Mitt Boy supported Roe v Wade as the law of the land and abortion on demand as a woman's Constitutional right. For 35 years, Romney had the record of an abortionist. In 2005 Romney made a decision to run for POTUS. He knew he'd have to change his tune on the abortion issue. What did Mitt do? He became pro-life. IMO, Mitt's act was a dynamic shift to achieve the highest elected office in the land.
Fred`s 100% pro-life voting record is all the evidence that conservatives require to see exactly where Fred stands on the abortion issue. His strong support for federalism is a huge plus on ALL the issues. Not only did the Founding Fathers support federalism, so did Ronald Reagan.
OTOH, Mitt Romney has never shown he's held the same position on any issue during his entire life. We need a principle individual to lead America. Conservative Fred Thompson would be my choice. Not someone like Mitt Romney who uses political expediency to advance his liberal-centrist political agenda.
I’m with you. I agree with Freds remarks, actually, and I am pro life with the only exception being to save the LIFE of the mother.
He hasn't said as much but, as has been mentioned, supporting a Right-to-Life amendment would compel the government to punish both the mother and her accomplices.
I actually favor Thompson's position on this over Romney's...but politics is a package deal and IMO Thompson falls short in too many other areas.
My beef is that I keep getting told abortion is murder, equal to and possibly worse than homicide. Yet, that claim is severely discredited and undermined when those same people will not support punishing the perpetrator of the murder. It shows me that they don't really believe in what they're getting all emotionally puffed up about.
I just want consistency...if you're pro-life and that's your single-issue, then if you had to choose between Thompson and Romney, you should be voting for Romney, as Romney supports a Right-to-Life amendment and Thompson doesn't.
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