One of the most difficult parts of this election is the decision between Bush and Kerry on social issues. If a more centrist nominee had taken the lead, I would be strongly considering voting Democrat in this election. But 'three-light-wounds-and-I'll-cut-and-run' Kerry has NO credibility on national defense, despite his otherwise extremely effective and honorable service in Vietnam. While I agree that gay couples should be allowed to marry, there is no viable candidate who agrees in either party (Kerry being in support of Massachusetts amendment to prohibit gay marriages). His stance as a pro-choice advocate, despite his religion, earns my respect, and I worry about what would happen if Roe vs Wade were overturned. But his stance on the American economy, our position in the world as relates to the U.N., and again his extremely poor record on national defense are all factors that outweigh his positives for me.
But, should he be elected, he will be PResident of the United States, regardless of how close the electoral votes come. While I will criticize his positions, he will still command the respect that the leader of the free world has earned. I wish many on the left would attempt to keep the same attitude.

I don't recall who said it, but the classic statement on patriotism goes roughly "Our country, may she always be right in her dealings, but still my country, right our wrong."

That should read "Our country, may she always be right in her dealings, but still our country, right or wrong."

Preview is my friend, especially when one has been out until four in the morning. This is a good weekend.

Anybody who doesn't think the morning after pill is murder is surrendering the principle that destroying the foetus at any stage of development is murder.

Most people would make concessions when the baby is unviable outside the womb. Others make concessions in the cases of rape or incest.

Lots of grey area out there. Which is why I find myself somewhat disgusted when people put up pictures of mothers with children and make sarcastic remarks about aborting the child. Just not funny.

I think there are plenty of things about liberals that are fertile ground for satire. I found none of them in this post.

I don't think the morning after pill is murder in the least, and I also think that the abortion joke was mildly funny. If your sense of irony was a bit more developed, you might have caught that it was meant to subtley mock the concept of trotting out children to stump for abortion; and that the abortion rights people are rather maniacal about extending the periods where abortion is legal up to full-term (and in the joke's case, beyond).

Hope that's helpful.

lefties always think its funny to be mean to righties but get mad when you make fun of them. "that's not funny!" they say but when they do that just makes it funnier.......

Oh my gosh, look at this: http://www.alarmingnews.com/archives/000899.html

I think abortion is a vile, disgusting act, but I still think it's a choice. Like using drugs, it's a bad choice, and one by no means I'll never make, but I support people's right to make those bad choices.

As to the morning after pill, as I understand it the pill actually prevents fertilization rather than killing a fertilized egg(I could be wrong though, but this is what my sources tell me), so if the egg is fertilized the morning after pill is pretty much ineffective. An egg getting fertilized most often takes time, hours or even days, it's not something that happens right after intercourse.

The question for me is not when life begins.

The question is do we want government further regulating our lives.

Abortion is not a government job.

Exactly, re: the morning after pill.

As I mention in the post, I'm pro-choice, but i was put-off by the way the abortion rights were depicted as something ... almost ... noble and family-oriented. Like having little girls at the rally, for example. It just seems like the fetishization of a rather distasteful procedure, whether you are pro-life or pro-choice.

I will hand it to Kerry - during his speech, he mentioned that abortions should be safe and legal, but take place in as few instances "as possible." this was much saner rhetoric than the sentiments expressed in the speeches of his affiliates.

Both extremes of the abortion issue are silly and have screamed themselves to the point of being totally ineffectual.

If more of them spent their efforts in preventing unwanted pregnancies BEFORE conception can occur, abortion would become unnecessary.

Heather gets my vote for "smartest comment on this topic yet."

I think that lobby of Kerry's headquarters looks almost exactly like something I would expect to built on a soundstage in Hollywood for the next Mummy film...

complete with some pharoah pushing up the lid of his sarcophagus, slowly unwrapping the linen corpse-windings, sitting up, and (shudder, oh, the horror of it all!) intoning,

"I am Senator John Kerry, who served in Viet Nam, and I want to be your next president."

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

The morning after pill works both as an anti-fertilization agent as an anti-implant agent. Of course, so does the regular Pill (most people don't realize that).

