Markos Moulitsas--political strategist, liberal guru, and blog impressario--now gets behind a plan for Democrats and abortion: Democratic politicians should simply say that they're pro-life. Because that then neutralizes the issue. What a genius!
Peter Beinart has a lot of work to do.
1 hour ago
5 comments:
Umm didn't Kerry try this to less than stellar results the last go round?
Actually, the widely reported "fact" that abortions have risen under Pres. Bush turns out to be false, at least according to a study by the (not exactly pro-life) Guttmacher Institute.
See, e.g., here:
http://www.factcheck.org/article330m.html
Larry, are you in favor of the death penalty for minors?
I'm willing to bet you are. And yet, minors are human beings who can't fight back or vote.
Abortion, Abortion, Abortion. There are certainly more than 2 honest positions on abortion. Go read Roe v. Wade. It's not about whether the embryo/fetus is a human being or not. As Justice Blackmun said, when theologians, philosophers and scientists can't even agree on that issue, it is not one to be decided by the courts.
The abortion question is really at what point does the government's interest in protecting (potential) life becoming so compelling that the government may interfere with the individual liberty of a woman to choose medical procedures that affect her health and life. The question is not whether this is a human being or not; the question is at what point do constitutional and civil rights attach to what may or may not be a human being. Go read Casey v. Planned Parenthood and you'll see the same thing.
So, really the question is are you willing to accept the government reaching into the lives of private individuals to force them to have children? If you are--if you want government forcing people to make enormously personal decisions in a particular way that that individual may not agree with, then please go ahead and vote to outlaw abortion. Vote for small-government conservatives with intrusive-government aims. Vote for libertarian Republicans who want to destroy liberty.
Incidentally, both Casey and Roe were written by Republicans, Blackmun in the first and O'Connor in the second. And beyond that, Casey came down after the court gained more anti-abortion judges.
I doubt those decisions will live forever, though. The interesting thing is that something like 60% of the US thinks Roe is right, with equal numbers from both parties. Yep, about 60% of Republicans think Roe should stand. So, let's overturn Roe and see what happens in the state assemblies. I'll bet you don't outlaw it.
Enjoy.
If you are going to compare capital punishment and abortion, you need to add one pertinent difference-- the criminal was found guilty by a court of law, and has had at least a decade of appeals that have established that the condemned is worthy of execution. It's called "due process", something completely missing when it comes to abortion.
When one person can legally codemn another to death on a whim, carry out the sentence, and suffer no legal consequences (not even a review by the DA to determine if it was "justifiable homicide"), then maybe such a comparison might be worthy of consideration.
Kos' tactic of outright lying to disguise one's pro-abortion position has already been tried. It elected bill "safe, legal and rare" clinton. (Duh.)
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