Where Are the Pro-Life People on This?

In 2009, Herbert and Catherine Schaible’s two-year-old son died of pneumonia because they belong to a Christian Fundamentalist church that believes only in faith healing.

They were given ten years’ probation in his death.

You can guess what just happened.  Yes, now their eight-month-old baby has died after being very sick and getting lots of prayers, but no medical help.

Look, if they don’t want to see a doctor for themselves, they can pray themselves to death as far as I’m concerned.  But when it comes to their minor children, they don’t have that right.

I think of the parents in Africa or Latin America who would cut off their right arm to get their baby some medical help and none is available to them, while these morons refuse to drive to the ER.

Maybe we need a little more state, and a little less church, to protect our children.

 

You Won’t Believe This One

David Gittrich is trying to get the Wichita City Council to prevent an abortion clinic from re-opening because he claims that the protests it will draw will be a nuisance.

Mr. Gittrich is Director of Development at Kansans for Life, so he will be organizing and attending those protests, thus creating the very nuisance he is complaining about.

The abortion clinic in question is the one that was run by Dr. George Tiller until a pro-lifer murdered him while he was attending church.  Murderers for Life!

Pro-Life Murder

Like many all over the world, I am saddened and outraged by the death of Savita Halappanavar, who was killed in a Dublin hospital because of a refusal to treat her miscarriage, dooming her to die of blood poisoning.

In addition to anger at her death, I am angry at how it is being framed, as the denial of an abortion.  She arrived at the hospital with her fetus miscarrying.  There was no way to save this fetus, either inside her body or outside.  The fetus was doomed.  The issue was providing proper care for her miscarriage, so that she would not die as well.

If we start thinking and talking about basic, established medical care for miscarriages as “abortions,” simply by using this terminology, we are caving to the crazies.

In Ireland, they just unnecessarily murdered a young woman under the sick and twisted guise of being pro-life.  If it were up to Paul Ryan and others in the GOP who share his extremist views, the same thing would happen to American women.

There He Goes Again

This time it’s abortion.

Mitt told the Des Moines Register today: “There’s no legislation with regards to abortion that I’m familiar with that would become part of my agenda.”

And one, and two, and three, and his campaign told the National Review:  “Governor Romney would of course support legislation aimed at providing greater protections for life.”

Of course.

Hey, Mitt, you can be moderate for the next four weeks within limits.  I know you don’t get the concept of limits, I’m sure there isn’t one on your black AmEx card.  But you just ran headlong into an enormous cement limit with neon lights and blaring sirens.  Ixnay on anything that might rile up the pro-life folks.

 

 

The Toto of 2012

From “Do You Get It?,” Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo:

“The intensity of the desire to banish Akin from the 2012 cycle is exactly in proportion to Republicans’ perceived vulnerability on what the Democrats term the ‘War on Women.’  And that means they feel pretty damned vulnerable. Akin is particularly ignorant and offensive. But his basic points are actually pretty similar to what a large swath of the Congressional GOP believes. Holding that up to bright light scrutiny just as the bulk of the public is tuning into the national political debate is perilous in the extreme.”

The truth is that they want Akin out not because he’s some outlier with bizarre views, but because he showed a little too much leg about what the pro-life movement and the GOP really believe.  He pulled back a curtain they wanted to keep drawn.  He’s the Toto of 2012.

White suburban women, the soccer moms of 2000 and security moms of 2004 who went for Bush, but then went for Obama in 2008, will decide this election.  Akin makes them flee from Romney and his Akin-clone Ryan.

Palin Still Doesn’t Know Anything

For someone who pushes the need for “Constitutional Conservatives” in our government, Sarah Palin herself seems ignorant of what the Constitution actually provides.

Palin says that Condi Rice would be fine for Mitt’s veep, despite being pro-choice, because “We need to remember, though, that it’s not the vice president that would legislate abortion, and that would be Congress’s role.”

Except, of course, that the vice president is president of the Senate and casts a vote in case of a tie.

Palin’s position is not what we’re hearing from pro-life groups, who have been going nuts about the Rice possibility, which isn’t going to happen.

It Can’t Be Condi

There are lots of noises that Mitt should/will pick Condi Rice for his Veep.

But he can’t.  She’s pro-choice, and that automatically disqualifies her.

Mitt is already mistrusted by the base for his flip-flops on abortion.  Sure, she could flip too and say she’s no longer pro-choice, but I don’t think that would fly with an already queasy and suspicious base.

Mitt’s trying to get credit for considering a woman who also happens to be African-American, without the grief he’d get from actually choosing her.  Typical Mitt, looking for benefits with no costs.

Mitt Should Keep His Mouth Shut

This is a challenging moment in our relations with China.  We have been getting cooperation from them on Iran, Syria, North Korea, and the valuation of their currency.  Now, relations are strained because of dissident Chen Guangcheng’s escape from house arrest and flight to the U. S. embassy in Beijing.  The Obama Administration wants to help Mr. Chen and his family without derailing the progress we have made with China on vital national security issues.

The timing is especially bad, given that Secretary of State Hilary Clinton and Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner are on their way to China for long-scheduled meetings.

So when he should just shut up and let the President handle this crisis (which some are calling the most serious with China since Tiananmen Square back in 1989), Mitt Romney jumps in to declare that we must confront the Chinese on their one-child policy.  The President is in a delicate diplomatic situation, and Mitt uses the moment for a purely political shout-out to the pro-life Republican base.

Great pandering, Mitt!  Leadership?  Statesmanship?  Not so much.

Pro-life Bombs? Really?

Now there’s an oxymoron for you.  Bombing for life.

Yesterday evening a bomb exploded at a Planned Parenthood office in Wisconsin.  The FBI is investigating.

These sick people are our own version of radical Islamic terrorists.  They are violent extremists, who don’t really care about “life,” only about imposing their ideology on the rest of us by force and intimidation.  They are no better than the bastards who took over the planes on 9/11.  They are using the same tactics the Taliban is using this very minute in Afghanistan.

I worry about threats like Iran and Al Qaeda, but I also worry about a country where your life is at risk if you go get a prescription for birth control pills.

This is a war on American women, and I’d love to do a drone strike on the nut jobs who did this.

Let’s Learn from the People of Massachusetts

From “Romney’s Path on Abortion,” by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, NYT:

“By 2005, with Mr. Romney eyeing a possible presidential bid, he began to distance himself from his abortion rights platform. ‘My political philosophy is pro-life,’ he told National Review….  That same article quoted his top strategist at the time, Mike Murphy, as saying Mr. Romney has been ‘a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly.‘”  Emphasis added.

Mitt lied on social issues to run for senator and governor.  His “severely conservative” views on social issues represent the real Mitt, views he knew would never get him elected in the Bay State.

Mitt displays the same ruthlessness in politics and in business.  It’s all about his “bottom line” of winning and making money.

So what’s he lying about now?  He’s lying about his concern for the middle class because he knows that is a requirement for winning nationally, just as concern for abortion rights was a requirement for winning in Massachusetts.  To paraphrase Mike Murphy, Mitt is a “pro-rich Mormon faking it as a pro-middle class friendly.”

While our states are laboratories for democracy, they can also be laboratories for demagoguery.  Let’s learn from the laboratory of Massachusetts that Mitt is a failed experiment.