Most people don't mind the government interfering with their lives to protect them (e.g. police, murder laws . . . ).

The question *is* when does life begin and when is it a person. That's the entire debate. Answer it one way, you're pro-life, answer it the other you're pro-choice. Answer it the pro-life way, but come out pro-choice, and you've got a logical problem. Life is the first right - no life, no rights.

Dennis, "it" isn't "he" or "she" until one or the other is born. At least until someone changes the United State Constitution to dictate otherwise. And I for one do not think you are about to get 37 state legislatures to agree otherwise. Now or anytime in the forseeable future.

In any case, abortion clinics are -- and always will be -- a relatively short trip away in Canada, Mexico (lots of Roman Catholics in both these countries), or relatively brief flights to European countries such as Spain. (Almost the most Roman Catholic country in Europe; so much for the declining influence of the declining papacy. Maybe you'll do better waving bibles at them and praying over them in the name of some evangelist sect or another.)

Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI

Is that 4th pic for real or is it doctored? I'd read the alarming news piece, and my first impression was that something was definitly up, BUT, how would Kerry's election logo be on that pic that photo unless it was done in photoshop? Also, since I haven't seen the pic you have posts on this site anywhere on Kerry.com (except the Lennon shot) it would seem that your pic is not legit. Any comment on that? I'd like to make a post on it, but I try to keep my criticisms of Kerry based on his REAL waffling...

Ken, god bless ya ... google where Lenin was circa 1970. :-)

I am offically sure of it.. you doctored one of those pics... you took out and replaced lennon. You also took off the war medal but forgot to take out the kerry logo from his website. Why did you do this? It's one thing to doctor a pic as a joke, and let people know you doctored the pic... it is another thing entirely to say you took a photo of that from Kerry's headquarters... I started the waffles campaign, I clearly do not support Kerry, but this sort of thing is irresponsible. In the feuture maybe let people know when you doctored a pic so that links like the one at alarming news don't happen.

Ken, there's been enough arguing around here today, so I'm only going to put up this last post on the matter, and only because you decided to lecture me publicly (I was being KIND to you with my last response, because I felt bad):

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin DIED IN 1924.

I thought about providing a hat tip that the photo was doctored, but I found that it disrupted the continuity of the joke, and I figured that no one would be ... uh ... ignorant of history enough to possibly imagine that John Kerry could have taken a picture with Lenin, seeing as LENIN DIED BEFORE JOHN KERRY WAS BORN.

It's also a play on the similar names, get it?

I'll take your advice and be "more responsible" next time. Now take mine: strangle your 9th grade history teacher - he or she FAILED YOU. Miserably.

Yeah, really sorry for not realizing it was Lenin. Especially embarrasing for me considering I was born in Russia.

No need to apologize for a goof, THAT'S actually pretty funny, and we all make mistakes (At least, I do).

Just don't lecture me about it ... :-)

Yikes. Sorry, I didn't mean to lecture... I knew the face was familiar but I couldn't place it. Nor can a lot of people from my generation, I'd bet. I appologize for my prior tone, I get a kick out of finding REAL dirt on Kerry (and doctoring funny pics, too). After reading the alarming news article, I thought I'd have a nice juicy post for my site and when I was closely examaning the pics and checking Kerry's site for confimation of various facts for my post, I realized that your pic had to be a fake (and all the time I had spent working on the story and taking screen shots and working in photoshop was pretty much wasted, so I was a bit irked.) It's clearly not your fault that I couldn't recognize Lenin... I should probably throw away my political science degree now.

My total, embarassing ignorance aside, I am happy you put up the little disclaimer. Now putz's like me wont waste time following up a story that seems too good to be true.

No problem, Ken. Sorry if I was rough; it's been a long, critical day here at Dean's World.

