I have not been tracking with the Republican presidential nomination super closely, but what I see of Herman Cain, I like. When asked on Meet the Press, a popular current affairs show, whether he was a “neo-conservative” he said simply, “I’m a conservative.” (Does the general public care for such terms as “neo-conservative”? I don’t think so.) When the interviewer tried to capture him in a Sarah Palin moment (What? Feign horror. You don’t even know what a neo-conservative is?) Cain simply repeated what he had said before: I’m a conservative, I believe in limited government and lower taxes, etc. Struck me as being a down-to-earth man, one who would connect with normal folks, ie. non-politicos.
Ditto on his positioning on abortion. There have been lots of comments in both the pro-life and pro-abortion (sorry but the folks I’ve been reading are not pro-choice, they are too extreme for that) camps saying Cain is confused, he doesn’t know what he is talking about. Pro-abortion folks have tried to frame him as being both pro-choice and pro-life; ergo, an idiot.
But let’s leave the pro-choice camp alone. For here, it is the pro-lifers who annoy me. They have tried to claim that he is going back on his former pro-life convictions, asking whether he is truly pro-life.
This drives me crazy. The man is saying what we all know to be true: That he as President of the United States of America cannot personally visit every woman about to enter a clinic and tell her not to. He has a role as President and he’ll use it to advance his pro-life principles within the context of what he can constitutionally do. This is a simple acknowledgement of what the office can achieve. He has said he is pro-life. He has said he won’t vote to fund abortions, or Planned Parenthood. But, he also rightfully acknowledges what is possible and what is not.
Yes, I’m feeling crabby today, so if you are catching that undertone, I’m sorry. But nothing makes me more crabby than pro-lifers who cannot see beyond the realm of the political, as if culture were non-existent and as if our politicians were demi-gods sitting in their temples. I only know a couple of pro-lifers like this, thankfully, but man oh man are they ever vocal. Worse still, they are very, very difficult to please. You can say you are pro-life, you can dedicate your life to changing the face of our soulless nation (on the issue of abortion we are lacking a soul, tis true) but unless you vote a particular way (typically for a candidate who has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting elected) they’ll renege on you and call you a turncoat.
The shorter purpose of this post was to say a simple thing. I like what I’ve seen of Herman Cain.
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There’s a post today on Jill Stanek’s blog that pretty much sums up how I feel. His clarification really doesn’t address what he actually said. His context was that if his family member was raped, then it’s a family (not a government) decision on if the baby should be killed, and I can’t agree with that.
“That he as President of the United States of America cannot personally visit every woman about to enter a clinic and tell her not to…”
Well, that’s true if you take it absolutely literally. But what he CAN do as POTUS is push for the legal recognition of unborn children as human persons entitled to the right to life, and it doesn’t sound like he’s willing to do that, or have his administration do that, if abortion is nothing more than a “private decision” or a “family choice.”
I wanted to vote for Cain but I’m having second thoughts. I guess it all depends on what happens in the primary; Cain would at least be a far sight better than Mitt Romney (aka Mr. “I’ll do whatever I consider to be most politically expedient in terms of life issues”).
I’m with you Andrea. It also frustrates me when I hear pro-lifers who will not budge one inch from a position, even though they risk losing any gains whatsoever.
The presidential candidate has to be reasonable in what he can achieve; to state that he has some goal in mind that will lose so much support that he won’t be elected, what is the point of that? we will be left with the status quo. Sometimes pro-lifers are not reasonable.
Why Abortion Care Must Be Fully Funded
By Joyce Arthur
October 20, 2011
Anti-choice activists in Canada argue that abortion should be defunded and that women should pay out-of-pocket for abortion care. But that is a right-wing ideological position that ignores evidence and human rights. Defunding abortion would be unconstitutional, discriminatory, and harmful to women. The following points explain why. (Each point is expanded upon here with detailed arguments, evidence and citations.)
1. Women’s lives and health are at stake. Funding abortion is necessary to guarantee women’s right to life and security of the person under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The main reason the Supreme Court threw out the old abortion law in 1988 was because it arbitrarily increased the risk to women’s health and lives through unnecessary delays and obstructed access. Not funding abortion would have the same effect and the same constitutional problems as the old abortion law, and would put politics and ideology ahead of women’s lives and health.
