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Hillary Clinton starts to look pro-life by comparison

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Is Obama  more pro-abortion than NARAL and fibbing about it?

Newly obtained documents prove that in 2003, Barack Obama, as chairman of an IL state Senate committee, voted down a bill to protect live-born survivors of abortion – even after the panel had amended the bill to contain verbatim language, copied from a federal bill passed by Congress without objection in 2002, explicitly foreclosing any impact on abortion. Obama’s legislative actions in 2003 – denying effective protection even to babies born alive during abortions – were contrary to the position taken on the same language by even the most liberal members of Congress. The bill Obama killed was virtually identical to the federal bill that even NARAL ultimately did not oppose.

American politics and abortion

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Now that Hillary has conceded defeat, sort of, we can examine Obama’s platform.

On abortion, it’s not good. Not good at all.

Oftentimes pro-lifers will declare there’s no middle ground on abortion–voting against amendments that would outlaw some abortions but not all, because they don’t go far enough.

But there is some middle ground to be found. Most everyone–even those who are pro-choice–find late-term abortion abhorrent. Most every civilized person shies away from eugenics, though eugenic abortions are common in Canada today. (Note the Canadian Down Syndrome Society’s new TV campaign: Different Genes, Same Value.)

Barack Obama’s position on abortion has been relentlessly extreme–against life.  This link, from the Atlantic Monthly, discusses just how extreme he has been. He has not done anything conciliatory on this front. Late term abortions? Fine by him.

As a side note, I stumbled on this link, for different reasons yesterday–you can choose your topic and get the candidate’s summary position on it. On abortion, I like Ron Paul’s the best. The man don’t mince words:

Paul said he views the fetus as a “human being [with] legal rights … from the day of conception.” He reconciles his anti-abortion outlook with his libertarian views, saying, “I do not say that because our homes are our castles that we have the right to murder our children.”

If I were American, I might vote for him, just for that clear-as-a-bell statement. I guess if you are the long shot, (ie. Ron Paul’s not going to be President) you can afford to say things like that.  

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Tanya sticks up for Ron Paul:

Even when he was full-swing campaigning, he didn’t mince words at all. And not just on the issue of abortion. The man would have been quite a president. Sigh.

Two types of abortion supporters

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Obama and Clinton on abortion, here.

I believe that the potential for life begins at conception,” said Mrs Clinton. But for me, it is not only about the potential life, but the other lives involved…

And Obama:

Mr Obama said he did not know whether life begins with conception.

“This is something that I have not, I think, come to a firm resolution on… I don’t presume to know the answer to that question,” he said.

One position is utilitarian, the other, ill-informed and evasive. But this would be the dividing line in the pro-abortion camp these days, I think. Those who know when life begins and don’t care, and those who maintain life does not begin at conception but rather at some other magical moment, arbitrarily chosen.

An intolerant update

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Remember that story about Planned Parenthood representatives being caught accepting money to abort black babies? Here’s more, via Michelle Malkin:

I’ve written several times before about Lila Rose’s pioneering undercover journalism. If left-wing reporters are going to use their positions to engineer bigotry stings, then there’s most certainly room for independent journalists to expose racism where the Left doesn’t want to go. In February, Rose released undercover tapes of her discussion with an Idaho Planned Parenthood official eager to accept money from a racist donor who supported aborting black babies. Now, Rose is back with new video of PP clinic officials in New Mexico and Oklahoma willing to take money from a blatantly racist donor. One PP staffer openly admits that “for whatever reason, we’ll accept the money.”

Sympathy for eugenics isn’t just an aberrent occurrence. It’s embedded in the historical DNA of Planned Parenthood. Margaret Sanger would be so proud.

Watch:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwif0VMW3c4]
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Andrea adds: The average Canadian may not be aware that Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood is also author of Birth Control and Racial Betterment. Sure, she lived in an era when eugenic science was popular, but she maintained her racist zeal long after it went out of style, and even spoke at a Ku Klux Klan rally. These taped admissions of racism in Planned Parenthood offices would be horrifying without that history. With it–makes you wonder whether eugenic pruning of whoever they consider the underclass isn’t still on their books as official policy.
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Tanya adds: This article mentions some early initiatives taken by Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood: http://www.lifenews.com/nat3780.html

We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.

