Tag Archives: Pro-Abortion

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Scott Klusendorf: Five questions for pro-life candidates

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Pro-lifer Scott Klusendorf on pro-life issues and candidate selection. (H/T Scott)

Summary:

In 2008, a handful of notable pro-life evangelicals and Catholics threw their support behind a presidential candidate sworn to uphold elective abortion as a fundamental right. They argued that doing so constituted an enlightened pro-life vote that was morally superior to the narrow party politics of religious conservatives. Instead of passing laws against abortion, so the argument went, the candidate and his party would “reduce” it by addressing its underlying causes.1 True, he was mistaken on abortion, but he was right on other, important “whole-of-life” issues such as opposition to war, concern for the poor, and care for the environment. The candidate’s political strategy was simple: shrink the significance of abortion so it was more or less equal with other issues.2

It worked. Twice as many white evangelicals age eighteen through forty-four voted for Barack Obama in 2008 than voted for John Kerry in 2004. Catholics, meanwhile, supported Obama at fifty-four percent, up seven points from what they gave Kerry four years earlier. The candidate got just enough pro-life votes from these groups to tip the election his way.3

I submit that each of these alleged pro-life votes represents a profound misunderstanding of the pro-life position. The fundamental issue before us is not merely how to reduce abortion, but who counts as one of us. How we answer will determine whether embryos and fetuses enjoy the protection of law or remain candidates for the dumpster. As Francis Beckwith points out, a society that has fewer abortions but protects the legal killing of unborn humans is still deeply immoral.4 Given what’s at stake, it’s vital that pro-life Christians persuasively answer five key questions before the 2012 election

He makes 5 points in the article.

Here’s point #4:

4. Instead of passing laws against abortion, shouldn’t pro-life Christians focus on reducing its underlying causes?

First and foremost, the abortion debate turns on the question of human equality. That is, in a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, do the unborn count as members of the human family? With that fundamental question in mind, it’s unreasonable for liberals to insist that pro-lifers surrender the legal fight to focus on underlying causes. As my colleague Steve Weimar points out, this is like saying the “underlying cause” of spousal abuse is psychological, so instead of making it illegal for husbands to beat their wives, the solution is to provide counseling for men. There are “underlying causes” for rape, murder, theft, and so on, but that in no way makes it misguided to have laws banning such actions.8

Moreover, why are liberals even concerned about reducing the number of abortions in the first place? If destroying a human fetus is morally no different than cutting one’s fingernails, then who cares how many abortions there are? The reason to reduce elective abortion is that human life is unjustly taken-but if that’s the case, then restricting the practice makes perfect sense. Imagine a nineteenth-century lawmaker who said that slavery was a bad idea and we ought to reduce it, but owning slaves should remain legal. If those in power adopted his thinking, would this be a good society? True, politics isn’t a sufficient answer to injustice, but it’s certainly a necessary one. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, “The law can’t make the white man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me.”9 Frankly, if Christians don’t think the government-sanctioned killing of unborn children merits a political response, then they not only misunderstand the moral gravity of the situation, but also their mandate to love their neighbor as themselves.

Underlying causes talk reminds me of how liberals, once in power, push contraception as a way of preventing unwanted pregnancy. The numbers from the UK show that this is like throwing gasoline on a fire – the number of abortions just goes up because contraception is not foolproof,  and it just normalizes sex all the more.

Point #5 is really worth reading, but too long to excerpt here.

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News

Does Mitt Romney’s Romneycare health care plan fund abortion with taxpayer dollars?

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Fred Thompson made the point about Romneycare and abortion during the 2008 campaign, and Politifact agreed with Fred’s charge against Romney.

Excerpt:

Fred Thompson’s campaign is trying to take the much-touted health insurance program that Mitt Romney helped create as governor of Massachusetts and turn it into a liability with conservative Republican voters who dominate the party’s primary elections.

The Thompson campaign, which has been playing up the former U.S. senator’s antiabortion stances, sent out this e-mail in November 2007:

“So what sort of services does Romney’s health care plan provide? Per the state Web site: $50 co-pay for abortions.

“While court mandate requires Massachusetts to cover ‘medically necessary’ abortions in state-subsidized health plans, Mitt Romney’s plan covers ALL abortions — no restrictions.”