Arnold,
Your biology and your Constitutional law are both a bit rusty. Genotypic sex is, by definition, determined at conception. So, yes, even a fertilized egg is male or female, and thus he or she.
Most abortion proponents today have given up on the "it's not alive"/"blob of cells"/"parasite" theory of fetal development. Which is good because that theory is biological nonsense.
The issue is, and always has been, when "it" is a "person" both ethically and Constitutionally.
You appear to be under the mistaken belief that an unborn child isn't a "person" within the meaning of the Constitution until it's born. That is not accurate. In fact, that is the most extreme of the pro-abortion positions. Wesley Clark got into trouble with that during his campaign. He said, in effect, that he support abortion any time before birth. The Supreme Court has never accepted that position.
In fact, the state is allowed to put fairly significant restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy because a viable fetus is a limited-rights "person" under the Constitution.
The key point in modern abortion jurisprudence (post-Casey) is viability not birth. As Court explained in Casey: "The woman's liberty is not so unlimited, however, that, from the outset, the State cannot show its concern for the life of the unborn and, at a later point in fetal development, the State's interest in life has sufficient force so that the right of the woman to terminate the pregnancy can be restricted.
* * *
We conclude the line should be drawn at viability, so that, before that time, the woman has a right to choose to terminate her pregnancy." Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833, 869-70 (1992)(plurality opinion). Prior to Casey, the Court used the even more arbitrary trimester system.
Thus, before viability, the states have no right to regulate. After, they do have a right to regulate in favor of the life of unborn. Of course, it's more theoretical than practical because of technical statutory drafting issues related to a health of the mother exception.

Re: Lenin - that was a really obvious photoshop of the picture the Kerry campain put out with him and John Lennon. It's funny.

I dunno...about this abortion stuff. Up till a few years ago, if I ever gave it much thought, I was for it. For years and years. But a story in the Wash Post about pro-lifers had a big effect on me. The interviewee responded, well, you want to get rid of your kid because you can't handle it (his paraphrase but I couldn't deny that it stated the reality of the legal justification) At what age does it become illegal to kill the thing? 20 weeks, 20 months, two years? Well, heck, if i can do it when the kid's 20 weeks old, why not when he's 2 years old?

Modern technology shows us a remarkably well formed human being in the womb pretty darn early. I just don't know anymore. Kinda looks more and more like killing a baby. Very disturbing. Glad it's not my issue.

Nitro Nora
Grand Junction Colorado USA

Humans always like to pick on the most defenseless, most helpless. Used to be finding other countries to beat up, then slaves, and now unborn.

I dunno...about this abortion stuff. Up till a few years ago, if I ever gave it much thought, I was for it. For years and years. But a story in the Wash Post about pro-lifers had a big effect on me. The interviewee responded, well, you want to get rid of your kid because you can't handle it (his paraphrase but I couldn't deny that it stated the reality of the legal justification) At what age does it become illegal to kill the thing? 20 weeks, 20 months, two years? Well, heck, if i can do it when the kid's 20 weeks old, why not when he's 2 years old?

Modern technology shows us a remarkably well formed human being in the womb pretty darn early. I just don't know anymore. Kinda looks more and more like killing a baby. Very disturbing. Glad it's not my issue.

Nitro Nora
Grand Junction Colorado USA

I am strongly pro-abortion (I reject "pro-choice" as a ridiculous euphemistic avoidance of the issue) to the point that I believe that taxpayers should pay for them.

I believe in gay marriage and am against the death penalty.

I am also appalled that during a time of war our AG is wasting time on porn and designer bong prosecutions.

Despite all that, it's a post like this that remind me why I am a hardcore Republican. Thanks Bill for an entertaining and informative post.

Thanks.

As I see more arguments about abortion between people, it seems to me that the decision of whether a fetus is a human being is based less on biology than on the mother's attitude. For example, watch Kill Bill, and listen to Black Mamba's line, "I had a daughter once. She would be about four now too." She didn't know that the baby had ever been born, but she "had a daughter." However, if a gal had an abortion about the same time Mamba was shot in the head and sent into her four-year coma, that gal would say, "I was pregnant once, but I decided to end it." She wouldn't ever consider that she had a daughter.

As someone who searches constantly for truth about life and its processes (I'm a biomedical researcher in immunology), I'm completely unable to accept "attitude toward the fetus" as a valid way of defining if it is alive and has basic human rights. That's why it's really tough for me to take the superficially appealing position that "abortion is a choice. I would never have one, but I can't deny anyone else the right to." In my mind, the fetus is a child or it is not. Abortion is the snuffing out of a human life or it is not.

