Posted on 11/20/2011 5:15:41 PM PST by xzins
A day after Michele Bachmann’s campaign attacks Newt Gingrich’s record on abortion, the Gingrich campaign e-mails this account of Gingrich’s record:
Newt Gingrich has consistently upheld a pro-life standard. He had a consistent pro-life voting record throughout his twenty years in Congress, including his four years as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Gingrich pledges to uphold this consistent pro-life standard as president. Gingrich’s consistent pro-life standard is reflected by the following:
1. 98.6% Lifetime Pro-Life Rating from the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC). For the 20 years that Gingrich served in Congress (1979-1999), Gingrich supported the pro-life position in 70 out of 71 votes. (In the one instance that he did not take the NRLC position, it was because the NRLC opposed an early 1995 version of welfare reform because it changed certain welfare payments for mothers with children; NRLC did not oppose the final version of Gingrich’s welfare reform passed in 1996)
2. Supported the Hyde Amendment. Gingrich consistently voted for the Hyde amendment and other bans on government funding of abortions.
3. Partial Birth Abortion Ban. During Gingrich’s tenure as Speaker, the House of Representatives twice passed legislation banning partial birth abortions. President Clinton vetoed this legislation both times. Finally, a partial birth abortion ban was signed into law in 2003. The legislative effort to ban partial birth abortions had a very positive impact increasing pro-life support in the United States.
4. Signed the Susan B. Anthony List Pro-Life Leadership Presidential Pledge. In June 2011, Gingrich signed the SBA List Pro-Life Leadership Presidential pledge in which Gingrich pledges to the American people that if elected President he will (i) only nominate judges to the Supreme Court and federal judiciary who are committed to restraint and applying the original meaning of the Constitution, and not legislating from the bench (ii) select pro-life appointees for relevant executive branch positions, (iii) advance pro-life legislation to permanently end all taxpayer funding of abortion in all domestic and international spending programs, (iv) defund Planned Parenthood; and (v) advance and sign into law a Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act to protect unborn children who are capable of feeling pain from abortion.
5. Pledges to Sign Two Pro-life Executive Orders on the first day of a Gingrich Administration.
i. “Mexico City Policy” of Respect for Life. Reauthorize President Ronald Reagan’s policy – also known as the “Mexico City Policy”— to stop the federal funding of any non-governmental agencies or charities that perform or promote abortions in foreign countries.
ii. Respect the Beliefs and Integrity of Healthcare Workers. No American working in a medical environment should be forced to perform any action or procedure that he or she finds morally or ethically objectionable. This protection should include, but not be limited to, abortion and sterilization procedures. Existing conscience clause protections need to be strengthened.
It is pointless, when you continue to ignore the principled logic that our entire form of government and our claim to liberty rest upon.
A self defeating curse too many FReepers suffer from.
Tactics the science of securing an objective set by a strategy.
Strategy the overall planning for achieving a goal.
We win wars because we remember what the goal is and use every tactic possible to achieve it. We want to end abortion (goal/objective). We will seek to defund abortion mills (tactic) in the process making it harder to find a place to get an abortion (strategy). While the purists fight for the "perfect" solution to end abortion (our common goal) their tactic of not supporting small strategic steps because they aren't "perfect" causes nothing to happen and the pro-abortion forces continue to win.
We see this problem in resolving illegal immigration, fiscal issues and foreign policy. In a nutshell pursuit of the perfect kills the good tactical move.
At that time, those who sat on the sidelines and rejected every incremental step will be correctly seen to be complicit in the deaths of many of the unborn.
Your argument falls apart in light of the fact that the compromised tactics you’re defending simply don’t work. We have about forty years worth of proof of that.
You reap what you sow. It’s always been true, and it always will be.
It's the biggest problem FR has in my opinion.
"The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a 'person' within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment."-- Justice Harry A. Blackmun, Roe vs. Wade, 1973
But when you codify the killing of what you have already identified, correctly, as a person, you are incrementally moving two giant steps further towards utter barbarism, not towards the stopping of the slaughter.
I am sorry I was trying to agree.
Every action that changes a heart and makes the correct position understood helps to promote the defense of the rights of the unborn. For far too long we have played political games, and conceded the ground of prolife means anti-abortion. Bachmann going after Gingrich serves nothing.
