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.
6 hours ago
7 comments:
Umm didn't Kerry try this to less than stellar results the last go round?
Incidentally, does anybody know how many (if any) abortions have been performed by Dr. Howard Dean?
Hmmm. So under President Clinton, who made a practice of vetoing laws banning abortions, the U.S. abortion rate declined from 25 to 16. Which is to say, the number of abortions per any given number of pregnancies declined by a third. That's almost 400,000 children who weren't aborted in 2000 alone.
Under President Bush, with Republican control of all three branches of the federal government, the abortion rate has risen from 16 to 20. Which is to say, the number of abortions per any given number of pregnancies has increased by a quarter. In real terms, that's about 200,000 more abortions per year today than when George W. Bush took office. And the abortion rate under Bush is rising faster than it declined under Clinton.
You see the same pattern repeated in many states, with declining abortion rates generally correlating with Democratic governance, and increasing rates with Republican control.
If you look at performance, not platitudes, Democrats would seem to be the anti-abortion party, if not exactly the pro-life party in the theological sense. Perhaps it's time Democrats ran on their record of fewer, not more, abortions. If it's true that, in the words of the Christ, "you shall know them by their fruit," then Democrats are the pro-life party, while Republicans are the abortion Pharisees.
Is the point of government sending messages, or is it governing? On abortion, Republicans sure do send a lot of messages. But they don't actually save any babies. Democrats do.
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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