"Mr. Obama is on his way to becoming the abortion president. Virtually everything he's done through executive order and through appointments and through other policies promote the killing of unborn children and the wounding of their mothers."
And in case the words aren't enough, here's the video:And this statement was after the murder of Dr. Tiller. How does this rhetoric promote their cause and advance the debate? So much for trying to find a common ground and reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies and abortions. Chris Smith would rather lob rhetorical bombs apparently. Maybe it's just meant to stoke the flames of a certain segment of people. But if you're so pro-life and need to use rhetoric, why not condemn people trying to take the life of others because they don't agree with what they do, which is by the way legal under the law of the land.
The attorneys general of Connecticut and six other states filed suit in federal court Thursday seeking to block the implementation of a controversial Bush administration rule they say would limit women's access to contraceptives.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued the regulation last month, saying it is needed to protect healthcare workers against discrimination by their employers if they decline to participate in abortions or other practices that violate their religious, moral or ethical beliefs.
This is what the Connecticut Attorney General had to say about why they filed the suit:
Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal (D) filed the lawsuit along with his counterparts in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Oregon and Rhode Island in U.S. district court in Connecticut. They seek an immediate injunction against HHS implementing and enforcing the regulation.
"On his way out, the Bush administration has left a ticking legal time bomb set to explode literally the same day of the Inaugural and blow apart vital constitutional rights and women's healthcare," Blumenthal said on a conference call with reporters.
And some of the problems people have with the new regulations:
Among opponents' numerous complaints about the regulation is that it does not explicitly define abortion, which they say could permit healthcare workers to deny birth control to women or even emergency contraceptive "morning-after pills" to rape victims.
They say the regulation is too broad and could be interpreted to apply to any employee at a medical facility, not just physicians, nurses and other practitioners.
In addition, opponents contend that these employees would not be required to refer patients to providers who would offer the relevant services and could even turn patients away without notifying their own supervisors.
If the regulation isn't blocked by the court, it would take effect tomorrow. In that case, the Obama Administration or Congress would have to make regulatory or legislative changes to the policy.
Herb Jackson is doing a series of Qs and As with Dennis Shulman and Rep. Scott Garrett on various issues. Here is part of Shulman's response regarding abortion.
My wife's an obstetrician-gynecologist. When she was in medical school ... there were still wards at the hospital at Columbia of women who were dying from illegal abortions. I think what people don't appreciate when they talk about the sacredness of life is that in any country where abortion is illegal we end up with women who die from illegal abortions. ... Abortion has to be discouraged, but it should never be made a constitutional amendment and never be made illegal.
The only place where I disagree is in tone, and not in substance. Abortion should be discouraged just as any surgery should be if it is not necessary, but the discouragement should be in the form of extended education of birth control options and not the shame right wingers want to use. It should be preventative as opposed to coercive.
Reducing abortion should be a goal, because it is a physical invasion of the body that can be prevented by preventing pregnancies. Too often when we hear "abortion should be discouraged" it means we should shame women into carrying through with an unwanted pregnancy, and that's not right.
This is amazing, and should be forwarded to all the wavering pro-choice Republicans out there.
John McCain mocks -- with air quotes and a sneer -- the idea that the health of the mother should be taken into consideration during emergencies involving pregnant women.
A few days ago, I introduced you all to New Jersey's 39th Legislative District, and why it matters to New Jersey and the country at large in 2007. You can read the article at http://www.bluejerse... . Today, I want to start tackling the opposition; for, even though NJ-39 has moved leftward, the incumbents have stayed on the far-right of the political spectrum. And that is especially true of Gerald "Gerry" Cardinale, the district's State Senator since 1981. In many ways, Cardinale is a New Jersey version of Mitch McConnell; arrogant, divisive, out of touch with political and social changes and blindly loyal to the special interests who back his campaigns. Cardinale's platform and values better echo 1907 than 2007, and today I'm going to show you why.
A doctor has no duty to tell a woman considering an abortion that her embryo is an "existing human being," a unanimous state Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.
The 5-0 ruling scrapped the possibility of a trial touching on the question of when human life begins.
That's 5-0, by the way. Republicans and Democrats voted on that one. But there's more:
The decision, citing past rulings, said the court "will not place a duty on doctors when there is no consensus in the medical community or among the public" on when life begins.
And that is the rub. The anti-abortion crowd will constantly run around and scream that there is scientific proof that life begins at conception, but they are unable to prove it using the scientific method. It is only through a severe and complete misunderstanding of what science and the scientific method are that can get a person to believe science can tell when life begins.
Many people say life begins at viability, when the fetus is capable of living outside the womb on its own for a significant period of time. Others say it begins at the quickening. Still others at the first heartbeat, and a rare few believe it begins at birth.
