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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 9/19/2003 10:45 AM (GMT -6) |   | Now, let's discontinue this thread on this link, since it is s'posed to be on the serious topic of WHC execs considering sponsoring a debate on the politics of abortion.
dlw | | Back to Top | | |
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Tigress
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1252
| Posted 9/19/2003 11:12 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 10/22/2003 2:52 PM (GMT -6) | | I love beating dead horses, but the recent bill passed and the following article illustrates why it is so important for Christian leaders to foster attempts at reducing the acrimony between both sides on this issue.
This issue rears its divisive ugly head and threatens to be a big issue in
the upcoming election. That would be tragic since we have so many important
things we need to collectively consider in this coming election.
Pro-choicers need to take a chill-pill over this and cut their losses. It
is hard to see how the PBAban will do harm to women's rights unless it
continues to predominate as a political issue.
I anticipate a constitutional rejection of this law will make the level of
acrimony in our gov't be even higher, something that will leave us even less
able to resolve the many important issues we are facing.
dlw
>Day After Abortion Vote, Some Senators Show Anguish
>
>October 22, 2003
> By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
>
>
>
>
>
>WASHINGTON, Oct. 22 - One day after the Senate
>overwhelmingly approved the first federal ban on a specific
>abortion procedure, some lawmakers were still coming to
>terms with their own feelings after eight years of
>emotional and divisive debate.
>
>The 64-to-34 vote, characterized by both sides as a
>historic turning point in a controversy that has split
>Americans for decades, clears the way for President Bush's
>signature.
>
>And it was clear today that some senators who had voted for
>the legislation did so only after considerable anguish.
>"I'm 99 percent pro-choice," said Senator Blanche Lincoln,
>Democrat of Arkansas. Nonetheless, she said, on Tuesday she
>had to vote with the other 1 percent.
>
>"I voted to ban something that, in people's perception, is
>very horrific," Senator Lincoln said. But in the same
>breath, she made clear she was not entirely comfortable
>with the bill, saying the ban had "unfortunately been
>misrepresented by its hard-core proponents."
>
>Other senators were making similar comments today. Taken
>together, they were a reminder once again that abortion is
>a deeply personal as well as political issue.
>
>One lawmaker who expressed no ambivalence was Senator Bill
>Frist, Republican of Tennessee, the majority leader. "The
>legislation we just passed will save lives," Senator Frist,
>who is a surgeon, said after the vote. "We have just
>outlawed a procedure that is barbaric, that is brutal, that
>is offensive to our moral sensibilities and it is out of
>the mainstream of the ethical practice of medicine today."
>
>Opponents of the bill, saying it is unconstitutional,
>vowed to challenge it in court as soon as Mr. Bush signs
>it. But the president, who is traveling in Asia, said he
>looked forward to the signing ceremony and called the
>measure "very important legislation that will end an
>abhorrent practice and continue to build a culture of life
>in America."
>
>Two Democratic senators who are running for president, John
>F. Kerry of Massachusetts and Joseph I. Lieberman of
>Connecticut, voted against the bill. The other Democratic
>senator running for president, John Edwards of North
>Carolina, did not vote.
>
>Legal experts question whether the measure, which prohibits
>an "overt act" to "kill the partially delivered living
>fetus," will hold up in court.
>
>Three years ago, the Supreme Court rejected a similar law
>in Nebraska, saying its language was so broad as to outlaw
>more than one type of abortion and that it was
>unconstitutional because it lacked an exception for the
>health of the mother. Opponents make that same argument
>about the federal bill.
>
>"Congress has turned its back on America's women, their
>right to privacy, the right to choose," said Senator Tom
>Harkin, Democrat of Iowa. "America's women are now
>second-class citizens."
>
>Seventeen Democrats joined with 47 Republicans to give
>final passage to the bill, which outlaws a procedure that
>doctors call intact dilation and extraction but critics
>call partial-birth abortion. The vote came after emotional
>and often graphic debate.
>
>At one point, Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, read
>an account written by a nurse who had witnessed the
>procedure and was horrified by it. At another, Senator Sam
>Brownback, Republican of Kansas, showed a photograph of a
>21-week-old fetus he said had been spared an abortion by
>doctors who operated, in the womb, to correct a birth
>defect.
>
>"Is little Samuel's hand the hand of a person," he said,
>pointing to the photograph, "or is it the hand of a piece
>of property?" To which Senator Barbara Boxer, a California
>Democrat who is the bill's chief opponent, replied: "I am
>not a doctor, and I am not God. I trust other human beings
>to make these decisions."