The article is called “Planned Parenthood Founder Sanger Would Love Pro-Abortion Barack Obama.”

Obama’s extremism

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The “consensus-building” candidate Barack Obama on abortion:

Obama’s record on abortion is extreme. He opposed the ban on partial-birth abortion — a practice a fellow Democrat, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once called “too close to infanticide.” Obama strongly criticized the Supreme Court decision upholding the partial-birth ban. In the Illinois state Senate, he opposed a bill similar to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which prevents the killing of infants mistakenly left alive by abortion. And now Obama has oddly claimed that he would not want his daughters to be “punished with a baby” because of a crisis pregnancy — hardly a welcoming attitude toward new life…

I’m reminded of Trish’s post from what seems like a long time ago now. “Yes we can” be virulently pro-abortion, “yes we can” oppose measures to save babies who are born alive after an abortion… But “can we” be president too? And that remains to be seen.   

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Brigitte wonders: What would Mr. Obama say to one of his daughters asking: “Dad, are you saying you were punished with us?”

The androgynous ideal

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obamhill.jpg

On the cover of the New Republic: The merged faces of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. I gather it’s to illustrate how so many Democratic party members are having trouble picking one candidate over the other. Which is a reasonably common problem in partisan politics; how often have you wished you could get a little bit of two or more leaders in one person? But, er, I didn’t think we ought to extend that to gender. This is one creepy picture.

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Tanya adds: It looks like a very clean cut David Spade. That is creepy.

Obama, poverty and families

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Obama’s recent speech discussed race and poverty: Here’s what he did not discuss. Marriage is an anti-poverty campaign in itself. The article is from a non-so-con source (very important-because so-cons are born with a pro-marriage, pro-life gene, as we all  know).  

Researchers estimate that the entire rise in poverty in America since the late 1970s can be attributed to “changes in family formation,” a euphemism for the decline of families headed by two married parents. … Given that a significant body of research now shows that children raised in two-parent, married families do better in school, are less likely to wind up in jail, and are less likely to end up on welfare, the startling racial divide in marriage tells us that a new generation of children, especially blacks, are growing up destined to struggle academically, in the job market, and in forming their own families. And policy prescriptions like a higher minimum wage or tax credits are unlikely to help many of these kids. What they mostly need is another parent-usually a father.

And lest you think the Republicans are doing any better on this issue…

Even Republican presidential nominee John McCain-whose economic agenda focuses on pro-growth policies, like corporate tax cuts-has little to say about the family, though the children of many fractured poor families will be in no position to take advantage of such tax cuts. … Comparing the rhetoric of the presidential candidates with the latest stark data on families is a reminder that, until we can at least begin to discuss in the political sphere one of the major causes of economic woes in America today, we can’t begin to take the necessary steps to reduce long-term poverty.

“Yes we can.”

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I have to admit that I find Barack Obama charming. But then, the author Rumer Godden described her first husband as “charming”, adding “I have mistrusted charm every since”.

In the same way, I find something compelling and catchy about this “yes we can” video.  If nothing else (and I’m pretty sure there is nothing else), it’s catchy. At the same time, the rhythmic chanting of glassy-eyed, “I’m too cool to have facial expressions” celebrities is faintly creepy. 

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjXyqcx-mYY]

My seven-year old summed the whole message up after about 5 seconds of viewing: “Yes, we can what? That’s dumb.” 

But I have discovered a way of increasing  the entertainment factor of the video exponentially: every time one of the celebrity-automatons echoes “Yes we can”, answer “No you can’t”. This provides good training for dealing with politicians with grand ideas for “change” and, incidentally, small children. After all, if you have to say a phrase eighty times a day, it’s good to have a catchy beat to go with it.

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Andrea adds: “Yes, we can” look profoundly serious and important while saying nothing of substance. Yes, we can. (From time to time I consider whether I could join a political party. Just when I start to think perhaps I could, I see something like this…and it’s back to square one. No, I can’t.)

Values voters and McCain

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[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2JoSo17Azk]

Barring something very strange between now and November, the next president of the USA will be Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Barack Obama. The Democrats are currently divided, along some very interesting lines, between Obama and Clinton.

