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News

Is Herman Cain pro-life? What are Cain’s views on abortion and Planned Parenthood?

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(Video: Herman Cain’s speech at the 2011 National Right to Life Convention)

Let’s do analysis this in two parts: 1) what Cain says, and 2) what Cain does.

Life News explains what Cain said about abortion to Piers Morgan that confused people about his pro-life position.

As LifeNews.com reported, Cain gave an interview to CNN in which he used typical “pro-choice” language about government not making abortion decisions for women that applied, depending on the listener, to either abortions in the case of rape and incest or abortion policy in general. Either way, pro-life advocates have been disappointed today following the comments and they have called on Cain to clarify the comments — which he did in a short message on twitter later in the day saying he is “100% pro-life.”
The statement reads:

So, basically, Cain was saying that the lay of the land should be that abortion is illegal, and then women will have to get together with their families and decide whether they want to break the law or not, and that it was not Herman Cain’s job to be in that discussion. His job would come after in prosecuting the doctors who perform abortions, because he thinks that life begins at conception and the laws should reflect that commitment to protect the unborn.

Yesterday in an interview with Piers Morgan on CNN, I was asked questions about abortion policy and the role of the President.

I understood the thrust of the question to ask whether that I, as president, would simply “order” people to not seek an abortion. My answer was focused on the role of the President. The President has no constitutional authority to order any such action by anyone. That was the point I was trying to convey.
As to my political policy view on abortion, I am 100% pro-life. End of story.
I will appoint judges who understand the original intent of the Constitution. Judges who are committed to the rule of law know that the Constitution contains no right to take the life of unborn children.
I will oppose government funding of abortion. I will veto any legislation that contains funds for Planned Parenthood. I will do everything that a President can do, consistent with his constitutional role, to advance the culture of life.

Here are Cain’s exact comments:

“Whats your view of abortion?” Morgan asks Cain in the interview.

“I believe that life begins at conception and abortion under no circumstances. And here’s why,” Cain said before Morgan interrupted him and asked, “No circumstances?” to which the presidential candidate replied, “No circumstances.”

Morgan told Cain that that sets him apart from many other Republican candidates who are pro-life but also believe in exceptions such as rape or incest or the life of the mother. He continued by asking Cain if he would want his daughter or granddaughter, if raped, to keep the baby — which Cain said “was mixing two things.”

“It’s not the government’s role, or anybody else’s role to make that decision,” Cain responded. “Secondly, if you look at the statistical incidence, you’re not talking about that big a number. So what I’m saying is, it ultimately gets down to a choice that that family or that mother has to make. Not me as president. Not some politician, not a bureaucrat. It gets down to that family, and whatever they decide, they decide. I shouldn’t have to tell them what decision to make for such a sensitive issue.”

Morgan told Cain that his views on the question of abortion are important because he may very well become president someday and turn into public policy.

“Not they don’t,” Cain said of his views becoming law. “I can have an opinion on an issue without it being a directive on the nation. The government shouldn’t be trying to tell people everything to do, especially when it comes to a social decision that they need to make.”

Cain finished by saying he agreed with Morgan that his view is a departure from the political norm.

Cain’s view is that the government should prohibit abortion, and then you should be left free to decide whether to comply with the law.

Cain’s position reminds me of a famous story about the British in India, who were opposed to the Hindu practice of suttee/sati which involves burning widows on the funeral pyre of their husbands. Sir Charles Napier responded to the Hindu custom as follows:

“Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.”

( Napier, William. (1851) History Of General Sir Charles Napier’s Administration Of Scinde, p.35)

That’s exactly what Cain’s position was, although I think that he would enforce the prohibition on abortion by fining or jailing the doctor who performed the abortion, and eventually the practice would stop, because there would be no money in it. Abortion is all about the money. When you take away the money, people stop providing abortions.

Cain’s pro-life record

What has Cain done for the pro-life cause with his own money? Life News explains.

Excerpt:

With the balance of power in Congress hanging in the air, a leading African American businessman says black voters in the United States should put their historical pro-life values above political party. That means voting for pro-life candidates rather than supporting Democratic candidates across the board.

