Tag Archives: abortion

national news

Hell freezes over: I agree with Pat Robertson

Hell has frozen over and the sun is going to rise above the western horizon tomorrow morning.

How else to explain that televangelist Pat Robertson and yours truly are on the same page regarding arguably the most emotionally charged issue of our time . . . or any time, for that matter?

Robertson says the Alabama Legislature has “gone too far” in banning abortion in that state. Gov. Kay Ivey signed the bill into law earlier today.

Robertson calls the Legislature’s move “extreme.” Indeed, he is right. Imagine that, if you can; he and I agree on something.

The law bans abortion except only when the mother’s health is in peril. Rape victims? Those who are impregnated by their, oh, fathers or uncles or older brothers? They’re out of luck. A doctor who terminates those pregnancies are going to face prison terms of as long as 99 years.

Well, I don’t know yet how to act this late in the day.

I know the sun will rise in the morning. I just hope it comes up on the correct side of the house.

national news

Alabama pushes forward radical abortion bill

Oh, I do hate commenting on abortion or, to borrow the current euphemism, “women’s reproductive rights.”

However, the decision by the Alabama Legislature to make abortion a criminal act deserves a brief comment here.

Alabama’s legislators have made a serious mistake. They have sent to the governor’s desk a bill that would punish doctors with prison terms of as long as 99 years for performing an abortion at any stage of a woman’s pregnancy.

Here’s the worst part of it: The bill makes no exception for women who are impregnated in an act of rape or incest; the only exception is if the woman’s health is in danger.

If Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, signs the bill, it seems to set up a clear challenge eventually of Roe vs. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion in the United States.

Here is a potential consequence of this legislation: We well might see a spike in what is called “back-alley abortions,” where women who cannot carry a pregnancy to full term will seek illegal methods to end the pregnancy. Some of these processes are too gruesome for me to describe in this blog; you know what I’m talking about. The consequences of these hideous acts also are dire in the extreme.

So what does the president of the United States say about this Alabama law? He endorses it as a hedge against what he describes as procedures supported by Democrats who favor “ripping the baby from the mother’s womb” and essentially “executing” the child — which, of course, is a bald-faced lie.

This blog post is going to get some blowback from readers who endorse the Alabama decision. Fine. I’m willing to take the hits.

I am not willing to remain silent while one of our states criminalizes an act that the U.S. Supreme Court has determined to be legal. I would never counsel a woman to obtain an abortion. That is my point. It’s not my business. It is hers alone!

medical news

Trump takes demagoguery to shocking level … even for him!

Donald Trump’s shamelessness knows no bounds.

He exhibited it yet again this weekend in Green Bay, Wis., when he accused women and their doctors of committing criminal acts.

The president got all fired up and then told his adoring crowd of Trumpkins that women and their doctors deliver babies, talk about how to care for the baby, wrap the child up — and then decide how to “execute” that child.

Oh, the throng loved it. They cheered the president and booed the scenario. Except that he lied. What he described does not happen!

Yet for this president to continually demagogue the issue of abortion, of whether a woman should be able to choose whether to carry a child to full term simply astonishes many of us beyond our ability to declare our revulsion.

It’s illegal, Mr. POTUS.

The nation does not allow the “execution” of babies. Such a crime would be produce at minimum a life sentence in prison in most states. Yet there he was this weekend, spouting even more outrageous lies.

Donald Trump is the most indecent human being ever to occupy the nation’s highest office.

State news

Not very ‘pro-life’ of this legislator

I am trouble grasping the logic of this proposal by a Texas legislator.

State Rep. Tony Tinderholt, a Republican, wants to criminalize abortion. He wants to charge every woman who terminates a pregnancy with homicide, or murder. He wants, therefore, to subject that woman to the death penalty, which Texas allows for those convicted of murder.

He is a “pro-life” legislator? I don’t get how that computes.

Enter a more reasonable GOP lawmaker, Rep. Jeff Leach of Plano (pictured), who says he won’t allow Tinderholt’s bill to the House of Representatives floor for a full vote among the state’s 150 state representatives.