Bachmann provides no leadership here. Romney provides no leadership. I am sad to say, they all fall short. Until you put the question in terms even a liberal can understand, the right of life for every person, the task is much harder.
Every question must be framed in terms of securing the freedom of the unborn to life, I am not happy with the mincing of words in terms of “feeling pain”, but I am sure the children who survive will not regard the distinction as important.
Incremental approaches must continue, but we must also drive home the central issue. Bachmann does neither.
No need to apologize; I understood you were trying to agree. I was referncing the insistence by freeper, Eternal Vigilance, that saving lives is a violation of the principles of our history. I just don’t understand that argument.
Any strategy which fails to recognize this and to act appropriately is going nowhere.
There are lots of unconstitutional things which our government does. The government does them because a sufficient majority of the population either supports those unconstitutional acts, or is indifferent. Until those minds are changed, the acts will continue.
You can’t understand because you don’t realize that the legislation in question doesn’t save lives. It can’t, because it abandons the core American principles which argue against allowing killing certain classes of people, and thereby assures the continuation of abortion on demand.
It’s wrong, and it doesn’t work.
Evil may seem like it works for a short season, but over the long haul, it doesn’t.
Simply doing what is right may seem impractical in the short run, but in the long run it always works.
You reap what you sow. That’s the way God made the world.
My complaint, EV, is that I think you are not making the connection that explains why saving lives now violates the principles of our country.
I believe that life is sacred from conception onward. I believe in equality under the law. I believe the constitution addresses the unborn with its use of the word “posterity” in the preamble.
All of those things are dear to me.
I also think it’s good to save lives through any legislative means that I can.
HOW does my saving that life violate those principles above? That’s the reasoning I don’t understand.
I think so to. Part of the process is educating people that their moral view is incorrect.
If those who call themselves Christians in this country would simply recommit themselves to enforcing the first principles of the republic, without compromise, the practice of child-killing in America would come to a speedy end.
If they won't? It won't. And, in that case, there is no hope for the republic.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..."-- The Declaration of Independence
"[T]he Declaration of Independence is the RINGBOLT to the chain of your nation's destiny; so, indeed, I regard it. The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles, be true to them on all occasions, in. all places, against all foes, and at whatever cost. From the round top of your ship of state, dark and threatening clouds may be seen. Heavy billows, like mountains in the distance, disclose to the leeward huge forms of flinty rocks! That bolt drawn, that chain, broken, and all is lost. Cling to this day-cling to it, and to its principles, with the grasp of a storm-tossed mariner to a spar at midnight."
"God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever."
-- Thomas Jefferson
We see this all the time. If conservatives are going to win the day and save this country we need to be willing to take small steps. The one issue I won't waver on is Pro-Life. I will not vote for any candidate that is not Pro-Life. However, if the candidate is for exceptions such as incest and rape I may not agree but I will support them because we can move one step closer to the goal. It's called being realistic and seeing the bigger goal. I often get accused of being a rino because of this type of thinking, but if you look at how much the purists have accomplished I think I'm in good company.
It doesn’t save lives. That’s the practical outcome.
But that is a utilitarian argument, not a moral or a constitutional one.
Morally, you have an obligation to protect the lives of all.
Constitutionally, you have an obligation to protect the lives of all.
Once you’ve abandoned that first principle of the republic, upon which everything else depends, every supposedly pragmatic argument you make is a self-delusion.
It’s as if you were a soldier who stripped himself bare, threw away all of his weapons and ammo, and then walked into Afghanistan all by himself proclaiming that he was going to kill all the Taliban and “save some lives.”
Again, sans the self-evident natural law truth of the Declaration and the imperative assertion of equality for all in the protection of God-given, unalienable rights of all, you’ve got nothing. No defense. No offensive weapons. Nothing. The Left just laughs at you and goes right on killing thousands of babies every day.
That's funny, considering the fact that the "impurists" have been in charge for decades.
You're advocating "small steps" of compromise with the killing of certain classes of innocent persons. Let's be clear.
See ya round, EV. Have a great Thanksgiving.
Yep. You too.
I see it more like you’re a special forces team in Afghanistan saving lives on a special behind the lines mission.
But, you are part of an army that is fighting a war.
Saving those lives does not injure that war effort.
So, I still don’t understand how “saving lives + working for change” violates the principles of due process, equality, equal protection, etc.
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