Pro-lifers have no presidential candidate

"In the 2008 election, both parties are pro-death."

As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be.

This is why real Christians should have flocked to Ron Paul.

The problem is, Ron Paul had articles appear in a certain "groupcentrist" literature, such group also tending to congregate in celebratory "groupcentrist" community places of meeting. The media focused exclusively on this fact giving Congressman Paul little other coverage.

"Now apply the same numbers to Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. Imagine what other countries might pop up on the radar of the paranoids running the War Party"

I was in school in London in 2004, when everyone was flipping out about what a second Bush term would mean in terms of wars all around the world. I didn't see it happening, and it turns out I was right. It is not compelling to conjure up images of McCain going around the world fighting wars everywhere just because he supported the war in Iraq. Is McCain saying he is planning on starting a bunch of wars everywhere if he is president? I don't see it happening barring some unexpected occasion that would precipitate war regardless of who is president.

I suppose it is also worth pointing out that being pro-life doesn't rule out the need for wars under certain circumstances, and it certainly isn't black and white what the pro-life position should be on Iraq in 2009. If I had to choose between a president who recognized the importance of completing the Iraq project and was against abortion on the one hand and a president who pledged to abandon Iraq and was for abortion on the other hand it's an easy choice for this pro-lifer.

I think that McCain is the lesser of 2 evils. And I think pro-life Christians are obliged to support him. There is a big difference between war and abortion. War can sometimes be justified, and abortion cannot. Also, capital punishment can sometimes be justified. I think it is foolish to throw up your hands and let a pro-abort like Obama or Clinton in the White House. B/c there is a likelihood of a number of vacancies on the high court, the president will likely determine the direction of the law in this country for at least a generation.

Could Mr. Zmirak also be concerned that overturning Roe v Wade may not decrease the number of abortions? My understanding is that it would turn into a state law issue and the states likely to outlaw abortion already have low abortion rates.

Steve

I've often thought that the basic infrastructure of the Republican Party, the movers and shakers, was never truly Pro-Life. I've thought that they just say they are to court all of those one-issue voters. They do just enough pro-life stuff to make it look like their putting forth some effort but really have no intention of overturning it. (After all, then they might be expected to spend money to help support all those babies rather than funneling government money into their buddies' pockets.) And so many of their deregulation policies over the years have really hurt working class people by making the rich richer and the poorer, probably contributing to the abortion problem.

And on one hand, people want to cry out "small government" and "beware of socialism", but government assistance could do a lot to prevent abortions by eliminating some of the reasons that women feel that abortion is there only choice. Look at the work that Feminists for Life does. And while overturning Roe v. Wade seems like the "quick fix" for the abortion problem, I don't see it happening. Furthermore, overturning it would mainly effect poor and low-income women who can't afford transportation to states in which it would still be legal. Rich women have never had a hard time getting an abortion, even before Roe v. Wade.

Not everyone who is pro-choice is "pro-abortion without any limitations". I think most people don't believe that abortion should be legal through all 40 weeks of pregnancy, but many people are unsure about where the line should be drawn. I think many people are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, including Obama. And politicians sometimes have to walk a line between their own personal beliefs and those of their constituents. (If Dr. Lyman Hall of Georgia hadn't gone against the beliefs of his constituents at the Second Continental Congress, our country might not exist.) I have always thought that being a one-issue voter, whether it is about abortion or anything else, was over-simplistic.

I intend to retire on my income from the "McCain '08" barf-bags I'm having made. But I'll being carrying one to the voting both with me.

Abortion is a federalist question. The over-reach of Roe v. Wade was a federalist disaster. It really should be left to the states. (I am opposed to a pro-life constitutional amendment for the same reason I oppose a flag-burning amendment: the Constitution limits the government, not the People.)

The foreign policy thing: Zmirak has drunk the MoveOn.org koolaid. Nobody likes war. But we sure understand why they happen.

McCain '08!! {blech}

All due respect, Barbara, but if you think that Obama is in the "middle of the spectrum" on abortion you haven't been paying attention. Obama's more pro-abortion than Hillary; he refused to support an Illinois measure that would have protected infants "accidentally" born alive during abortions, on the grounds that this was unduly burdensome to their mothers.

Obama's the pro-infanticide candidate; there's no room for moderation in his views on abortion.

