Hey Michelle! Do something about you husband!
Let me be honest up front here:
I am pro-life in the very essence of the word.
This means that I am essentially against abortion. I can, however, envision situations where a pregnancy should be terminated, if it is the will of the parents, especially the mother whose status and wishes must over-ride any other consideration. It is between the mother and her physician
Actually, I don't know anyone who is pro-abortion. I have many friends who are pro-choice, but who are not pro-aborton.
Certainly we can agree that a pregnancy resulting from incest or rape should be terminated if it is the mother's will. Should a young woman be forced to carry to term a fetus resulting from incest or rape?
There are situations in which tests show a fetus not to be viable long past birth. Why should a woman be forced by law to carry a fetus to term, knowing that the baby will not live?
Talk about state sponsored torture!
I don't believe in abortion as a form of birth control. I don't know anyone who does. Women take abortion very seriously. It is a procedure that no one I know takes lightly. Anyone who does would make a terrible parent.
Nevertheless, no one I know wants the federal government passing laws that continuously chip away at Roe v. Wade, either. No one wants the federal or state government limiting their civil rights.
As I say, I am pro-life, which means I do not support executions. I do not support treating criminals in an inhumane way, unless they behave as animals of a lower class than humans. I have a thing about quality of life as well as life.
A prison staff could take any one of us and turn us into monsters, in 6 months or less. Think it can't happen? Think again!
I refuse to support war, especially one based on organized deception involving fear-mongering.
Deception and fear-mongering: The Two Forgotten Deadly Sins.
If there is a real threat to our country then I will fight, myself. No doubt about it.
I don't see any threats except those caused by the Neoconservative ideology which is driving our foreign and domestic policy. These people are a great danger to life and quality of life and should be arrested for war crimes and attacks on our constitution.
I don't care whether the dead are American babies or Iraqis and their babies. My feelings are the same.
Can the Fundamentalists say the same? If not, they are not pro-life. They are only pro-American fetus. You know, that tiny being who, according to them, is sinful even in the womb.
They say that abortion is the murdering of the innocent. They also say that we are all born in sin and must be baptized and accept Jesus Christ as our savior in order to be saved from original sin.
I doubt many fetuses can do all that.
A continuous flow of money helps much, of course. The Roman Catholic Church has made quite a lot of money off the MAFIA and, probably, government officials, just to name a few.
Other denominations of the so-called Christian faith prey on the elderly and the infirm. Anyone who is close to death's door, or wish they were, are ripe for the "prayer club," or whatever scheme/scam is going today. These modern-day faith healers have been making out like Flint since 9/11, which they perceive as the beginning of the end.
The end is a good thing is their collective mind because they get to go to heaven. What is even better is that anyone who does not believe as they do will be cast into the lake of fire, to burn forever. Glory Hallelujah !
There's nothing quite so heavenly as watching your perceived "enemies" burn.
What a totally screwed up theology! It is so twisted and has nothing to do with the authentic teaching of the Christ.
Thank God for the 60s. I have yet to see a documentary that covers this aspect of the era known as the 60s, but there was a major spiritual movement that surfaced in those days. Various kinds of Yoga and Buddhism came to those who were seeking truth. Some Seekers went to find truth in foreign lands. They walked the "Happy Hippie Trail," as it was called, which circles the planet; some came home, some did not. The Trail, I hear, is no more, because of the wars we are fighting.
Truth be told, it was that movement, the spiritual one, that scared the fundamentalist more than what happened in Chicago, at the Democratic Convention in 1968. The violence, though disturbing, was a distraction. It scared the living beejesus out of conservatives everywhere and across the board. It scared other people as well. The independent masses grew. Many could see that the two major political parties were....well....full of it.
It is interesting that only the violent horror in the streets of Chicago and Birmingham and the Hippies at the Woodstock Festival, in The Haight and at Altmount made it onto our TeeVee screens.
Rarely is anything mentioned about some of those Hippies. Those who saw other realities and set about achieving states of consciousness that were quite expanded, legally. There is Holotropic breath-work and many types of mediation. One is no better than another, generally. Particularly, one may be very good for me and terrible for you. We are different, ya know.
(One thing I do know for sure is this: Those old Hippies who chose the spiritual path are still around today. You will recognize them only by their presence. They wear no uniforms.)
One size really does not fit all, or even half.
Different strokes for different folks, as the song goes......
Say what?
Here's one for you to think about:
Parental notification: What if the father of the girl is also the father of her child? Think it doesn't happen? Think again, Dear Reader. It happens far more than one might expect and not just in West Virginia, as some of us would like to believe.
Posted July 6, 2008 10:17 AM
by Frank James, updated at 5:37 pm with Obama campaign response.
Does Sen. Barack Obama really mean to say he supports new restrictions on late-term abortions that would effectively weaken Roe v Wade?
That's the huge question that remains following the Democratic presidential candidate's statement yesterday that he doesn't believe a pregnant woman's "mental distress" should be considered a sufficient exception to bans against late-term abortions.