2. Women’s liberty and conscience rights under the Charter require abortion to be funded. The government must not interfere with the deeply personal decision to bear a child or not, which is integral to women’s autonomy and privacy. Otherwise, the government would be co-opting women’s right to choose by funding childbirth but not abortion, and paternalizing women with an official stance of moral disapproval of abortion.
3. Since only women need abortions, funding abortion is necessary to ensure women’s legal right to be free from discrimination. Restrictive policies and laws that apply to only one gender violate human rights codes that provide protection on the basis of sex. Further, women’s equality rights under the Charter cannot be realized without access to safe, legal, fully funded abortion—otherwise, women would be subordinated to their childbearing role in a way that men are not.
4. Abortion funding is crucial to ensure fairness and equity, without discrimination on the basis of income. We must not compel low-income women and other disadvantaged women to continue an unwanted pregnancy due to lack of funding, or to delay care while they try to raise money. Any delay in abortion care raises the medical risks, especially when it extends into the second trimester. Delays are also a punitive burden that unnecessarily prolong stress and discomfort for women. Best medical practice should ensure that abortion takes place as early as possible in pregnancy, and this requires full funding.
5. Funding abortion is very cost-effective while unwanted pregnancies are costly. The medical costs of childbirth are about four times higher than the medical costs of abortion, and the social costs of forced motherhood and unwanted children are prohibitive. Further, the overall cost of abortion care to the taxpayer is a pittance relative to healthcare costs as a whole.
6. Funding abortion serves to integrate abortion care into the healthcare system in general, and ensure the comprehensiveness of reproductive healthcare programs, which is essential. If abortions were not funded, it would ghettoize abortion care, as well as the women who need it and the healthcare professionals who deliver it. This would likely increase stigma, lead to other restrictions, further marginalize abortion care over time, and increase anti-choice harassment and violence. All of this occurred in the United States after abortion was defunded for poor women by the 1973 Hyde Amendment.
7. Funding abortion is the right thing to do, despite some peoples’ belief that abortion takes a human life. There is no social consensus on the moral status of the fetus, and our laws do not bestow legal personhood until birth. Regardless, most Canadians believe that the woman’s rights are paramount in all or most circumstances, because she is the one taking on the health risks of pregnancy, bearing a child is a major decision with significant lifelong consequences, and a woman should be able to direct her own life and pursue her own aspirations apart from motherhood.
8. Legal abortion is very safe for women, and generally beneficial. The alleged medical and psychological “dangers” of abortion to women as described by anti-choice activists are either totally false or grossly overstated. Such arguments cannot support the defunding of abortion anyway, since pregnancy and childbirth are actually far more medically risky, and many other funded medical treatments carry substantial risk. Access to legal, safe, fully funded abortion is also beneficial for women and families because it allows them to continue with their lives and plan wanted children later when they are ready to care for them.
9. Opinion polls showing that a majority of voters do not want to pay for abortion are misleading and not pertinent. Voter opinion on this issue has been shaped by anti-choice misinformation, as well as lingering prejudice about women who have abortions. Regardless, voters have no authority to dictate what medical treatments to fund, as this is the role of provinces and medical groups. Women’s basic rights and freedoms must not be subject to a majority vote.
10. Abortion must be funded because it is not an elective procedure, any more than childbirth is. Pregnancy outcomes are inescapable, meaning that a pregnant woman cannot simply cancel the outcome—once she is pregnant, she must decide to either give birth or have an abortion. To protect her health and rights, both outcomes need to be recognized as medically necessary and fully funded, on an equal basis.
11. Anti-choice activists often say that “pregnancy is not a disease” and therefore abortion should not be funded. But the same arguments can be made for childbirth, since there are no medical reasons for a woman to get pregnant and have a baby. More importantly, health is much more than the absence of disease – it’s about achieving a state of overall health and wellness. Women with unwanted pregnancies are not in a healthy place, so their abortion care should be funded.
Taken from: http://www.arcc-cdac.ca/action/why-abortion-must-be-funded.html