Mark:

I'm not shouting ... I just want to emphasize important parts of the argument:

YOU HAVE A MORAL OBLIGATION TO PROMOTE THE COMMON GOOD THROUGH THE EXERCISE OF YOUR VOTING PRIVELEGE. When every candidate endorses positions contrary to pro-life principles, YOU SHOULD CHOOSE THE CANDIDATE LIKELY TO DO THE LEAST HARM. You may vote for the candidate who takes the fewest such positions or who seems least likely to be able to advance immoral legislation, or YOU MAY CHOOSE TO VOTE FOR NO ONE.

A vote cast in such a situation is not morally the same as a positive endorsement for candidates, laws, or programs that promote intrinsic evils: It is only tolerating a lesser evil to avoid an even greater evil. Where a perfect candidate, law, or program is not on the table, we are to choose the best option, the one that promotes the greatest good and entails the least evil. Not voting may sometimes be the only moral course of action, BUT YOU MUST CONSIDER WHETHER NOT VOTING ACTUALLY PROMOTES GOOD AND LIMITS EVIL IN A SPECIFIC INSTANCE.

So, unless you can demonstrate that not voting (and not opposing a victory for Clinton/ Obama) promotes good and limits evil, then you are obliged to support him. [Iraq is a non-issue. We are there, and we will have to finish it one way or another. McCain has not proposed starting an unjust war. Even Pope Benedict has acknowledged that the situation is different now that we have undertaken this. We cannot simply leave (as some claim.) We are actually morally obliged to fix Iraq. ]Stem cells are a problem for McCain, but compared to the other two candidates, he is definitely the lesser of two evils.
You cannot simply throw up your hands and give up. You are obligated to promote the common good through the exercise of your voting privelege. How are you proposing to do that?

Can an argument be made that riding the American Way aka "A Streetcar Named Desire" (dting-tding__Planned Parenthood, Bagdad____next station, Timbuctoo) is not something Christians should be paying for?

While our domain.mil experts daydream about whether its more cost-effective as the "American Project" to

[a] support a Pan-Turkic empire of influence stretching from Northern Cyprus to Northwestern China by knocking out Iran, Armenia and Kurdistan (who inconveniently stand in the Aga Khan's way)

www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/sept02/eastAsia.asp

"Constituting the Uyghur in U.S.-China Relations: The Geopolitics of Identity Formation in the War on Terrorism"

[b] prop up our nuclear ally Pakistan as the bulwark(*) to militant Islam by "blaspheming on the anthropological level" (Sergio Romano, Corriere de la Sera) by a(nn)ppointing a westernized women as gatekeeper to the Karakorum TriState highway to nowhere

(*) while turning a blind to illegal sales to parties listed under [a] and the Saudi-funded, madrassa-trained, ISI tyranny of a Pan-Islamic empire of influence stretching from Madrid to East Timor.

Consider should they choose [a], the first (Russia) and second (China) ends of the TriState Highway to nowhere will take offense and jump in to defend their national interests,

Should we choose [b], the second and third (India) ends of the Karakorum highway collide somewhere in Kashmir as they rush to seize power in the ashes of the failed state that remains after the suicide bombers have a party.

Now where oh where is a grown up who understands all this?

Obama? Well, he just lost his "senior" foreign policy adviser 'cos she insults people...

Hillary? Well, her hubbies philanthropic friends can't remember bringing Nursultan Nazarbayev to lunch, so can we trust 'em to remember where the Uranium went...?

McCain? Well, since his wife's independently wealthy, they don't need any unsavoury friends to help 'em take care of business so he'll have more time on his hands for 100 years of both [a] and [b] -- he'll get his wife to talk to his VP about who picks up the tab... economics isn't his strong suite.

Folks, we are in dire straights... and which ever way the election goes, American foetuses will be getting sucked into the sewers all the way to Timbuctoo... along with their Chinese and Indian sisters (while their legions of unmarriagable brothers will be piling up to meet us at Karakorum pass... along with the nuclear weapons we sold 'em)

Abortion isn't just a domestic issue --
It's global and dangerous...

"Into infinity and beyond"
Buzz Lightyear

Abortion should not be left to the states to decide. The Constitution requires equal protection under the law. States are obligated by the Constitution to outlaw abortion. If states won't outlaw it, then the federal government must intervene.

Thus far, prolifers have heartily condemned Roe on the grounds that it conflicted with the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment. It's interesting how quickly such condemnation is forgotten when one discovers how judicial activism can be used to advance one's own agenda.

AFAIK, the term "persons" in the Constitution was originally understood as referring only to born human beings, and was never understood as referring to the unborn (*). Thus, for the federal government to wield the equal protection clause as you propose would require ignoring the original meaning of the Constitution, and redefining its text to mean whatever is convenient to your own particular political agenda. This is exactly the sort of judicial activism that gave us _Roe_.