As Jan Crawford Greenburg, ABC News legal correspondent so ably points out in her Legalities blog, Obama's response yesterday to a reporter's question in which the senator sought to clarify his earlier remarks on the issue, left open the possibility that he actually supports a significant narrowing of abortion rights.
This, of course, would come as a shock to his liberal supporters and many of those voters who backed Sen. Hillary Clinton in the primaries, voters Obama is now trying to win over. Many of those voters very much support abortion rights.
Attempting to clarify comments he made during an interview in Relevant magazine in which he seemed to strongly indicate that he supported a late-term abortion exception for the physical-health of the mother but left the impression he might not support a mental-health exception, Obama yesterday told reporters on his campaign plane that he, indeed, supported mental-health exceptions. Such exceptions were acceptable so long as they were for clinically-diagnosed conditions, he indicated.
What he did not support was the idea of exceptions that would allow late-term abortions based on "mental distress." "It is not just a matter of feeling blue," Obama said.
I'm not too proud to say that answer was enough to throw this non-lawyer off the scent but it didn't Jan, a University of Chicago trained lawyer. That's why when she worked with us at the Chicago Tribune where she covered the Supreme Court, her nickname was Justice Greenburg, because of her detailed knowledge of the high court and her probing mind.
Here's her cogent analysis of Obama's answer which points to why the senator is going to be forced to address this issue again:
So Obama, it seems to me, still is backing away from what the law says--and backing away from a proposed federal law (of which he is a co-sponsor) that envisions a much broader definition of mental health than the one he laid out this week.
That proposed federal legislation, the Freedom of Choice Act, refers to the key Supreme Court case on the issue, which was decided the same day as Roe v. Wade in 1973. In that case, Doe v Bolton, the Court said a doctor could decide to perform an abortion based on "all factors--physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age--relevant to the well-being of the patient. All these factors may relate to health."
Subsequent cases in the Supreme Court and lower courts have said states cannot ban abortions where the doctor deems them necessary to protect a woman's physical and mental health. Lower courts have taken that to mean a state cannot prohibit an abortion--even one post-viability--if the woman would suffer severe emotional harm without it.
Nowhere do those cases impose criteria of "serious clinical mental health diseases."
That's not what the law is today. The Court has said the Constitution prohibits states from banning post-viability abortions unless those laws contain a broad mental health exception---one that includes mental distress and severe emotional harm. Abortion rights groups have fought for decades to preserve these exceptions, and I'm awfully curious what they will think about limiting them to women with mental disease or mental illness. (A good question for Monday, when we're all back in the office.)
Safe to say that abortion-rights supporters are not going to be satisfied with vagueness from Obama on this issue. Indeed, they may find added causes for concern in the "clarification" he provided Saturday.
Take Obama conscious or not use of the language of abortion opponents in his answer to the reporter.
Here's what he said at one point:
"My only point is that in an area like partial-birth abortion having a mental, having a health exception can be defined rigorously," Obama continued.
The term "partial-birth abortion" is how abortion foes describe a particular and rarely performed late-term abortion procedure. Doctors refer to it as intact dilation and evacuation. Abortion-rights activists generally despise the partial-birth abortion term.
In a 2004 National Press Club speech, Kate Michelman, then NARAL Pro-Choice America's president, referred to the term dismissively as "so-called 'partial-birth abortion.' That is a political, not a medical, term. No one knows quite what it means..."
That would be the same Michelman who endorsed Obama in February right before Super Tuesday.
So what are we to make of this? Does Obama really mean what he said about "mental distress" not being an acceptable reason for an exception to late-term abortion bans, in which case, it's probably an understatement to say he's going to have a major problem with a big part of his base?
Was he just being lax with his language, a dangerous mistake on an issue as deeply felt and contested as abortion?
Is he trying to send a signal to voters in swing states, like working-class whites, especially Catholics in Ohio and Michigan, by cunningly infusing his comments to reporters with the language of the anti-abortion movement?
The Obama campaign schedule indicates the senator is back in Chicago with no public events today. That should give him some time to rehearse his thoughts on abortion since reporters are likely to try and pin down precisely where he stands in the coming days.
Updated at 5:37 pm:
Linda Douglass, a senior campaign spokesperson for the Obama campaign provided this statement.
Senator Obama has always fought for a women's right to choose and has consistently opposed efforts to pass measures lacking a health exception. Also, Senator Obama recognizes that some people view these health exceptions not as exceptions, but as a way around these restrictions. Senator Obama believes that while "mental distress" or simply "feeling blue" should not be covered by a health exception, there will be cases where carrying to term a pregnancy may seriously damage a woman's mental health and those cases should be covered. During an interview with Relevant Magazine, Senator Obama made the point that we can craft well-defined health exceptions - as pro-choice legislators have tried in Congress and in state legislatures - that address those concerns.
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.
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