Leach chairs the Texas House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence. Since announcing his plan to stop House Bill 896, Leach has received threats at his office. The Collin County Sheriff’s Department is investigating the source of those threats.

Yes, this issue is highly sensitive. It pushes hot buttons on folks they possibly didn’t know existed on their person.

As for Tinderholt’s idea of criminalizing a legal medical procedure — which the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled — it doesn’t sound very “pro-life” to kill someone who makes the most difficult decision she ever would make.

This debate over women’s right to choose whether to give birth needs to stay on a more sane track than the one proposed by Rep. Tinderholt.

Thank goodness there exist some sense of reason among Texas Republicans.

political news

Bring it to the middle, candidates

I dislike radicals on both ends of the vast political spectrum.

Yes, that includes the far lefties who at the moment seem to be dictating the direction the Democratic Party appears to be heading. I guess it’s understood that I harbor an intense loathing of those on the far right; no need to elaborate there.

The 2020 presidential campaign is taking shape.

You’ve got the incumbent on side, Donald Trump. Where he stands on that spectrum remains a mystery to me. He is a Republican In Name Only, the RINO in chief. He’s also a serial liar, a self-proclaimed genius and also a self-proclaimed self-made zillionaire; now that I think of it, the latter two items are related directly to the first one. He is an amoral narcissist who possesses zero empathy for the plights of others. He spent his entire pre-political life enriching himself and looks to me as if he governs in the same manner.

I want the president out of office, but you know that already.

As for the Democrats, I tend to tack toward the centrists. I don’t like the far-left rhetoric that comes from Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke . . . and many among the rest of horde of Democrats running for their party’s nomination. That leaves, oh, Amy Klobuchar. Then we have a one-issue hopeful: Jay Inslee.

I remain a devoted centrist. I am a deficit hawk. I want us to remain vigilant in the war against international terror. I favor strong border security (although I do not want to build Trump’s Wall along our southern border). I want to retain the Electoral College system for electing presidents.

On the flip side, I want stronger — not weaker — environmental regulations. I believe Earth’s climate is changing and we need to tackle the crisis head on. I believe transgender Americans deserve to serve in the military if they wish. I support the Affordable Care Act and believe the U.S. Constitution gives women the right to choose whether to terminate their pregnancy and whether same-sex couples have the right to be married.

My hope over time is that we can move the dialogue from the fringe and toward the center.

I am not confused. I once was a radical lefty. The older I get the more shades of gray I see on many issues.

It starts, too, with electing someone who appreciates the majesty of the office to which he or she will be elected. The guy we’ve got now needs to go.

medical news

Oh, and then there’s this ‘infanticide’ matter

While the nation gnashes its teeth over Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s alleged posing in a racist picture that appeared in his medical school yearbook, there this other matter.

Northam went on a radio talk show and appeared to suggest that “infanticide” is an acceptable medical practice if it is done a woman who gives birth consults with physicians, clergy and her spouse.

Wow! I cannot stomach the idea of anyone failing to condemn such an act.

At issue is whether a third-trimester abortion should occur while the mother is “dilating,” and “ready to give birth.”

Northam, whose other day job is as a physician, has uttered a disgusting and disgraceful policy view.

Those of us who are “pro-choice” but “anti-abortion” should be repulsed in the extreme.

national news

He once was known as ‘Rubbers’

One aspect of the late President George H.W. Bush’s extraordinary political career has been getting short shrift by the media.

I refer to a nickname a young member of the U.S. House of Representatives endured while he served there.

George Bush was known to his colleagues as “Rubbers.” How’s that? Well, he was a big-time ally of Planned Parenthood, the organization devoted to family planning, which included the distribution of contraceptives . . . and so forth.

He continued his affinity for Planned Parenthood’s agenda well past his four years in Congress. He spoke to his colleagues in 1968 about Planned Parenthood.

Read it here.

But then he became a national politician in 1980 when Ronald Reagan selected him as his vice presidential running mate. Bush and Reagan had competed against each for the Republican presidential nomination; Bush famously labeled Reagan’s trickle-down fiscal policy “voodoo economics.” That didn’t dissuade The Gipper from tapping Bush as his running mate.

Immediately upon accepting the Republican nominee’s request to join the GOP ticket that year, Bush became a “pro-life” politician.