Herman Cain is best known as the former chairman and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza. He is a political commentator and was a candidate for the U.S. Senate.

“More and more African Americans are pro-life,” Cain said in a statement LifeNews.com obtained. “Our message to African Americans is simple — it’s time you vote for candidates who support our values.”

Cain will underscore that message with a $1 million advertising campaign in key states and congressional districts targeting black radio programs and urban radio stations young African Americans enjoy. Some of the ads focus on abortion.

But there’s more to his pro-life record than just giving up a million dollars of his own money. He is a pro-life activist.

What has Cain done with pro-life groups? Life News explains.

Excerpt:

The National Right to Life Committee is today vouching for Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain’s bona fides, saying the businessman who is considered by many to be the current GOP frontrunner is pro-life.

NRLC’s comments come after a 48-hour period during which Cain has confused pro-life voters where he stands — by first using seemingly pro-abortion language saying government should have no involvement before finally clarifying he is pro-life and saying he wants abortions illegal.

“Herman Cain’s pro-life,” David O’Steen, executive director of the National Right to Life Committee, told National Review. “He addressed our convention last June. We are quite confident in his pro-life position. When he ran in the primary for senate some years back … he ran as a pro-life candidate then in Georgia. We’ve known of him for a number of years, and he’s always taken a pro-life position.”

At that event, Cain, the former businessman and candidate, said the “Founding fathers got it right” including the right to life from conception.

“Don’t infringe on the rights of somebody else and that includes the unborn,” Cain said of what the Constitution requires.

Cain spent most of his time talking about the moral crisis and lack of God in the cultural conversations in America, saying, “We’ve got a moral crisis in this nation. One of the reasons we have this moral crisis today is because too many people are trying to take God out of our culture, little by little.”

“Those that believe taking the life of the unborn is a choice has gotten away from the Godly principles,” he said. “The way we’re going to protect the unborn in this nation is to work on the right problem, get God back in our culture.”

Cain said pro-life advocates must change hearts and then minds will follow and he urged pro-life advocates to do more to promote the work of pregnancy centers.

“Let young women know about alternatives to these so-called Planned Parenthood facilities. We have to inform and educate people and let them know about resources like the one in Dallas Texas where I visited called the Source for Women. When young women show up there, the first option isn’t getting an abortion, the first option is counseling to show these young ladies the alternatives to abortion,” he said.

Herman Cain’s opposition to Planned Parenthood is quite strong. Life News explains.

Excerpt:

During a presentation before a set of conservative bloggers in the nation’s capital today, likely Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, a pro-life businessman, bashed the Planned Parenthood abortion business — which went after him in return.

Cain said he supports revoking the federal taxpayer funding for the abortion business: “I support de-funding Planned Parenthood. “Tactically how [Congress] does it…I can’t tell you.”

The African-American then went further and talked about the racial overtones behind the founding of the abortion business by Margaret Sanger.

“You probably don’t hear a lot of people talking about this,” Cain said.  “When Margaret Sanger – check my history – started Planned Parenthood, the objective was to put these centers in primarily black communities so they could help kill black babies before they came into the world.”

“It’s planned genocide. It’s carrying out its original mission,” he said. “I’ve talked to young girls who go in there, and they don’t talk about how you plan parenthood.  They don’t talk about adoption as an option.  They don’t say, ‘Well, bring your parents in so we can sit down and talk with you, and counsel with you before you make this decision.’”

[…]In January, Cain also went after Planned Parenthood.

He told American Family Radio’s “Focal Point” program that he is pro-life and opposes the agenda of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s biggest abortion business.

“I absolutely would defund Planned Parenthood — not because I don’t believe in planning parenthood, [but because] Planned Parenthood as an organization is an absolute farce on the American people,” he said.

Cain, who is African-American, accused the abortion business of engaging in a racist agenda.

“People who know the history of Margaret Sanger, who started Planned Parenthood, they know that the intention was not to help young women who get pregnant to plan their parenthood. No — it was a sham to be able to kill black babies,” he added.