If prolifers want to follow their pro-choice opponents down the road of judicial usurpation, fine; but they should at least abandon the pretense of cloaking their political agenda with the sacred mantle of "original meaning".

(*) See Robert Bork at the following links:

www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=424

www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=469

Prolife:

I sort of had this notion I might vote for somebody who isn't threatening to do evil at all, instead of simply voting for the guy who promises 30% less evil than the other leading brand.

- Which candidate is that? Nader?

MI - You should read the case that is cited in that discussion: Steinberg v. Brown, 321 F. Supp. 741

Well, as someone who is pro-choice and moderate, I'll be voting for whomever the Dems nominate...as long as it isn't Obama.

If it is, I might be staying home on Tuesday the Fourth.

__did my 10:50 post go down the tube?__ repost:

P.S. As Captain of Culture, Buzz Lightyear proposes option [c] "Fight the culture wars with culture" and put KBS in charge of all enemies, foreign or domestic - those damn Koreans are so cute:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0GlgU5d-gI

H/T Thrill of the Chaste culture warrior and author Dawn Eden
http://www.dawneden.com/2008/03/welcome-today-viewers.html

Indeed VOA could do worse than feed my current favorite TV show Dae Jo Young, 130 episodes of dark-age daring-do, fought on horseback (in best camp-spaghetti-western fashion) with a Joan-of-Arc-on-steroids called Geumlan:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=uksHx13qQzU

subtitled into Pashto, Turkish, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, Spanish and Russian and piped into every home from here to Timbuctoo. Fight the culture wars with culture! Any country that declines to permit their citizens from viewing history on TV shouldn't be trusted with defending our interests - "memory and identity" ought be the first step in democratic nation building, and those regimes who subdue their citizens in an infantilized crawl should be left to learn how to stand up first. DVDs stamped "A gift of the American people" must be cheaper than paying our farmer's subsidies to harvest bags of surplus rice and buy Airbuses from those spoilt nanny-bratz in Europe to fly 'em round the globe, right?

It'd be so much more entertaining watching our dollars getting blown to the wind while the Chinese or Russians try and retool their moribund industries to catch up (the CBC has a Ghenkis Khan epic in the pipeline, I hear, doubt if they'll mention his daughter was a baptized Nestorian Christian,,, we'll let Bollywood make the remake, and feature a few of those Malankara liturgies in Syriac to even the balance of the Koran being blasted over the airwaves in Arabic everywhere, generously paid for by our addiction to oil guzzling SUVs of course... so sorry)

__dang URLs__ !

Indeed VOA could do worse than feed my current favorite TV show Dae Jo Young, 130 episodes of dark-age daring-do, fought on horseback (in best camp-spaghetti-western fashion) with a Joan-of-Arc-on-steroids called Geumlan:

www_youtube_com/watch?v=uksHx13qQzU

subtitled into Pashto, Turkish, Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, Spanish and Russian and piped into every home from here to Timbuctoo. Fight the culture wars with culture! Any country that declines to permit their citizens from viewing history on TV shouldn't be trusted with defending our interests - "memory and identity" ought be the first step in democratic nation building, and those regimes who subdue their citizens in an infantilized crawl should be left to learn how to stand up first. DVDs stamped "A gift of the American people" must be cheaper than paying our farmer's subsidies to harvest bags of surplus rice and buy Airbuses from those spoilt nanny-bratz in Europe to fly 'em round the globe, right?

It'd be so much more entertaining watching our dollars getting blown to the wind while the Chinese or Russians try and retool their moribund industries to catch up (the CBC has a Ghenkis Khan epic in the pipeline, I hear, doubt if they'll mention his daughter was a baptized Nestorian Christian,,, we'll let Bollywood make the remake, and feature a few of those Malankara liturgies in Syriac to even the balance of the Koran being blasted over the airwaves in Arabic everywhere, generously paid for by our addiction to oil guzzling SUVs of course... so sorry)

MI - You should read the case that is cited in that discussion: Steinberg v. Brown, 321 F. Supp. 741

Couldn't find it online; do you have a PDF or URL? I note that Prof. Schlueter's excerpts from that case fail to even address the question of original meaning.

Pro lifers remind me of a woman who keeps going back to an abusive relationship. She keeps saying, well, he'll really change this time, he really means it, and besides, I don't want to be alone. Face it, people, McCain will do even less for the prolife cause than Bush, if that's possible. I mean, wasn't he one of the "Gang of 14" moderate to liberal Senators from both parties who blocked conservative judicial nominations? Even Reagan, who tried to appoint pro life judges, got O'Connor and Kennedy.