This doesn't mean that I think abortion should be banned for every circumstance, because I don't know what the mores of society will eventually be regarding this. Clearly, if the majority of society considers it to not be murder, it will not be, and therefore should not be banned, whatever my misgivings. Just as a personal wish, though, I think a woman ought to be aware of exactly the act she is committing, and not fool herself with comforting rationalizations about "well, it's only so-many weeks old..." or "it's not really alive until it's disconnected from my body." She should, if she ever considers a fetus a life under other circumstances, admit to herself that she is choosing her own convenience or her own life over her child's... and this may be the right decision for her, but she should know that this is the choice she's making. Our country, too, should make a decision and stick with it. It doesn't make any sense to allow fetuses to be terminated as a standard medical procedure, but then charge a murderer with two deaths when he kills a pregnant woman. Whatever attachment she had to that fetus, if our law says it isn't a life, then killing it is not murder.

That's all I really have to say about it... and I can't think of a good ending line, so I'll just cut it off here. :)

"This doesn't mean that I think abortion should be banned for every circumstance, because I don't know what the mores of society will eventually be regarding this. "

"It doesn't make any sense to allow fetuses to be terminated as a standard medical procedure, but then charge a murderer with two deaths when he kills a pregnant woman. Whatever attachment she had to that fetus, if our law says it isn't a life, then killing it is not murder."

Sorry, alison, my inconsistency alarm is going full blast. If you don't think abortion should be banned in "every circumstance" (for whatever reason -- really, are supposed future mores of society a valid position to base a moral and legal stand on? Kinda nebulous, ain't it?), you're already giving away the notion that it is acceptable that abortion should be banned in *some* circumstances. And, interestingly enough, we already have that -- there isn't a right to unrestricted abortion.

Hence demanding consistency with murder of a pregnant woman is kinda pushing it to absurdity.

Excellent photoblogging. I did some on my site of the march on Sunday, as well.

But dude, Dean: killing babies is never cool. It may be understandable to wish to be delivered of an unexpected child. But it's not okay to kill them.

You know it. We all know it. So don't support it.

Let me clarify my reply to Allison a bit:

An even simpler rebuttal -- you're sneaking in a trojan horse of the idea of individual choice in the argument that in some cases abortion should be legal. On the other hand, you claim that such choice does not exist for a murdered pregnant woman (to put it plainly, a) she didn't ask to be murdered, b) she didn't ask her baby to be murdered. Certainly, it is a safe legal presumption that if 1) is true, so is 2).

This would be the only consistent way of looking at the two cases. Otherwise you're left with a situation where individual choice only applies in *some* cases.

Hey, JB! :) Mores of society are all we've got to base our laws on, as far as I can tell. What else are we going to use to dictate morality/acceptability of anything? Science, religion? Neither of those mean a thing unless the majority of the public accepts them as standards... thus making the majority opinion the true standard. *shrugs* I don't necessarily like that, but that's how I perceive it to be.

The fact that we've banned partial birth abortion doesn't really influence what I'm saying... I think our laws on this aren't particularly stable since the debate over a fetus' rights is ongoing (in contrast to, say, laws against regular murder, which are super-stable), so what we have doesn't define for me what we will always have. I don't think asking for consistency is absurd at all, and I'm not sure why you do. Either something's a human being with rights or it isn't... so if we have that kind of inconsistency in our laws, then the humanity of a being goes right back to the attitude individuals take towards it, and not something intrinsic to the being itself. And that, the definition of "humanity" being based on other people's allowance, is the thing that troubles me. Does that make sense? It's like... so back in the day, when African people were brought over to be slaves, some people considered them subhuman and some people considered them totally human. If the country had kept the status quo of "it's the state's choice whether to acknowledge their humanity", we'd still have madcrazy human rights violations going on all over the place. It's not a perfect analogy, obviously, but that's sort of how I see this debate. I *do* demand consistency in how we define human beings... I think it's terribly, terribly important.

Am I sounding less inconsistent to you? I hope so. :) Have a good night!