>
>Tuesday's action by the Senate ends the long and tortured
>legislative history of the ban, which was passed by
>Congress twice before, but vetoed both times by President
>Bill Clinton. This year, with Republicans controlling both
>houses of Congress and the White House, abortion opponents,
>who began pressing for the ban in 1995, knew victory would
>be assured.
>
>The measure passed both the House and Senate earlier this
>year, but got hung up because the Senate version included
>language, opposed by the House, that reaffirmed lawmakers'
>support for the Roe decision. The language was stripped
>from the bill in conference, and the House gave final
>passage to the measure on Oct. 2, 281 to 142.
>
>But in the Senate, advocates of the right to abortion, led
>by Ms. Boxer, insisted on one more day of debate before
>final passage. They characterized the bill as an assault on
>the right to privacy established by the Roe case, and an
>intrusion into the ability of doctors and patients to make
>their own medical choices.
>
>"This is a bad package for the families of America," Ms.
>Boxer said. "I know the handwriting is on the wall, and
>that it will pass, but the issue is not going away."
>
>Indeed, three groups say they will file suit to block the
>law from taking effect. They are the Center for
>Reproductive Rights, an advocacy group in New York that
>brought the Nebraska case; the Planned Parenthood
>Federation of America; and the National Abortion
>Federation, which represents 400 centers that provide more
>than half the 1.2 million abortions performed in this
>country each year.
>
>The American Civil Liberties Union will represent the
>abortion federation in its suit.
>
>The bill defines the procedure as one in which the person
>performing the abortion "deliberately and intentionally
>vaginally delivers a living fetus until, in the case of a
>head-first presentation, the entire fetal head is outside
>the body of the mother, or, in the case of breech
>presentation, any part of the fetal trunk past the navel is
>outside the body of the mother, for the purpose of
>performing an overt act that the person knows will kill the
>partially delivered living fetus."
>
>Under the measure, anyone violating the ban would be
>subject to two years in prison and unspecified fines.
>
>"This bill puts doctors in the untenable position of
>choosing the best and most appropriate care for their
>patients or risk going to jail," said Vicki Saporta, the
>abortion federation's president. Of the Senate vote, she
>said, "It will be a very short-lived victory. The bill will
>be enjoined and will not become law."
>
>Legal experts tend to agree. David J. Garrow, a professor
>of law at Emory University who is an expert in abortion
>case law, said, "The absence of an all-encompassing health
>exception means this is D.O.A."
>
>But the Congressional authors of the bill say they have
>addressed the Supreme Court's concerns, by making the
>language of the ban more specific, and by including
>Congressional "findings of fact" that suggest the procedure
>they are trying to outlaw is never medically necessary.
>
>"If your concern is women's health, then you would be for
>banning this procedure," Senator Rick Santorum, the
>Pennsylvania Republican and lead Senate sponsor of the
>measure, said in Senate debate today.
>
>Mr. Garrow said courts were likely to disregard such
>Congressional pronouncements.
>
>But proponents of the ban say the legal climate may change,
>particularly if Mr. Bush wins re-election. They are hopeful
>that, by the time the case reaches the Supreme Court, Mr.
>Bush will have had an opportunity to appoint new justices,
>and the slim 5-to-4 majority that rejected the Nebraska law
>will no longer hold together.
>
>"It would only require the change in one mind, or the
>change in one justice, so that those on the other side who
>make confident predictions aren't as confident," said
>Douglas Johnson, a spokesman for the National Right to Life
>Committee, which has spent years fighting for the ban.
>
>Of the Nebraska case, Mr. Johnson said, "Congress is now
>inviting the Supreme Court to re-examine that extreme and
>inhumane decision."
>
>The Senate's votes, and Mr. Bush's signing of the bill,
>will undoubtedly have political ramifications for the 2004
>presidential race. Already, the National Abortion Rights
>Action League, an advocacy group, is planning television
>advertisements criticizing the Bush administration as
>interfering with the right to privacy.
>
>Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood is planning a major rally for
>next April.
>
>"This is not unexpected," Gloria Feldt, the organization's
>president, said in a telephone interview, referring to the
>Senate vote, "but it's also a good time to recognize what a
>historic day this is. This is the first time that the White
>House and both houses of Congress have been aligned in
>lockstep and ready to take away reproductive choice."
>
www.nytimes.com/2003/10/22/politics/22CND-ABOR.html?ex=1067866617&ei=1&en=9a66a5265b03e82a
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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