Posted on 09/22/2002 4:24:36 PM PDT by madprof98
There's the probability of war in Iraq. Public education is wrestling with failure. Government spending, especially at the state and federal levels, is once again veering out of control. And vigilance is required, lest Congress snatch back the little tax relief it has "temporarily" granted.
Terrorism. The economy. Homeland security. All require our attention.
But on the right and left of the Republican and the Democratic parties, nothing is more riveting, more compelling, more consuming, than abortion.
In Georgia, right-to-lifers apply a litmus test to Republicans that virtually guarantees complying candidates will lose in the general election.
On the national level, special-interest groups such as the National Abortion Rights Action League have taken the Democratic Party hostage, virtually guaranteeing that access to the federal judiciary will be denied to those who fail the litmus test compliant Democrats allow them to impose.
The Senate Judiciary Committee, for example, is a national institution on loan to single-issue ideologues. The 10 Democrats who control the committee vote as one in rejecting judicial candidates who are not blindly obedient to the agenda of out-of-the-mainstream special-interest groups.
Democrats, like Republicans, have a serious internal problem with abortion ideologues. In Georgia, right-to-lifers insisted that candidates it endorsed swear to a single exception: life of the mother.
Reasonable people, including conservatives who generally side with them, agree that women who were violated should not be forced to bear the eternal reminder of their victimization. The real threat to the values right-to-lifers hold is not the rape-and-incest loophole, anyway. It's "health" of the mother, an exception that eviscerates any proposed limitations. So in actual and political terms, right-to-lifers in Georgia are fighting the wrong battle, which is their prerogative.
Both parties, frankly, need some spine in dealing with abortion fanatics. In the U.S. Senate, the nomination of a superbly qualified jurist, Priscilla Owen, a justice on the Texas Supreme Court, was defeated 10-9 by the single-agenda extremists.
The only basis for opposing her was that in interpreting a vague law passed by the Texas Legislature on parental notification, she had given hint that she was not rigidly attuned to pro-choice religion.
Judiciary Committee Democrats were therefore instructed to deny her access to the full Senate, where her nomination to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals would have been approved.
A replay occurred last week involving law professor Michael McConnell of Utah, a nominee to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. McConnell, 47, is considered by his peers to be a brilliant legal thinker.
Despite conservative views on abortion, he told the committee, which has yet to vote, "I will conscientiously enforce the law, including laws and precedents I don't agree with," specifically agreeing to uphold Roe v. Wade.
In his view, though, "If the courts would get out of the business of regulating abortion, most legislatures would pass laws reflecting the moderate views of the great majority."
So we have zealots on the right convinced that the tiniest exception will start the hordes marching to abortion clinics and zealots on the left convinced that anybody who disagrees with them should be trashed, lest Roe v. Wade be compromised. Fanatics the both.
And all the while deserving judicial nominees and the "moderate views of the great majority" are kept hostage.
Jim Wooten is the associate editorial page editor. His column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays.
I'm just saying that both sides have been terribly destructive to thisnation.
Both pro-life and pro-choice people are guilty of polarizing national politics to the point of damaging the nation.
I've never trusted this exception because just like "if the life of the mother is in danger" exception, it will be the "word of the patient and her doctor". And you have it right - the "pro-choice" side will insists that the claim of rape or incest is enough to invoke the exeption - guaranteed(for the exact reason you point out - woman would have given birth before it went to trial).
But I'm sure the Libertarians can save us pro-lifers from ourselves.
You're a nutcase, if you think folks who try to prevent the murder of the innocent are somehow harming this country. You would have called abolitionists a danger to our country 140 years ago, by your flawed logic.
Respectfually....
Three of the last four Libertarian nominees for President openly called for the Repeal of Roe vs. Wade (Paul '88, Browne '96, Browne '00). The lone pro-abortionist "sore thumb" was Marrou '92. And I didn't vote for him, neither, so I'm washin' my hands on that one.