Cain also talked about his pro-life views in general and alluded to judicial appointments.

“I believe that life begins at conception, period. And that means that I will have to see enough evidence that someone I would appoint shares that same view. I believe that the current Supreme Court is leaning too much to the liberal side,” he said. “I’m a Christian, I’ve been a Christian all my life. I’ve been a believer in the Bible since I was 10 years old. I’m very active in my church, and there is no way I would compromise my religious beliefs about the sanctity of life. And so it starts with, will they have demonstrated in their career, in some of their other rulings, if they come from the federal judge bench, whether or not they also share that.”

“Because I believe that the principles that our Founding Fathers cherished, when they founded this country, and wrote the Declaration of Independence which inspired the Constitution, they were based upon biblical principles. I want to get back to those principles as president, if I run and get elected — not rewrite those documents,” he added.

I do think that Cain needs to be challenged now rather than later to clarify his views and to increase his knowledge. He has a year to do it before the election. Right now he is leading Romney in the national polls, and that’s good, because Mitt Romney’s record has been pro-abortion since 1994 and Mitt Romney refused to sign a pro-life pledge. So, if we have to pick a nominee in 2012, we have to pick Herman Cain over Mitt Romney. But Cain needs to improve his thinking and speaking on pro-life issues to prevent gaffes from occurring that make people think that he isn’t pro-life. His previous words were pro-life, his allies are pro-life, and more importantly, his previous record has been pro-life – right up to use a million dollars to support pro-life causes.

Commentary

Ohio Issue 2: Should voters vote yes or vote no on Ohio State Issue 2?

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In the 2010 mid-term elections, Republican John Kasich won the governorship and promised to balance the state’s budget by reining in the state’s spending on salaries and benefits for public sector union employees. To accomplish this, the Ohio legislature pass Senate Bill 5. However, an effort is on the ballot to repeal the law, and Ohio voters will get a chance to keep or scrap the law on Tuesday, November 8th, 2011.

Here’s what Ohio’s Issue 2 is all about:

Issue 2 makes some very fair and common sense requests of our government employees to give local communities the flexibility they need to get taxes and spending under control, while providing the essential services that we rely on.

  • It allows an employee’s job performance to be considered when determining compensation, rather than just awarding automatic pay increases based only on an employee’s length of service.
  • It asks that government employees pay at least 15 percent of the cost of their health insurance premium.  That’s less than half of what private sector workers are currently paying.
  • It requires that government health care benefits apply equally to all government employees, whether they work in management or non-management positions.  No special favors.
  • It asks our government employees to pay their own share of a generous pension contribution, rather than forcing taxpayers to pay both the employee and employer shares.
  • It keeps union bosses from protecting bad teachers and stops the outdated practice of laying off good teachers first just because they haven’t served long enough.
  • Finally, it preserves collective bargaining for government employees, but it also returns some basic control of our schools and services to the taxpayers who fund them, not the union bosses who thrive on their mismanagement.

Even under the reforms of State Issue 2, Ohio’s government employees will still receive better pay, better health care and better retirement benefits, on average, than the vast majority of Ohioans who work in the private sector.

There are a number of myths going around about Issue 2, and it’s important to set the record straight, so I’ll do that below.

Ohio Average Pay: Public vs. Private
Ohio Average Pay: Public Unions vs. Private

Myths and truths about Ohio State Issue 2

Here’s a common myth:

State Issue 2 would “cut salaries and benefits.”

The truth:

Issue 2 would not cut salaries or benefits for any government employee. Employees would simply be asked to pay a modest share of their benefits, just like employees in the private sector do. For health care coverage, they would pay at least 15% of their overall plan. (Many local government employees currently pay less than 9% of their health care premium, while the average private sector worker pays upwards of 30%.) In addition, employees would be required to pay their personal share of a retirement plan (only 10%), rather than asking taxpayers to pay that share. That’s not too much to ask at a time when many private sector workers get no retirement benefit at all. Finally, Issue 2 requires that benefits apply equally to all public employees, so no one gets special treatment.