Oops, sorry, JB. :) I was writing my reply when you were writing your second post, and I'm no longer sure that I interpreted your criticisms correctly. I wasn't using the example of the pregnant woman as a situation demonstrating her lack of individual choice regarding the child's death, just as an example of a situation in which the law considers a fetus to be a human being with rights. My problem with that lies in the fact that, if the fetus is killed via abortion, it's not a human being, if it's killed in utero during the murder of its mother, it IS a human being. That inconsistency troubles me, that's all.

Daniel: "Humans always like to pick on the most defenseless, most helpless. Used to be finding other countries to beat up, then slaves, and now unborn."

Please this is false on its face. The best you can say is, "Humans have...." but I'm not sure what use that statement has.

M. Simon:

Thank you. You are the first person I’ve seen to have a position similar to mine. I don’t think the government should be regulating birthing babies or the end of pregnancies. What if the mother objects to the regulation can she petition a court in time? I’m against abortion but against government regulated abortion even more.

It seems to me that the pro-choice position is based in the same general narciscism that infects most liberal thought. That alone should give a person pause.

Somebody wrote:

I worry about what would happen if Roe vs Wade
were overturned.

Well, in most states, pretty much nothing would change. Why does that worry you?

Wonderful photoshoot. Abortion is a sacramental issue to a number of folks in this country, and when they gather en masse, you get... well, a general strangeness. You've captured it in Kodachrome.

Thanks for the pics; they were entertaining! Having said that, I think you're simplifying the pro-life argument down to "religious convictions." I've been pro-life since high school and it's never been a religious issue with me, but one of inalienable human rights and medical science. It's not especially intelligent to say "we don't know if it's life" because it's obviously a living being, and to ask "but is it human?" is also dumb, as it is the product of human sperm and egg, with its own DNA and will grow to look like any regular human with proper nourishment and the protection of the womb. We can watch a child develop in the womb from the start of pregnancy until birth, showing in amazing detail the very human attributes of the fetus from very early in pregnancy. We've been ducking the issue of "is human life inherently valuable?" over this fictional disagreement over the basics of fetal development, and replaced medical facts with the philosophical bullshit of "personhood," a line of argument adapted from those who dehumanized their slaves to justify mistreating them. I'm not a Catholic or a Mormon or part of the "Religious Right," but I don't see how this issue developed into liberals supporting an unrestricted right to kill the weakest members of society, and conservatives throwing out their love of "choices" on abortion.

(1) Mr. Blue and Ms. Pink should have thought to carry Mace to protect themselves from assault.

(2) As for the use of women as enforcers, I'm so tired of this you-can't-hit-a-woman bullshit. Let's make it a standing rule that we deck a woman the moment she puts herself in a man's shoes.

(3) Women seem so different to us gay guys who don't have a sexual interest in them. I'm so glad I don't share other men's servitude. And it is servitude, isn't it?

Interesting (and entertaining) article. Liked your photos!

(PS I'm pro-choice and a Republican. I recall at the last convention that several prominent Republicans of like views tried to get the convention to soften the public stance on this in the platform. They failed. But with that knowledge I need never feel alone again. :-)

Dude, of course abortion is the most important political issue for women's rights around the world. It raises the most money. Do you think NARAL and Planned Parenthood could raise money with slogans like "Rights for Muslim Women", "Down With Religious Prejudice" or "Yes Democracy, No Mohamedism"?

The reason why politicians cave to the interests of both extremes is for the very point highlighted in this post - Party Loyalty. You know that with a Liberal Democrat as President you will not see a decrease in funding for abortion, population control and an increase in abstinence educational review. You know that with a Conservative Republican as President you will not see an increase in abortion funding, any support for population control and a slashing of abstinence sex education.

Maybe I am alone here but I think the 2004 general election is entirely about abortion. Iraq, War on Terror - forget about it, these are secondary issues to the culture wars the Executive Branch shapes. With the potential for 3 Supreme Court nominations in the next term both sides of the Roe v Wade are very aware of why this election is important.

Hey Doug:

1) Yes. That would have been the prudent move, especially if Franken were afoot.

