The gut reaction is: if you’re pro-life, you vote Republican. In most instances that would help your cause, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in this election.
Why? Because Obama actually has a plan to reduce abortions, McCain does not.
McCain just wants to overturn Roe v. Wade. At the debate he claimed to be a federalist, meaning that he would want the choice to have abortions to go from women to the state legislatures. It would still be a choice, there would still be states that choose to allow abortions, but the only difference would be that now people who have no business in the matter (e.i. men,) would have a say in the decision.
Obama wants to reduce the number of abortions by women through sex education. By educating women on how to avoid unwanted pregnancies, you can reduce the number of abortions much more that by outlawing it in some states. If certain states still allow abortions, women would still be able to have them. The only abortions prevented under this scenario are those where women (girls more likely) don’t know of any way to get to or find an abortion clinic.
Instead of making it trickier for parts of the country to get to abortion clinics, why not have a program that reduces unwanted pregnancies nationwide? That way the number of abortions would be reduced across the country.
So the question is what would a pro-lifer gain by voting for McCain?
I am not completely pro-life, but I support McCain on this issue because it **should **be a state problem. The federal government should neither demand the allowance of nor prohibit abortion.
It seems to me that pro-Life is not so much about reducing the number of abortions (though that’s obviously important) as it is about making sure abortion is formally recognized, in law, as unacceptable in American culture.
I’ve posted this elsewhere, but primarily it is because that it is only by the election of the correct senators and presidents that Row v Wade can be over turned. However, the work of reducing abortions can be done by many other people and agencies. Such programs can still be instituted by congress, by the states, by private organizations, etc.
Also, if it is at the state level it there still a chance, even if it is a small one, of restricting abortion.
I also do not agree with your statement that men have no business in the matter. It is a human life that is being ended and thus anyone who is human has business in the matter. If I did not believe it was a human life I could possibly accept that men have no business in the matter, but as I do not believe this I do not accept that.
Also, as I understand it, I think Roe v. Wade is bad a bad judgment and is bad for this country. It is a poison in the veins of our political system that prevents good candidates from being nominated or elected on the national level.
Finally, Senator Obama does not seem to favor any restrictions on abortions what so ever and this is troubling to me as he also does not seem to want to state when he thinks life begins. If he has I’ll happily be wrong on this as I’d love to know it. Surely a someone becomes a person sometime before birth even if it’s not at conception and not having any feedback on when he thinks this might be troubles me.
To be honest I want to vote for Obama. I really do. I like his health care program better. I’m just generally fed up with the republicans and I think the McCain has gone insane with the whole terrorist thing and the ACORN brouhaha. However, as I think abortion ends a human life, I think that millions of people have been killed since Roe and millions more will be in the future so I have to do what I can to end abortion.
In the end I really might end up voting for him. Its not impossible, but right now I’m not. Its something I actually agonize over. Which seems silly to me as it’s just one vote out of millions, but darn it its my vote and I want to get it right.
Exactly. The “pro-lifers” don’t care that Obama has a plan to reduce abortions, because they don’t actually care about abortion. They just care about tyrannizing and abusing women. Sure, they SAY otherwise; but whenever they have the opportunity to choose between reducing abortions and hurting women, they choose the latter.
I don’t disagree with this, but what I have trouble swallowing is this naive notion that if abortion became illegal, that it would “go away” somehow. And what happens to a woman who is “caught”? Is she then imprisoned? What if she has other kids? What if her husband is the one to perform the abortion? Do they both go to jail? Whither then their kids? It doesn’t sound very well thought out to me.
I also cannot reconcile the dichotomy of “I’m against abortion and want only abstinence education taught.” You’d think that anti-abortion (I find “pro-life” very misleading) folks would be adamant about sex ed in schools and support Planned Parenthood. They tend not to do so, in general.
Where are all these babies to go and who is to raise them? Foundling hospitals?