I don't think it would even do much good if Roe v. Wade were overturned and the abortion question returned to the states (though Constitutionally, it should be). Ok, maybe Mississippi, Utah, and Texas would ban abortion in most cases. Well, maybe South Carolina. Most of the other states would continue what we have now. I think that the past 35 years have shown that when it comes to getting rid of abortion by the legal and political route, that dog won't hunt. I should think we need to change people's minds before we can truly have prolife laws.

I wonder where McCain and the neocons think we are going to get the money for attacking Iran or any of the other places that Norman Podherentz wants us to attack (the list is long). Iraq is costing us $2 billion a week, and while things have improved a bit there, the government is still feckless and incompetent. Afghanistan is going badly and bin Ladin is still out there. How can we keep borrowing money from China? What if they call in their chips? How can we do the Globocop thing when we don't even have the manufacturing capacity to produce our own armaments?

Judging by how the Dept. of Homeland Security recently received bad reviews, I think the fact that we haven't had any terrorist attacks since 2001 is attributable to one of two things: 1) sheer, dumb luck or 2) Al-Quaeda pretty much shot their wad in 2001 and can't get their stuff together since then and while Islamic radical terrorism is a threat, it's not the Soviet Union and we are far far more likely to be killed in a car accident or even stung to death by bees than to die in a terrorist attack.

McCain makes me nervous because he looks like he could flip his lid, lose his temper (he is notorious for that) and do some sort of Dr. Strangelove thing at any time. Obama makes me nervous because he's all inspiring and all that, but I don't really know what his real program is. Hilary makes me nervous because I think she's one of those managerial people who think the government knows better than you how to run your life and besides, she's just McCain in a skirt (or maybe a black pantsuit) when it comes to foreign policy.

My plan as of now is to either write in Ron Paul in November or vote Libertarian or Constitution party. I don't see that much difference between McCain and Hilary. Both devoutly believe in the warfare-welfare state.

I also think that for the conservative movement to survive and regain its purpose and direction, it's necessary for the Republicans to go down in flames in November. As well they deserve to!

Scott R
I'm just curious, because I never hear much about what the pro-life crowd will be doing after Roe...especially for all those live babies born to mothers who don't want them and can't afford to give them a life.

Well, a few of them, possibly, will work on that. Although, honestly, if they cared about that they'd probably already be working on that.

The rest of the prolife movement will work on outlawing contraceptives.

He voted against and held up a bill that would have forced abortionists to save the life of a baby who survived an abortion. And the reason he did it was because he didn't want the baby to be considered a person thus proving he is an abortion absolutist.

Where has McCain said that he will invade Iran? I think he's been clear about targeted bombings if necessary but not invading. And both Hillary and Obama have said that they would leave troops in Iraq and would slowly remove them. And if fighting was going on they certainly wouldn't remove troops.

So, you'll be stuck with troops in Iraq, Iran with the nuke and a president who is willing to provide abortions to anyone who needs them and will pay for them with our taxpayer dollars. Yeah, that's something a pro-life voter looks forward to.

Gee, Brian, judgmental much?

I know lots of pro-life Christians who've adopted kids out of foster care, medically fragile children, etc. I don't personally know any pro-abort liberals who've done so, but I wouldn't rush to judgment and say it's because they'd rather see such kids dead in utero. Maybe you don't know any conservative pro-lifers with adopted kids because you don't know all that many conservative pro-lifers.

Erin,
In the third paragraph I meant to inform you that Pat Robertson also said we deserved 911 shortly after the actual terrorist acts.
But hey, he's pro-life.

I know some liberals who have adopted hard-to-place children. One that I know of, though he's not a personal friend, is the science fiction writer David Gerrold, famous for writing the Star Trek episode, "The Trouble with Tribbles." He adopted an abused eight year old boy who had spent years in foster care. His memoir about being a gay single father, The Martian Child, was recently made into a movie--but in the movie version, the father isn't gay. A misrepresentation based on box-office cowardice, I suppose. It's worth noting that the children adopted by gay parents often are the hard-to-place--those who are older, troubled, medically challenged or nonwhite. So the idea that "children have a right to a mother and a father" is kind of irrelevant in their case. Without gay parents, they'd have no parents at all.