3) "Servitude" is one way of looking at it. Women set the moral tone of any given society by choosing what behavior they demand from male suitors who want traction. Whenever you see the fabric of a society collapse, it's generally not because the men are worse than usual, but because the women gave up.

Whether that's "servitude," or "subservience," or something else is an open question.

I hope that females will one day rally around the idea males must use condoms.

Abortion is a billion dollar industry while a condom is a mere fifty cents. The cost of other methods of birth control, ie, the pill, spermicides, etc., are outrageous. Something is wrong with this equation.

Instead of advocating that females carry ALL the burden of sexual reproductive issues, we should be advocating males help carry this burden.

Not only have females been conditioned to believe we must carry the burden of abortion decisions and sexually transmitted diseases, we also must worry about the males 'sensitivity factor'. The sex industry can create a pill which can extend the males ability to perform but it cannot create a condom designed to address the males sensitivity factor?

The sexual revolution has come and gone and ladies, I think we lost.

Takes two to tango. It is my body but it is also his sperm.

In addition to easing the pain of having to decide whether or not killing a fetus is acceptable, advocating for the use of condoms will also help to prevent the spread of AIDS, as well as, other sexually transmitted diseases.

Advocating for the right to choose is not empowering females, it is oppressing females.

Well, in most states, pretty much nothing would change. Why does that worry you?
Well, we already have the standard of judicial activism (see the Massachuseets Supreme Court decision), what happens in a liberal state with conservative judges (as happens from time to time) when their court rules that abortion qualifies as murder? Not to mention most of the Southern states would immediately outlaw abortion (don't believe me? Look at the voting records for Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana), producing economic incentive in surrounding states to provide cross-border services. Large abortion clinics would attempt to advertise across the border, and therefore become more attractive targets for violence. Then there are the providers in the blackout states, most of whom would move, some would change careers, and some would provide services still as civil disobedience. This would lead to copycatters trying to get a quick buck, and we're back to back-alley abortions.
Things wouldnt change much? I strongly doubt it, it's an issue with too much tension built, and a radical decision by the SCOTUS would be like the final break of a fault line.

If you are pro-choice that runs counter to the Republican political party platform. Call yourself Libertarian and be done with it.

You can't cherry pick issues and wrap yourself in some underdog platform that has some of the issues you like and flatly refuses others you personally adhere to. The reason we have political parties is to organize individuals who had the same stance on all of the issues, not just a few of them here or there.

If that was the case then why do have a political party that is strictly pro-life/anti-abortion and one that is strictly pro-abortion at all?

And you can't slam the door on discussion of your political views in a post laced with acerbic comments on the opposing party that you loosely associate yourself with.

If you want sterile comments then make sterile posts (maybe sterility would also help with your pro-abortion stance, just a thought).

I'm pro-life and I really appreciated your story and your honesty. I'm glad that you "somewhat" understand my position, although labeling it as merely religious is a cop-out. But thanks anyway.

And I agree that some of the rhetoric is scary.

Hey Neo - I can do whatever I damn well please. And as for this:

"The reason we have political parties is to organize individuals who had the same stance on all of the issues, not just a few of them here or there."

That pretty much indicates what a single-minded little drone you are in terms of your political thinking.

I may be pro-choice, but I'm also more anti-tax, pro-gun and pro-defense - officially, Libertarians were against teh invasion of Iraq, which I think was the MOST IMPORTANT decision facing this country - PERIOD.

So that is why ... I am ... a Republican. Who is pro-choice.

I didn't slam the door, I just didn't want a bunch of pro-life folks coming in and saying YEAH! Way to stick it to those baby killers - because I guess I am aa "baby killer."

Amphipolus - sorry it acme off this way, but the pro-life people at the rally brought it up as a religious issue - not me.

Scroll up to some of the other abortion threads above and you'll sere more on this matter.

You are hilarious. One day Conan O'Brien's staff is going to see this, hiring you, and then you can get the sirens and keep the ideology.

"If you are pro-choice that runs counter to the Republican political party platform. Call yourself Libertarian and be done with it."