But these are definitions, not duplicable experiments. There has to be an experiment to challenge the idea (i.e., one that can fail) and it has to be repeatable. Then it goes through peer review and other people try to repeat the experiment. But there is no experiment to determine when life begins, and the mere fact of a scientist saying something doesn't mean it's scientific.
Now, there are issues at hand with this case, and I am not belittling the plaintiff's pain. She maintains she asked her doctor if her six week old fetus was a baby, and he said, "'Don't be stupid, it's only blood.'"
That makes him a crappy doctor, and in my opinion should be taken to the medical board for review of his medical knowledge. But it doesn't mean that every doctor has an obligation to inform pregnant women that a fetus is a full-fledged human being.
John McCain, campaigning in South Carolina, says that Roe v. Wade should be overturned, and has pledged to appoint Supreme Court judges who will do just that. (Haven't we got enough of them already?)
That should dash McCain's hopes of winning the New Jersey primary--no matter which NJ pols are backing him--as long as the word gets out. Fortunately these days it's more difficult for politicians to say one thing in South Carolina and another in New Jersey.
And this guy tries to portray himself as a "moderate"!
Last week, New Jersey General Assemblyman Michael Carroll made Blue Jersey the topic of a blog post. Juan, in good humor, gave the Assemblyman the honor of the Quote of the Day. Of course, opposing blogs flaming each other is hardly anything new. But I wanted to take a moment and thank Assemblyman for actually going on the public record and for embracing blogging as a means of telling the public what he thinks. By way of thanks, I'd like to give him an answer to some of the questions he raises.
Mr. Carroll writes:
Anyone who unreservedly supports capital punishment needs professional help. That anyone would uncritically support empowering the same government which can’t count votes correctly, deliver mail timely, or provide a decent education economically, with the right to take a life, strikes me as outrageous.
I'm not sure I'd say people "need professional help" because they disagree with me politically. His anti-government screed, however, doesn't strike me as a compelling reason to disallow government the power to take the lives of its citizens. What happens if the government suddenly gets a vote count right (something it does regularly), delivers mail correctly and on time (something I rarely have a problem with), or that education can be delivered cheaply (something that has been done regularly up until the last twenty years or so)? Do we say, "Well, we reduced the cost of education, let's fire up the death machine!"?
I got an email from the Family Research Council Today and was surprised to see that their headliner was none other than our own homegrown nutjob Chris Smith. Tony Perkins touted Smith's reintroduction of the "Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act." Under the act, an embryo is described as a "pain capable unborn child" and requires abortion providers to inform the "mother" that the "unborn child" may experience pain. Smith also introduced this bill in September, but it never made it out of committee. This is a last ditch effort to get it passed before the dems have functional control. Since Smith is obviously a lost cause, perhaps those living in more moderate Republican districts can contact their Representative (e.g. Frelinghuysen) to urge them to oppose such measures.
Aronsohn seeking Internet buzz. That's the title of a Bergen Record article about a new online ad created by Paul Aronsohn's campaign.
The youtube ad highlights Congressman Scott Garrett's extremist views on abortion rights and will be emailed to all 14,000 New Jersey members of NARAL. This is the kind of targetting that the internet is incredibly useful for, and the hope is that those viewing the ad will forward the link on to like-minded friends. Garrett opposes a woman's right to choose even in the cases of rape or incest. The video shows Garrett speaking about Roe v Wade at a "March for Life" rally in January of this year:
"We want to shine the light of day on the truth of the terror that abortion is. Because we know that over 30 years ago a dark cloud spread across this nation. The dark cloud spread darkness in this nation and closed the eyes to the political leaders of this nation."
I was wondering if anyone was going to step up and run on an anti-abortion slate against Tom Kean Jr. and Bob Menendez -- both pro-choice -- for US Senate. From Inside Edge, it's happened:
Among the seven Independents running for the United States Senate in 2006 is 77-year-old N. Leonard Smith, who is running as the "Solidarity, Defend Life" candidate. Smith is no newcomer to New Jersey politics: he served as a Camden County Freeholder in the early 1960's and sought the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 1976 ...
This is bad news for Junior, as the pro-life crowd might have held their nose and voted his way without the option. But now they have a chance to make a statement with their vote, and they are pretty good at litmus test voting.
One of my favorite things to do with students in my Intro classes is to have them look at the Constitution and find some of the rights they think we are entitled to. The point is to show them that a strict literal reading of the Constitution would lead them all into territory they don't really want to contemplate. The right to own property? Doesn't exist. You have only the right to be compensated for property taken away. The right to get married and have children? It doesn't exist. The right to go to school doesn't exist. The right to lie in bed naked doesn't exist. The right to even have sex with someone doesn't exist.
So where does that leave the right to privacy?