By contrast, the Republicans fall into a number of different camps, most of which are lukewarm-to-actively-hostile to McCain. Fortunately, save for Ann Coulter (see YouTube clip) the petulant calls to sit out the election or cast a protest vote for Hillary have subsided. Still,  there remains a lack of enthusiasm for McCain among social and fiscal conservatives.

Arguments that conservatives and Republicans will or ought to stay home on election day generally rest on one of three postulations. 

The first is that McCain is not a “real” conservative, and hasn’t earned their votes. 

The second is that McCain is so eager to reach across the aisle and be moderate that electing him is tantamount to electing Hillary or Obama. 

Finally, some analysts suggest that the long-term health of the Republican Party requires a crushing defeat this year, so that the (perceived) heresies of compassionate conservatism, neoconservatism and big-government conservatism can be rooted out. 

Each of these ideas is badly flawed. I’ll address each of them in turn.

On fiscal and social conservatism, McCain has repeatedly asserted he did not “manage for profit,” as did Mitt Romney, but rather “led for patriotism.” Fine. But if he is truly a patriot he must be able to see the connection between the nation’s economic and social health and its ability to carry out the ambitious foreign policy missions he has outlined. That means fiscal issues are intertwined with social ones.

America spends a staggering amount of money on its military. Such budgets are only sustainable by an ever-growing and thriving economy; to advocate keeping the military strong, or using it worldwide, without recognizing the crucial nature of a solid economy to back it up, is folly. An effective and muscular foreign policy requires both strong families and a strong economy. 

As to the second argument, that McCain is such a moderate that he’s not much better than Hillary or Obama, values voters should know better.  McCain is staunchly pro-life, and would prefer to permit abortion only in cases of rape, incest, or life-threatening risk to the mother’s health.  He is also in favour of traditional marriage.  (He has not expressed an interest in settling these issues as President, but this is not because he opposes the idea, but rather that he considers that an inappropriate use of federal power in a federal system of government.)  And for better or for worse, abortion law is made these days by the Supreme Court, so McCain’s thoughts on what federal abortion law should be are less significant than the judges he would appoint to the Supreme Court (and it is likely that up to three justices will be appointed between 2009 and 2012).  Not only has McCain committed to originalist judges, but he even voted in favour of Bork at his confirmation hearings. 

On the last point- that a stunning defeat would be a bracing and overall rejuvenating experience for the Republicans–there is some truth to this idea.  The question we must ask is, what would the cost be?  In the next four years, and possibly eight, what would happen as the Republicans rebuilt?  The significance of a Supreme Court with three or more new hard-line liberal justices should be clear; major decisions that have a profound influence on life today, such as Roe v. Wade and Miranda v. Arizona, were decided in the 1960s and 1970s.  And radical social change is always harder to reverse than to initiate.  How much harder to reduce the number of abortions after two more terms of rulings striking down any laws about notification, parental consent, and third trimester abortions?

Exasperation and frustration with McCain are understandable. A moderate and a maverick he might be, but he is closer to mainstream Republicans and conservatives than any Democrat candidate, and Obama and Hillary in particular, could possibly be. 

John McCain is perhaps not a values voter’s first choice, but he is certainly not a bad choice, and infinitely preferable to the other name on the ballot in nine months’ time.

Why I don’t like feminists

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Well, some of them anyway.

America’s favourite television presenter is paying a painful price for her intervention in the US presidential campaign last month. Oprah Winfrey has been dubbed a “traitor” by some of her female fans for supporting Barack Obama instead of Hillary Clinton.

Winfrey’s website, Oprah.com, has been flooded with a barrage of abuse since the queen of daytime chat shows joined Obama on a tour of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina in mid-December.

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It started with a message on her website entitled “Oprah is a traitor” and rapidly expanded to include several discussions that attracted hundreds of comments.

In the original post, a reader called austaz68 said she “cannot believe that women all over this country are not up in arms over Oprah’s backing of Obama. For the first time in history we actually have a shot at putting a woman in the White House and Oprah backs the black MAN. She’s choosing her race over her gender.”

Oprah? A traitor to women? Some sisters need to give their head a good shake.

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