As a pragmatist, I don’t see Roe v Wade being overturned by anyone at any time in the near future. Since I am pro-choice, I am untroubled by this. But I would like to see the number of abortions drop via viable sex ed, genetic testing, decrease in rape and incest etc. IMO it would be better if abortion stayed legal, but we reduced the need for it.
This is a pet peeve of mine: “Human life” is irrelevant. Human life is not in any way sacred; an excised cancer tumor is human life, and nobody has any problem with incinerating it as medical waste. Nor does it matter when life begins. What is sacred is the life of a person, and so the real question is when personhood begins.
I see now. Someone else can teach sex ed, but only a president can appoint judges to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Still, outlawing abortions (like eleanorigby mentions) won’t stop people from getting abortions. A culture that promotes sex education over sexual ignorance would do a much better job. That way, whether it’s legal or illegal, less women would be placed in a position to make such a decision.
He favors restriction for partial birth and he doesn’t know when life begins.
I am anti-abortion, but the whole abortion issue to me is such a minor, unimportant issue when one considers all the important questions facing the country that I can not imagine myself voting for or against a candidate because of his or her views on abortion. I don’t really care what Obama or McCain think about abortion. It is not important. Tell me what they think about national defense, immigration, tax policy, etc.
It seems to me that the general idea is that one follows from the other. That abortion being outlawed and recognised as a bad thing is important, but that that would hopefully also decrease the number of abortions is also important.
Senator Obama would not even support the bill in Illinois, the “Born Alive” bill, that protected the life of a baby born live after a botched abortion, correct? God almighty, if pro-life values are important to you, what the hell do you do with that little fact? Words fail me, that is so beyond the pale, so slavishly committed to pro-choice orthodoxy.
Anyway, in response to the OP, it’s hard for me to sync up any rhetoric he has otherwise uttered with anything remotely in line with my pro-life objectives. It’s all bullshit as far as I’m concerned, if his “compromise” won’t reach even that far.
Wow. You’ve got your mind so made up that you are just eating up the shit being shoveled down your throat by republicans, aren’t you?
The reason he did not support the bill was because there was ALREADY a law in the books that provided for the support of life for a baby born alive after a failed abortion. The rest of the law dealt with issues that might have weakened abortion rights.
In other words it was composed in the proud tradition of “We’ll try to sneak in legislation for our cause under the guise of something that would seem so reprehensible to the ignorant masses that our opposition will think twice about voting against it” that is so prevalent in our country. And you have so clearly illustrated why this keeps being done. The masses remain ignorant.
Right, now I’m enlightened. Thanks so much. Here a link for you:
Bolding added. So, did all the Dem Senators who voted for an identical bill ignore the parts that weakened abortion rights? This is silly. Anyone who seriously offers Obama as a pro-life alternative is delusional. Seriously, it is to laugh.
Actually, I had already seen that site, and I think they did a good job. It’s clear that Obama lied about why he opposed the bill, changing his tune multiple times when his campaign’s position was no longer tenable (read your cite). Bottom line, I don’t think Obama wants infants to die. I believe he wants to protect abortion rights, and demonstrate his commitment to such a cause, even to the extent that he will not for a moment take even a slight risk that such rights would be affected, not even to protect an infant. If the bill was superfluous (there’s no agreement it was), still, why not vote for it? Because he is so committed to pro-choice orthodoxy.
And “pro-life alternative,” isn’t that the reason for this thread? Why vote for that guy, when this guy is a better alternative, and all that?
No one argued Obama isn’t pro-choice, the argument is one of pragmatism. While still championing the rights of mothers to decide for themselves, Obama is clearly a candidate that would press harder for the measures limiting unwanted pregnencies (sex ed, etc.) in the first place while McCain’s federalist leanings would push to allow some states to overturn of Roe V. Wade but certainly would not prevent mothers from crossing state lines for abortions or doing them illegally.
In that context the OP is asking why wouldn’t pro-lifers want Obama instead of McCain.