And another common myth:

State Issue 2 will eliminate government employee pensions.

The truth:

Government employees will still get a very generous pension benefit – an annual payment that averages their three highest annual salaries. That’s a pretty nice deal, when many private sector workers get no retirement benefit at all. State Issue 2 only ends a practice where some government union contracts require taxpayers to pick up the tab for BOTH the employer AND employee shares of a required pension contribution. In this economy, it’s simply not right to ask struggling taxpayers to foot the bill so government employees can get a free retirement. Issue 2 simply says government employees should pay their required share (10 percent) and taxpayers will contribute the employer share (14 percent).

Another myth:

State Issue 2 will cut teacher salaries.

The truth:

That’s one of the scare tactics government unions are using to turn people against these reforms. Nothing in Issue 2 determines salary levels. It only ends the practice of handing out automatic pay raises, or “step” increases, and longevity pay – or bonuses just for holding the job for a certain period of time. Issue 2 also asks that performance be added as a factor in teacher compensation, a goal President Barack Obama set out in his national education policy in 2009.

And another myth:

State Issue 2 will cost jobs

The truth:

Just the opposite is true. Ohio’s state and local tax burden ranks among the top third in the nation. As a result, companies large and small have left our state in pursuit of better tax incentives elsewhere, taking hundreds of thousands of jobs with them. If Ohio hopes to compete for new job growth, we have to make our state a more affordable place to live, work and do business. That starts with getting the cost of government under control so we can direct more of our limited resources into economic development, community revitalization and better schools.

More myths are corrected on this page.

Newspaper endorsements

So far, Issue 2 has been endorsed by several Ohio newspapers, including the biggest ones.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer:

The fiscal picture of local governments and school districts, especially, will improve as they are able to right-size their work forces and their expenditures on services. That will happen over time, not overnight, as new contracts are established.

Repeal SB 5, though, and it’s going to be awfully hard for local governments to manage their payrolls without resorting to larger-scale layoffs than would otherwise be necessary. And local governments will continue to be hamstrung by anti-merit seniority rules that lead to worker complacency and protect dead weight and time-servers.

Voting YES on Issue 2 will prevent layoffs by keeping public sector wages and benefits in line with what the private sector can afford to pay.

The Columbus Dispatch:

Despite the insistence of opponents, the effort to reform Ohio’s out-of-balance collective-bargaining law is not an expression of disrespect for or dissatisfaction with Ohio teachers, police officers, firefighters and other government employees. It is a much-needed attempt to restore control over public spending to the public officials elected to exercise that control.

It does not assert that public employees are worth less than the compensation they’re receiving, only that the compensation has grown faster than the public’s ability to pay for it.

[…]With more ability to control the escalation of salary and benefit costs, governments won’t be forced as often to impose layoffs, and might be able to afford to keep even more police and firefighters on the streets.

Again, no one is saying that public sector workers don’t matter – the question is whether we can afford to give them better wages and benefits than the private sector workers who are their customers and their employers. Public sector workers work for the public, and the public can only afford to pay so much.

Conclusion

Government employees are paid 43% more than private sector employees, in salary and benefits:

I think that people who care about the long-term prosperity of Ohio should vote “YES” on Issue 2 to make public and private salaries and benefits MORE EQUAL. Ohio is facing enormous economic pressure from the global recession, and everyone has to make sacrifices. Now is not the time for public sector workers to insist on higher wages and benefits, especially when the private sector workers who pay their salaries don’t make as much money, nor do they get the pensions, nor do they get the better job security. Ohio voters can certainly go back and renegotiate union salaries and benefits when Ohio is out of the recession.

Click here to learn more about Ohio Issue 2.

News

Mitt Romney on global warming, climate change, environmental regulations

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An alarming article from the Washington Examiner about Mitt Romney’s environmental regulations on business.

Excerpt:

Make no mistake, if Mitt Romney secures the nomination, the Tea Party almost assuredly suffers a mortal wound.  As Newt Gingrich just said, while Romney is an exceptionally nice person and a very hard worker, he is also a Rockefeller Republican.