Neo, if every member of a political party had to agree with every single part of that party's platform, all political parties would be VERY small. I'm a libertarian, and sent away for my membership card last week, and I don't agree with the Libertarian Party platform on all issues, just most of them. Political parties allow like-minded individuals to get together, but even like-minded people don't agree on everything. Most people who register as a member of a political party agree with most of the party platform, but you'll find few who agree with it completely. And while the Libertarian Party didn't support the Iraq war(but they do support the occupation and reconstruction efforts, since we need to take responsibility for our actions, a cut and run strategy would be irresponsible and harmful) because they felt the war was not necessary, not all libertarians thought the war was unnecessary, and I can safely say that there are Republicans who felt the war was not necessary.

Thanks Chris - maybe you should e-mail Conan and tell him? :-)

Dear wrote:
"Making the assertion that abortion is a key issue for women in the US is highly arguable; projecting your self-centered focus on abortion to the rest of the world is foolish."

Sorry but you are wrong. The right to have an abortion is the back-up plan when birth-control fails. It is ESSENTIAL for women all over the world to control their fertility if they are to have any chance at gaining the power to change practices like female circumcision. Women will continue to cooperate in doing this kind of thing to their daughters until they believe that they will be able to control their own lives and earn their own livings. If a woman has no choice but to marry and bear as many children as her husband chooses to get on her, she will never be able to break out of the circle of exploitation. It isn't going to start with inexperienced and powerless young girls who are married off when girls in the western world are in high school. It's going to start with older married women who want to limit their families and give their daughters better opportunities than they got.

Coworker - Dean did not write that, I did, and let's see ...

A woman being stoned by an Islamic mob is not going to get the right to live from pro-choice views being introduced in her country - she MAY get pro-choice rights from having the right to freaking walk with a man in public without being KILLED.

Kindly put down the crack pipe, it's burning your lips.

To extend that argument, If the western world dropped huge supplies of birth control pills into these countries, we wouldn't suddenly be seeing women popping up and claiming their inherent rights as a person. I firmly agree with Bill that a women's ability to choose her fertility is DERIVED from equal rights, not the other way around.

Anybody who doesn't think the morning after pill is murder is surrendering the principle that destroying the foetus at any stage of development is murder.

It is the 'strategy' inherent in statements like these with which Dems shoot their arguments and themselves in the foot most thoroughly.

Just like with the Same Sex Marriage issue, when you say "All or Nothing", the rest of us are forced to say, "Fine then. Nothing.", when we may very well, in fact, be willing to support a given fight for something more in the middle.

"There is no middle when it comes to (whatever)" you say.

Fine. Just don't complain when we throw out your baby with the bathwater.

I found this most amusing:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/story/187471p-162349c.html

Mrs. Kerry is pro-choice but believes abortion "stops a life." That's not an unsensible position, but I wonder how many of Kerry's supporters will be unhappy at Mrs. Kerry's statement?

Also, she gives the following hypothetical:
----
"I ask myself if I had a 13-year-old daughter who got drunk one night and got pregnant, what would I do. Christ, I'd go nuts," Heinz Kerry said.
----
Well, the pregnancy would have to be dealt with - but wouldn't it be smarter to keep a 13-year-old under close watch so that getting "drunk one night" isn't an option? Why would her 13-year-old even be out at night?

Also, don't miss Kerry's non-response to his wife's opinion:
----
Asked if he shares his wife's views, Kerry told Newsweek, "I do not know the answer to that. We've never - she's never had to vote."
----
Waaah?

If more of them spent their efforts in preventing unwanted pregnancies BEFORE conception can occur, abortion would become unnecessary.

Heather gets my vote for "smartest comment on this topic yet."

It's a smart comment. But how do we do this? We have a society that is inundated with sexual images. It's in our ads, on our TV shows and movies, in our popular music.

We have 13 year old girls dressing like 2-bit streetwalkers, and their parents paying for the clothes. We have a generation of pre-adolescents thinking that oral sex isn't sex. After all, the president said so.

Then, when these kids are knocked up by 16, we lament that we should have "prevented unwanted pregnancies BEFORE conception can occur".

Call me cynical, but how can this happen in this society? After all, we must keep the government out of the bedroom, so any kind of government edict is definitely out.

