Refreshing: SBA List focusing on Republicans
For the record, I do not belong to any political party. I’m generally supportive of pro-life candidates, of course, but many politicians cross party lines on abortion. That’s why I’m happy to see that the Susan B. Anthony List, one of the most politically powerful pro-life groups around, has set its sights on the GOP.
The SBA List has gotten plenty of attention for its campaign against Democrats who backed out of the Stupak coalition on health care reform. Their “Votes Have Consequences” tour was sharply criticized by pro-life Democrats, eventually leading to a fruitless pissing contest.
While continuing its campaign against targeted Democrats, the SBA List just announced a campaign that will focus on strengthening the pro-life platform of the Republican Party:
Today, the Susan B. Anthony List announced the launch of its “Life Speaking Out Campaign” aimed at encouraging House GOP leadership to make protecting women and the unborn a priority in its legislative blueprint expected after Labor Day. The campaign includes a website for pro-life activists to lobby House GOP leadership (www.LifeSpeakingOut.com) and an encouraging letter to leadership signed by SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser.
“The Republican Party must show what it is made of this time around. They can do so by acting on their convictions and those of their party, and by making a commitment to passage of common-sense, life-saving legislation,” said Dannenfelser.
. . .
Since the format for the blueprint was originally floated, it has been widely reported that the agenda consists of five basic planks which were outlined in a recess document: jobs, national security, spending restraint, government reform and health care. The SBA List praised its reported inclusion of anti-funding of abortion language, but the “Life Speaking Out Campaign” asks that GOP leaders include a separate “Family Values” plank under which pro-life priorities would be included.
Pro-life Democrats might see this as little consolation. Still, I think it’s a step in the right (no pun intended) direction. The pro-life movement must constantly push elected officials to be responsive, regardless of party affiliation.
While the Democratic party harbors rather more pro-family and pro-human rights people, neither party has a particularly good record of supporting pro-choice policies. But unquestionably, the Republican Party has the worst voting record against human rights for women and families.
Of course this is because, just as soon as it became politically tricky to use racism to inflame white voters against black people and thus get them to vote Republican, the Supreme Court's decision that a woman's right to private consultation with her doctor could not be abrogated, gave them a wonderful excuse to use "pro-life" as inflammatory rhetoric to get white Americans to vote against their self-interest.
For this reason, no Republican politician will ever seriously attempt to overturn Roe vs Wade; it is far too useful to them as a means of inflaming voters against politicians who support policies good for poor people, women, and families.
I'm not saying that the Democrats don't have some good policies; they do. But talk of human rights and family rights is hollow when spoken by people who deny the rights of the youngest members of the human family.
Exactly the point I was making at the end of my last post.
BTW where do people here stand on universal healthcare and more resources for single mothers and poor families?
I'm totally for it.
Simon, I think it's safe to say that our members want more resources for single mothers and poor families; the question is whether those resources should come from the government or the private sector. On universal health care, our membership is more divided.
the question is whether those resources should come from the government or the private sector.
If you want all single mothers, and all poor families, to receive the support they need, and you consider this an obligation on everyone, then you want their support to come from the government.
If you prefer to have resources unfairly and unevenly allocated, leaving some single mothers and some poor families completely destitute, then you want their support to come from the private sector.
Republicans are cheap-labor conservatives one and all, with ideological beliefs mandating denial of help and support that enables single mothers and poor families to climb out of poverty: which means Republicans prefer to talk big about help from "the private sector", while denying universal help from the comity, the citizens at large.
Universal health care is a no-brainer for pro-lifers: they're against it, because it enables women regardless of income to control the size of their families and to support the children they have.
I agree with everything you said except for the last paragraph.
I agree with everything you said except for the last paragraph.
Universal healthcare means women having access to contraception as of right – which you've made clear you're against – and having more than just two doctors in the whole of a very big country being able to perform late-term life-saving abortions. As you're part of the Doctor Tiller lynch mob, I'd guess you're not in favor of that, either. Universal healthcare means ending the prolife denial of care to women.
The pro-life movement is a cheap-labor conservative movement: that's why Republicans love it so much.
The pro-life opposition to Obamacare was based on its funding of abortion, not contraception. The Stupak Amendment, which pro-life groups supported, made absolutely no mention of contraception.