As their standard bearer going into battle with Barack Obama next fall, do Republican primary voters really want the person who drew up the blueprint for Obama-care?

Worse, do Republican primary voters really want the person who the out-of-control job and freedom killing Obama EPA looked to for some of its most draconian ideas?

As reported in the conservative blogs Moonbattery and HOTAIR; “the Romney administration in 2005 essentially did what Barack Obama’s EPA wants to do now.  He imposed CO2 emission caps — the “toughest in the nation” — in an effort to curtail traditional energy production.

“Not only did Romney impose these costly new regulations, he then imposed price caps to keep power companies from passing the cost along to the consumer.  As we have seen in Romney-Care, regulation and price controls eventually drive businesses into bankruptcy or relocation.”

More chilling than that bit of socialist nanny-state big government interference is who Romney looked to for advice regarding the plan.   As reported by these two conservative sites, it was none other than Obama’s Chief “science” adviser, John Holdren.

Are you kidding me?  Is anyone in the GOP paying attention to what is going on here?  Is the Republican establishment so desperate to hold on to its power that it will continually look the other way as a chameleon-like candidate not only dreams up the ideas used by far-left Obama White House, but praises one of the people most reviled by the conservative movement?

With regard to this subject, then-Gov. Romney’s office trumpeted its energy and job-killing plan by saying in part: “Today’s regulations will achieve our aggressive environmental goals and provide incentives to push technological development,” said Stephen Pritchard, Secretary of Environmental Affairs.

“In the development of greenhouse gas policy, Romney Administration officials have elicited input from environmental and economic policy experts.

“These include John Holdren,professor of environmental policy at Harvard University and chair of the NationalCommission on Energy Policy and Billy Pizer, an economist at Resources for the Future, anenvironmental policy think-tank based in Washington D.C”

Again, is anyone paying attention to these surreal, anything but conservative, facts?

Governor Romney’s office then closed the memo by proudly stating:

“Implementing these regulations represents the latest in a series of initiatives that theRomney administration has undertaken to address air pollution.

“In 2004, Governor Romney announced the Massachusetts Climate Protection Plan, which laid out acoordinated statewide response to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the climate.”

You can’t make this up.  Something that sounds as if it was drafted in the bowels of the Obama EPA was actually part of a memo released with great fan-fare by Governor Romney on December 7, 2005.

Do you remember who John Holdren is? Let me help.

Excerpt:

President Obama’s “science czar,” John Holdren, once floated the idea of forced abortions, “compulsory sterilization,” and the creation of a “Planetary Regime” that would oversee human population levels and control all natural resources as a means of protecting the planet — controversial ideas his critics say should have been brought up in his Senate confirmation hearings.

[…]…many of Holdren’s radical ideas on population control were not brought up at his confirmation hearings; it appears that the senators who scrutinized him had no knowledge of the contents of a textbook he co-authored in 1977, “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment,” a copy of which was obtained by FOXNews.com.The 1,000-page course book, which was co-written with environmental activists Paul and Anne Ehrlich, discusses and in one passage seems to advocate totalitarian measures to curb population growth, which it says could cause an environmental catastrophe.

The three authors summarize their guiding principle in a single sentence: “To provide a high quality of life for all, there must be fewer people.”

As first reported by FrontPage Magazine, Holdren and his co-authors spend a portion of the book discussing possible government programs that could be used to lower birth rates.

Those plans include forcing single women to abort their babies or put them up for adoption; implanting sterilizing capsules in people when they reach puberty; and spiking water reserves and staple foods with a chemical that would make people sterile.

To help achieve those goals, they formulate a “world government scheme” they call the Planetary Regime, which  would administer the world’s resources and human growth, and they discuss the development of an “armed international organization, a global analogue of a police force” to which nations would surrender part of their sovereignty.

Is that what Mitt Romney believes, too? It would be consistent with his other liberal views.

Click here to learn more about Mitt Romney’s political views on abortion, gay rights, health care, gun control and other issues.