And it’s true.

One of the crowning moments of Mitt Romney’s tenure as governor of Massachusetts was the creation of Commonwealth Care, a state-run, state-subsidized health insurance program for people making up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level. Although private insurers provide the coverage, the state helps pay the bills and determines what services must be covered.

That list includes abortion. And the co-pay is indeed $50.

Romney has recently sought to distance himself from some details of the plan, but he has touted it in debates and interviews as a model for the nation.

“I love it. It’s a fabulous program,” Romney said during a May 3, 2007, Republican debate in Simi Valley, Calif. “Now I know there’s some people who wonder about it. Sen. Kennedy at the signing of the bill, we were all there together, he said, ‘You know, if you’ve got Mitt Romney and Ted Kennedy agreeing to the same bill, that means one thing — one of us didn’t read it.’

[…]Although Romney shares responsiblity with the state legislature and the program’s board, Commonwealth Care was his pet project, and he takes credit for it. We find Thompson’s claims true.

Those are the facts. Romney may say he is pro-life, but he doesn’t have the record of pro-life activism of Rick Santorum, or even the good pro-life voting record of Newt Gingrich.

Many more details of Romneycare and abortion here.

Watch Mitt Romney explain his views on abortion and stem cell research in his own words.

News

CBS News smears Santorum with racism because he is anti-welfare

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CBS News is painting Santorum’s opposition to welfare as racism – by inserting words he didn’t say into their “transcript” of his speech.

Excerpt:

The left and media are sending out a false story about what Rick Santorum said at an Iowa event. A CBS News transcript falsely claimed that Santorum said if elected he plans to cut regulations and entitlements and he doesn’t want to “make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

The video is below. It’s clear he did NOT say that, and he was referring to people on welfare in general, and race was not mentioned. But that doesn’t keep people like this from using it as propaganda. It’s frustrating because so many will read the false story and believe it. But that’s the purpose of the propaganda.

Here is what Santorum said in full:

“It [Medicaid] just keeps expanding. I was Indianola a few months ago, and I was talking with someone who works at the Department of Public Welfare here, and she told me that the state of Iowa is going to get fined if they don’t sign up more people under the Medicaid program. They’re just pushing harder and harder to get more and more of you dependent upon them so that they can get your vote. “I don’t want to make [pause] lives, people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.”

Even liberal Tommy Christopher at Mediaite admits Santorum didn’t say what the CBS transcript says he did.

The left is determined to paint the GOP as bigoted because even if they lose a tiny portion of the black vote, it could be enough for Obama to lose, so they lie.

Journalists are indoctrinated in J-school to view conservatives as guilty of SIXHIRB – sexism, intolerance, xenophobia, homophobia, Islamophia, racism, bigotry. While the rest of learn quantitative, marketable skills, journalists spend 4 years learning how to be biased and how to mislead the public.

Santorum is pro-family, and so he opposes welfare. Welfare is anti-family because it makes fathers optional and encourages women to have children with men who will not commit for life and will not prepare to provide for a family. The mainstream media believes that it is too much of a burden on women to insist on these antiquated sex roles – they would rather tax working fathers to subsidize fatherlessness. And if they have to drum up popular support for subsidized fatherlessness by smearing conservatives, then that’s what they’ll do. Santorum says, and I agree, that people on welfare would be better off if they were working, instead.

In other news, leftist Alan Colmes mocks Rick and Karen Santorum for grieving over their miscarriage.

Excerpt:

National Review Editor Rich Lowry and Liberal commentator Alan Colmes clashed on Fox News Monday when Lowry interjected to rebuke Colmes’ criticism of the way Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum and his wife handled the death of their infant newborn Gabriel, who lived for only two hours in 1996.

“I even think some of the dastardly characters we have in the main stream media are not going to go as low as you just have Alan,” Lowry said at one point.

The heated rhetoric began early on in the segment when Colmes said undecided voters will ultimately not stick with the surging Santorum once people “get a load of some of the crazy things he’s said and done, like taking his two-hour-old baby when it died right after child birth home and played with it so that his other children would know that the child was real.”

You have to exercise judgment when dealing with the mainstream media. They have their worldview, and they fit the facts to it.