As for two doctors performing late-term abortions: most doctors don't want to! Even strongly pro-choice doctors, even abortionists, can't stand the discomfort of killing a late-term fetus. They'll stick to the first trimester, thankyouverymuch. What do you want to do, conscript people into becoming abortionists?
The pro-life opposition to Obamacare was based on its funding of abortion, not contraception.
Yea, because it's so much better for women who need abortions if they have to use a coathanger.
As for two doctors performing late-term abortions: most doctors don't want to!
Who would, given the terrorism and violence inflicted on doctors who do? Pro-life violence, terrorist actions against clinics, and outright murder, has succeeded in convincing many doctors that they just better hadn't.
What do you want to do, conscript people into becoming abortionists?
But on the other hand: a doctor who can't stand the "discomfort" of saving a woman's life, health, and future fertility by performing a late-term abortion, is in the wrong profession.
Women are not slaves or breeding animals, as pro-lifers pretend: women are human beings with the right to decide how many children to have and when. No woman should be forced through pregnancy and childbirth against her will.
But the pro-life opposition to late-term abortions says something even nastier about pro-life view of women: not slaves or breeding animals, whose owners may care for them at least to the extent of looking out for their health and wellbeing, but women as cheap incubators, use till broken, never mind even if you get a living baby out of the incubator.
Unborn children are not tumors or parasites or warts to just be killed and chucked in the garbage. You have still not explained why unborn babies should not be awarded human rights.
You have still not explained why unborn babies should not be awarded human rights.
I think you're trying to have an argument with someone else: I have not argued that human fetuses should not have human rights. It makes no difference to the pro-choice question.
Unborn children are not tumors or parasites or warts to just be killed and chucked in the garbage.
One of the consistent memories Doctor George Tiller's patients have of their visit to his clinic was of how endlessly kind and supportive he and his staff were to them: another is of the hateful, threatening behavior of the crowd outside, from which Tiller's murderer ultimately came.
One of the true horrors of the pro-life movement, I came to realize, is how it sanctions hatred and threatening behavior, abuse from cowards like Nulono, towards women at a most vulnerable, painful time in their lives: terminating what is usually a wanted pregnancy, because they have discovered either they or the baby will not survive pregnancy.
Nulono doubtless feels he's being most morally righteous, in howling such abuse at a woman who has discovered her fetus is dying inside her: and that sense of moral righteousness blinds him to the terrible cruelty of his position. (See my blog on kitten-burning.)
I often wonder, every time I encounter a new prolifer, if this time will be the time they prove amenable to arguments based on human rights, equality, and dignity.
I believe: "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."
But that's arrogant: if they were amenable to such beliefs, they would be pro-choice already, and wouldn't need my arguments.
My blog remains open to anyone who wants to comment on it, though I do moderate first-time commentators to keep off spambots. Anyone human is free to comment there, regardless of their views.
One of the human rights is the right to not be killed, so, yes, it matters a lot.
If Tiller truly only performed life-saving last-resort abortions or removed the corpses of deceased fetuses, I have no problem with him. However, this is simply not what happened.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMC_70oYV8U
If Tiller truly only performed life-saving last-resort abortions or removed the corpses of deceased fetuses, I have no problem with him.
But that's what he did.
And for doing that, he was murdered, by the pro-life movement who told lies about him for twenty years.
The pro-life movement is fundamentally a movement of lies and hatred.
One of the human rights is the right to not be killed, so, yes, it matters a lot.
How many murders have pro-lifers committed in their efforts to stop women having abortions? How many women have died because pro-lifers have successfully prevented women having access to safe, legal abortion? No interest in human rights for doctors or for women – and no real interest in "preserving the unborn", demonstrably. Just in hating women and in hating medical services for women.
Look at the sites of every major pro-life organization right after each of the murders of abortionists and you'll see immediate condemnation.
But even if we grant your claim that pro-lifers are responsible for these deaths, maybe we should do a little comparison. I'm pretty sure that there were only 8 or 9 such deaths since 1973, but I'll give you an absurdly high number (let's say a thousand) and compare.
Deaths from pro-life: 1,000
Deaths from pro-choice: 52,000,000