The problem is that we seem to let everyone else into our bedrooms.

TV (Harry)

I was pro-choice until my son and his girlfriend
told me she was pregnant. Until that time I could
accept the baby was a fetus, but when they told me
the dr. had offered a abortion, I felt such pain at the thought of never seening my first grandchild and knew if they accepted the abortion
we would all feel the pain of a real loss.

They did not have the abortion, went on to keep the baby and marry.

So, we all learned in this way that each abortion
is the removal of a real person.

A person who is notw 22, who is beautiful, a person who sparkles with life, who we are so
grateful to have in our lives.

Sometimes life has to offer people situations like
this to understand once and for all what abortion
is, and for the women who get them, for as many
reasons there are getting it done. I do not judge
them, but feel sadness at their loss, their lack
of strength and commitment to life, and the wee
person who never saw life, was perhaps, wanted
but the situation was too difficult to handle,
never learning that in many situations if they
stuck to having the child another answer to their
situation could have been found.

Rape, incest, and the mothers health are all issues to be dealt with are for the mother to
decide and no judgements on the decision should
be made. I do not believe any women wants to have
a abortion, they know they are losing something
ver precious and will have a small scar on their
heart as long as they live.

I do not believe in the type of behavior of the
women who only see it as a "right" it is a right
already, and this behaviour only accentuates the
rather pathetic lack of life in these people who
have nothing to do with their time than to go
to protests like these, using foul language instead of intelligent thinking, and generally
making the pro-choice women look as they do not
have the smarts to even spell properly, much less
see past the propaganda that got them out there in
the first place. Hillary is at the bottom of this,
and we will find out why in the future.

There is no need for the protest, as the president
has said a number of times that America is not
ready to lose their abortion rights and he has
no intention of trying to get them to lose it.

Useful fools strike again.

jean

I'm sure the secret service appreciates you posting pictures of their agents on the web.

As a 68 year old pro-choice advocate I can clearly remember the back-alley abortion I had when I already had three children and was in the midst of a divorce. What I remember most was literally having to sneak in through an alley entrance and the crucifixes on the walls of the doctors' office and his upstairs apartment. After a no-anesthetic abortion the doctor asked me if it had hurt. When I said I never knew anything could be so painful he said "Good! Then you won't do it again." In many ways he still symbolizes the anti-abortion view for me, and I don't really wonder why so many leaders of the movement are male, as are most of those who expressed their views in response to your photographs. Perhaps it's easier to be rigid in your convictions when the outcome doesn't affect your body personally. St. Francis said that life begins at quickening, and his opinion is at least as rational to me as those who believe that birth control is abortion, and every time you kill a sperm it's murder. I've raised six children and fifteen foster children, and wondered where all those dedicated Christians "saving children's lives" were in relation to those already born. When I helped young women whose children were already born, and who were sliding into a sewer because of lack of resources, education, or a future, I wondered where all those good people were who had convinced those young women to bear their child because otherwise they would be committing murder. How about the shelter for pregnant women in your town - what do they do for the mother and child after the child is born? I believe cruelty to children, or refusal to do whatever you can to help children (whether your own or not) is a whole lot worse than the "murder" of a sperm, an egg, or the combination of the two.

Hey Spanky - the Secret Service does not care - they're on the national news nearly every day, and their presence is intended to be seen - it's a deterrent.

Hi.

Thanks for the photo essay.

I found it a bit of a shock. I thought he would have been keeping this at arm's length, making a pretence of ... humanity, or faithfulness to the Church, or something. He's a famous obfuscator, on all sides of every issue, so I assumed he would have been careful not to reveal a stand. But it's not like that. They're totally committed and out there, and he's their man.

So that's what the fuss about John F. Kerry getting communion is about. It's not about some people with pro-abortion placards showing up at the back of John F. Kerry's rallies and him ignoring them, and some Church folk getting over-sensitive and jumping the gun or whatever. He's the abortion candidate for the abortion party, supported by the abortion lobby. It's out there. All you need is eyes to see what's going on.

And there are the anti-abortion people, pointing out the reality of what this is all about. There's no way anyone could have an excuse to say they didn't know.