When the framers of our Constitution began writing what would become the Bill of Rights, there were strenuous objections. Alexander Hamilton, for one, claimed that enumerating our rights would allow people to argue that only those rights that are enumerated should be protected. Jefferson and Madison disagreed, stating that some rights are so crucial that they must be placed above reproach.
There is a bill in front of the Subcommittee on Health, where Ferguson is co-chair, that would increase funding and availability of contraceptives and family planning education for poor women. This, in turn, would reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and result in a dramatically lower number of abortions. The Bush administration estimates that there are 3 million unwanted pregnancies a year, with 50 percent ending in abortions.
Now new evidence from the Bush administration demonstrates that the number of unwanted pregnancies among poor women is skyrocketing under Republican "pro-life" policies, resulting in even more abortions.
Poor women in America are increasingly likely to have unwanted pregnancies, whereas relatively affluent women are succeeding more and more in getting pregnant only when they want to, according to a study analyzing federal statistics.
As a result of the growing disparity, women living in poverty are now almost four times more likely to become pregnant unintentionally than women of greater means, the study found.
Based on nationwide data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics and other sources, the researchers found that from 1994 through 2001, the rate of unplanned pregnancies increased by almost 30 percent for women below the federal poverty line -- now defined as $16,000 annually for a family of three. For women in families comfortably above poverty, the rate of unplanned pregnancies fell by 20 percent during the same period.
The abortion rate also rose among poor women while declining among the more affluent.
The Republican took over the House and Senate in 1994, and the White House in 2001. During that time they have radically reduced access to family planning and contraception, choosing to focus only on abstinence education to prevent unwanted pregnancies. Abstinence education has a place, since teenagers are often not ready for the emotional or other costs of sex and pregnancies, but only when it is coupled with realistic prevention messages, as well.
Congressman Ferguson is one of the most absolutist opponents of contraception, family planning and abortion. He is so radical that his own colleagues call him "Mr. Embryo", and that radical position is hurting poor women. Unwanted pregnancies create financial burdens, empotional stress, hurt families, and end in abortion as often as they result in children.
1. As huntsu already pointed out, they are having a Pro-Death Speaker to raise funds.
2. For thinking that conservatives (like them) have not been successful at pounding home the idea that when pollers say "stem cells," people don't think they mean the "evil" kind of stem cells.
Aside: For those of you who don't yet know that the Right to Life is less about stopping abortions, and more about stopping sex, you can read this book. My fiance (and myself) helped research it.
New Jersey Right to Life has its annual dinner tonight, and many dignitaries will be present to raise money for the anti-abortion group. Republican politicians -- NJRtL has never given money to a Democrat -- make their pilgrimages here to pretend to righteous morality and superiority to the pro-choice Democrats.
This year NJRtL has a special guest at their dinner, one who speaks out forcibly on a number of issues. This woman is strongly anti-abortion, but is in no way pro-life. Her name is Ann Coulter. Here are some highlights of her pro-death statements:
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."– National Review Online
"When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."Conservative Political Action Conference speech
"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building." NY Observer This one is special. She doesn’t regret the children and state employees who died in Oklahoma City. Her only concern is that she wished children and NY Times employees had died instead.
"Would that it were so! ... That the American military were targeting journalists." Kudlow & Cramer, CNBC
This organization which pretends to support life-affirming policies has as its annual guest and main speaker a woman who advocates killing people based on their religion, using the death penalty to intimidate political opponents, directing terrorism to murder reporters whose views she doesn't like, and sending the American military to assassinate journalists.
Pro-life means being anti-death penalty, anti-terrorism, anti-assassination, and by including Ann Coulter as their honored guest and lecturer New Jersey Right to Life demonstrates that is not a pro-life organization, but an anti-abortion organization. There is a difference, and when the media speaks of them they should say that explicitly.
Pro-choice supporters are regularly called "abortion supporters" when in fact our position is far more varied than that of the Right to Lifers. We support people being able to choose for themselves when to have sex, with whom to have sex, what contraceptives to use, whether to continue a pregnancy, etc. It is about choice, and not about abortion. In fact, many people who are pro-choice would not consider an abortion for themselves.
Congressman Mike Ferguson is the vice chair of the House Subcommittee on Health, which was referred a bill called the "Prevention First Act’’ [pdf] in January. So far the bill, which is intended to reduce abortions in the United States, has neither come up for discussion nor a vote. Rep. Ferguson has so far taken no position on the bill.
Blue 7th PAC is calling on Rep. Ferguson, as vice chair of the committee, to bring this bill up for discussion. Rep. Ferguson is well-known to be an avid opponent of abortion, going so far as to support a Constitutional Amendment making it illegal. The "Prevention First Act" should be a common ground where both pro-choice and anti-abortion advocates can find common ground:
The summary of the "Prevention First Act’’ is:
To expand access to preventive health care services that help reduce unintended pregnancy, reduce the number of abortions, and improve access to women’s health care.