I think maybe Brian's comment had more to do with what conservative pro-lifers would do to make society in general more friendly to all poor children, not just the ones they happen to have a personal stake in.

Glad to hear it, Scott R.! Just to be clear, I don't think liberals avoid adopting children due to pro-choice views--I was simply turning Brian's assumption about pro-lifers around. Many families selflessly adopt even hard-to-place children, regardless of political affiliations--but for some reason the old canard that pro-life people won't help the mother in crisis or the child once born persists.

Brian, I'm Catholic, so I can't speak to specifics regarding Evangelicals and pro-life issues. I do know a family of Christians who have added three adopted children, siblings, whom they adopted out of foster care; with their biological children they have five children altogether. So I try not to make assumptions about who does and who doesn't adopt or otherwise take pro-life actions to help families in crisis. I think we'd all be pleasantly surprised at how often people act beyond our assumed stereotypes of them.

I'm honestly leaning toward not supporting McCain, on the grounds that he's minimally pro-life and can't really be trusted on the judicial appointment question, which is one of the most serious concerns for pro-life voters just now; but I respect those who choose otherwise. Clearly I can't vote for a Democrat, so election day might be a good day to vote for a third-party or write-in, go home, and watch "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

I got pregnant when I was 21, poor and unmarried. The government provides health care to poor women and many counties also provide health services for no or low cost to women who would otherwise fall between the cracks. I got a job making about 19K (this was in 95) and didn't have to pay anything for medical care - before or after my son was born. I considered placing my son for adoption and would have had a choice of the more than 2 MILLION couples waiting to adopt an infant (many willing to adopt more than one infant) - no chance of him ending up unwanted in some foster care home!

A crisis pregnancy center supported by local churches, including evangelical churches, helped me find my way through the government programs, provided counseling, maternity clothes, a crib, baby clothes, a car seat, gas money and a small stipend while I finished school (paid for with federal financial aid which due to being a single mother was far more generous than what I could get as just a single woman). I became homeless and an evangelical group had a half-way house which they ran for single moms who needed help with housing that I lived in for almost 2 years. This program also provided training to the moms for life skills, money management, arranged employment, helped with car repairs, etc. As my son got older, the large evangelical church I attended helped out with food, free car repairs and had other help available if I had needed it. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

The bottom line is that aside from the government, there was not one single liberal, secular institution out there which was offering to help to mothers like me. Other than arranging for an abortion - there were several who were willing to do that; they'd arrange transportation and everything. Everyone who helped me out, and they did help A LOT was a pro-life Christian. Every. Single. One.

This slander that pro-lifers don't care about babies and their mothers is a lie and those who insist on perpetuating it are liars who are exposing themselves as simply evil people who hate religion. Yes, that's a blanket statement and yes, that is precisely what I and millions of other women who have been helped by pro-life Christians will think of you each and every time you let this vicious, evil lie come out of your mouth.

Erin,

Perhaps the answer for you and your fellow Texans is what they have in New York State, a "Right To Life" third party. http://www.nypirg.org/sv2k/rtl.html

there *was* one secular institution that helped her -> namely the government and money from taxpayers.

A set of programs that would be obliterated were it not for secular, liberal groups advocating on behalf of women like Rebecca in the legislatures. These are people working every day to make sure programs like this operate effectively for the working poor, for people who need a momentary help and that they are properly funded. Because those church groups--as hard as they tried--would not be able to provide the kind of financial assistant provided by the government at the urging of secular liberals (and religious progressives).

God bless rebeccat!

that overturning Roe v. Wade -- the prospect of which makes many of us vote Republican no matter what -- would do nothing to stop abortion in most of America.

Thats dumb as rocks. Apparently D-Day was a waste of time, because Hitler was still in power even after we secured our beachhold.

NOTE: Obama voted against BAIPA because BAIPA does not clearly state that the term of the pregnancy or the method of delivery. It is legal, under BAIPA, to cut a woman open who was raped and wants an abortion, pull her live fetus out, put it on a machine and declare its "independence" of her.... sending her home a few days later without her child.

This bill was an attempt to bring alive the fascist Handmaid's Tale "dream world" of manufacturing people using technology and compromised women. These NeoNazi's keep getting upset when their 11th adulterous-girlfriend-of-the-month decides to abort their 11th bastard child. But what they don't realize is that *before* abortion, women would just toss unwanted kids into a creek (and in third world countries they still do). Women have the power of life an death over their children, and if men treat them like crap, they will pass on that treatment to their children. This is part of sexual antagonism and evolution.

Try to play God and take this power away from women.... I dare you.