Your fight is not with Libertarians, Polycarp. If Libertarians were judged by the same standards as Republicans (that is, treating the milquetoast "abortion in case of exceptions" -- rape, incest, first trimester in case of "health", etc -- as though they are "Pro-Lifers"), then surveys will demonstrate that more than half of the Libertarian Party are "Pro-Life".
Of course, I will willingly admit that only maybe one-third of Libertarians are Principled Pro-Lifers who take an uncompromising Pro-Life stance on the basis of ETHICS, not transient poll-data... but then, isn't that also true of Republicans?
You just made my point for me, do you really think that the abortion issue is worth a civil war in this country?
Somebody needs to save this nation from pro-lifers and pro-choicers.
The last Three out of Four libertarians Party nominees for President have been willing to turn the matter over to the States (Paul '88, Browne '96, and Browne '00), advocating a Full Repeal of Roe versus Wade.
If thise sounds insufficiently "pro-life" to any anti-abortionist, I would remind them that the Founders of our Nation remanded the definition and enforcement of Murder Law unto the sovereign jurisdiction of the States. And if Abortion is anything, it is certainly Murder.
Roe vs. Wade is an Unconstitutional abrogation of State Common Law on the subject of State Murder Law. It should be rescinded immediately as a Federal USURPATION of the Rights of the States.
If "Roe" were rescinded today, at least 40 States would be Pro-Life -- TOMORROW.
And if, under a regimen of State Sovereignty, we saw that California and New York decided to permit the Murder of Unborn Children...
...Then in that case I have Faith in the Governor of the World to judge the States, but spare the Nation.
California, New York, and the other Pro-Abortion States can burn in the Lake of Fire, for all I care.
The Remnant marches on.
Would that our nation, the nation that espouses the right to life as an unalienable right, would that our nation embrace life from conception to grave. We don't, and in fact a large portion of our sovereign electorate doesn't even want to face the horror of abortion on demand and wholesale serial killing occurring every day in abortuaries. Renewal isn't gonna happen quickly, short of a holocaust that wipes out so many Americans that every one possible to be born will be precious! Sorry, this nation will have to climb back out of the abyss of selfishness, making huge changes to many social, political, and financial institutional means in order to become a nation that embraces life fully.
So, what can we do?... Fight the battles, to win the war. A beachhead has been established, with the born alive infants protection act. Not a political beachhead, an awakening to the reality of the heinous state we've sunk to, where too many little ones are now(or were) forced into premature delivery, to be left to struggle and die of suffocation or be drowned by an abortion serial killer so that the body parts can be quickly harvested for fetal tissue research! The war is for the hearts of our fellow Americans, and in the series of battles which we must win to protect more and more of the helpless, most innocent, we will have to bring along the growing consciousness of our fellow human beings who now haven't a clue. Consider what a huge impact the 4-D ultrasound is having already; gradually, common citizens are realizing that what they see in the video of that pre-born individual human being is fair game for willful slaughter at the whim of the one giving life support; often pregnancies are terminated more for willful ignorance and evil obfuscation than for blood lust. That can only be changed by choice. Yes, choice. Individual hearts must become alive again, to face the truth of the current holocaust, the sanctioned serial killing, in order to choose life not killing. And when a woman or girl chooses life over complicity in murder, we the people must put our wallets where our mouths have been, to give the support to her and >u>pay the embrace of this new individual human being we say is so precious.
ABSOULTLY!! As the old saying goes Talk is cheap.
How many abortions have the "all or nothing" wing of the Right to Life movement actually stopped via legislation? My answer - none. So far as I recall, no one has ever been able to offer up a regulatory statute which stayed within the bounds of Roe v. Wade - because the Right to Life movement insists on drawing up and passing the impermissible every time.
Banning late term PBAs was in reach - but blown because of the language insisted on. Second trimester abortions could easily be regulated as well, but as always, there are blown opportunities.
People, there has to be some reality recognized here - this is not an instant process.
Baby steps, folks.
Toss in revocation of the 2nd amendment and a few other leftist wet dreams and I'm enlisting.
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