To reduce unintended pregnancies and, as a result, reduce abortions the bill would:
Allow states to provide family planning and contraceptive services to low-income women and families not eligible for Medicare;
Requires health insurers who cover prescription drugs and outpatient services to cover prescription contraceptives and outpatient family planning services;
Requires Health and Human Services (HHS) to distribute information on emergency contraceptives to the public and health care providers;
Requires hospitals to offer and provide emergency contraceptives to victims of sexual assault;
Creates HHS grants for public and private entities to expand teenage pregnancy prevention programs; and
Mandates that all information regarding contraception in federally funded educational programs and materials be medically accurate and include health benefits and failure rates.
No position forthcoming. He'll only say something if it comes up in front of the House, which it won't, because it's being held up indefinitely by the FDA politicos, according to Marcus.
This is pretty selective, and intended to avoid answering direct questions from his constituents. It's also based upon a pretty big falsehood. See, contrary to what Marcus said there is a bill in front of the House regarding Plan B and the FDA. Ferguson's people just don't want you to know it.
H. R. 4229 [pdf] is sponsored by Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-NY14) and has 61 cosponsors. Here's the summary:
To require the Commissioner of Food and Drugs to determine whether to allow the marketing of Plan B as a prescription drug for women 15 years of age or younger and a nonprescription drug for women 16 years of age or older, and for other purposes.
This bill, which goes directly to the question Ferguson's staff refuses to asnwer, was referred on February 17, 2006 to the "Subcommittee on Health" which is part of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
One of two things happened in that call regarding Plan B: either Ferguson's office intentionally lied to a constituent regarding bills and issues pending in front of a committee Ferguson sits on, or Ferguson's office is unaware of the bills and issues pending in front of a committee Ferguson sits on. They are lying or incompetent.
A number of people have called or written Congressman Mike Ferguson's office about the emergency contraceptive called Plan B to determine his position on whether it should be sold over the counter without a prescription. Plan B is made of the same stuff as the contraceptive known as the pill in higher concentrations, and has been approved by the FDA as an emergency contraceptive for use within days of unprotected sex to prevent conception. It is not an abortion pill.
To date his office has not answered the question once, though they do have a new tactic: answering a different question. A few weeks ago the following question was sent to Ferguson's office via his official on-line form:
What is your position on Plan B? Do you think it should be made available?
The answer that came back [after the jump] was about H.R.1652, the Access to Legal Pharmaceuticals Act, a bill that requires pharmacies to fill medical prescriptions even if the pharmacist has a moral objection to the drug. Interestingly, not only is this not an answer to the question Ferguson was asked but he also refused to take a position on this bill.
Thank you for contacting me regarding H.R.1652, the Access to Legal Pharmaceuticals Act. I appreciate hearing from you and having the benefit of your views. ...
H.R.1652 was referred to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Should this legislation come to the House floor for a vote, I will reflect further on your well-stated views.
Ferguson sits on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, yet will only "reflect further" if the committee reads the bill out to the entire house. He would not say whether he believes the committee should approve the bill, or if he will vote against it. Of course, he doesn't have to because it is sponsored by a Democrat and has no chance of coming to a vote in the committee, much less for the entire house.
Congressman Mike Ferguson's opposition to contraception and family planning services is a lesser known cousin to his fervent opposition to abortion. It is all tied up in the Right to Life community he is beholden to. His positions on contraception, abortion, embryonic stem cell research and other issues are so far out of the mainstream that his colleagues in the House jokingly call him "Mr. Embryo." He opposes such common sense programs such as requiring hospitals to inform rape victims that emergency contraception is available.
Recently a constituent received a letter from Ferguson that further illustrates his radical position, and his willingness to ignore facts and research to support it. The entire letter is printed after this post, with the recipient's name and address redacted, but here is the relevant part:
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) on June 16, 2005, offered an amendment to H.R. 2862, the annual appropriations bill that finances the State, Justice and Commerce departments, which would lift restrictions on U.S. taxpayer assistance to UNFPA. [United Nations’ Population Fund]
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell announced July 17, 2004, that UNFPA helped China manage programs that involved forced abortions. Powell said at the time that the administration would continue to help women and children around the world through other programs. The United States is the largest donor of bilateral assistance to help improve the health of women and children and provided more than $1.8 billion in 2004 through a U.S. Agency for International Development fund
Rep. Maloney’s amendment failed 192-233, and I voted against the amendment in the House. I believe it is wrong for U.S. taxpayers to subsidize a program that aids in coerced abortions and forced sterilizations in China.
It's true that the administration claims that the UNFPA is involved in China's programs, but it's also true that they have no evidence to back up the claim.
[W]e can look back at another year in which we've made tremendous progress in the pro-life movement. Our greatest victory this past year was to re-elect and re-inaugurate our great pro-life president, George W. Bush.
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