That immediate transformation from “pro-choice” to “pro-life” always rang hollow to me. Ronald Reagan could not possibly run for the presidency with a running mate who was such a champion for an organization that was total anathema to his political base.

Bush signed on and made a pledge — and I believe it came with a wink and a nod — that he would recite the pro-life mantra when asked to do so.

George Bush never became an outspoken advocate for the pro-life position, which I suppose tells us plenty about his actual devotion to the cause.

But you do what you gotta do . . . I suppose.

national news

Abortion debate brings out the demagogues

I continue to grapple with the most emotional issue of our — or probably any — time.

The issue is abortion. I happen to favor giving a woman the right to decide whether to carry a pregnancy to full term. I also believe there should be some restrictions on that decision. I oppose late-term abortions. I detest the idea of “gender-selection” abortion.

My pro-choice views on this subject have exposed me to those who contend that I “support abortion,” that I “favor abortion.”

I do not support abortion. The basis for that declaration is a simple one: I cannot possibly ever counsel a woman to abort a pregnancy. That decision is not mine to make. It is hers. It also belongs to the father of that baby. It lies also with her spiritual adviser. It rests ultimately with God, or whatever deity she worships.

To that end, such a decision shouldn’t rest with politicians, many of whom have never been pregnant or faced this kind of gut-wrenching decision on their own.

Does my support of pro-choice politicians define me as one who “supports” abortion? No. It doesn’t, for reasons I have tried to explain with this brief blog post.

Why am I writing about this? Because it has troubled me for decades about how this particular issue brings out the demagogues. It fills normally sensible individuals with blind rage.

So I’m getting a couple of matters off my chest … once again.

I have written about this before.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2014/04/pro-choice-does-not-equal-pro-abortion/

I just have this need to clear the air, not that it will satisfy those who stand foursquare on the other side of the great divide separating those who believe women have the right to make decisions regarding their bodies and those who want to make those decisions for them.

legal news

Yes, elections have consequences

Brett Kavanaugh is likely to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate to become a justice on the Supreme Court.

Is he the kind of judge I want on the court? No. But here’s the deal, and I take no pleasure in acknowledging this: Donald Trump is the president of the United States; he was elected in 2016 by winning enough electoral votes to take the nation’s highest office; he gets to nominate individuals to the high court.

Elections have consequences. Of that there can be no doubt.

Kavanaugh is qualified to serve. I heard much of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. I listened to Democrats try to trap him into saying something he shouldn’t say. Kavanaugh didn’t take the bait.

I am deeply troubled that the president would declare his intention to nominate someone who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark ruling that legalized abortion. Tradition usually dictates that presidents not set pre-determined parameters for who gets nominated. This one, though, busted that tradition to pieces.

So, the court will have an even stronger conservative majority if Kavanaugh gets confirmed. I wish it weren’t so. But it appears set to occur.

We’re about to reap the consequence of the 2016 presidential election in a big way. That’s how the system works. I accept the process that has brought us to this point. That doesn’t mean I like it. Far from it.

legal news

Sen. Collins: Kavanaugh says Roe v. Wade is ‘settled law’

It might be that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has won over a key Senate Republican vote as he seeks to be confirmed for a spot on the nation’s highest court.

If Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is right, and Kavanaugh believes a landmark court ruling on abortion is “settled law,” he has gone a long way toward winning the support of many skeptics across the country.

Collins and Kavanugh met and the senator — a noted GOP moderate lawmaker — said the following to reporters: “We talked about whether he considered Roe (v. Wade) to be settled law. And he said that he agreed with what Justice [John] Roberts said at his nomination hearing, at which he said that it was settled law.”

Those of us who believe in a woman’s right to choose to end a pregnancy consider this an important hurdle that Kavanaugh has to clear if he is to be confirmed to a seat vacated by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy.

I do not believe Sen. Collins is prone to shoot of her mouth without thinking, which gives me hope that her two-hour closed-door meeting with Judge Kavanaugh produced the kind of dialogue she has mentioned. Collins has declared Roe v. Wade to be the benchmark on which she would decide whether to confirm his nomination to the court.

There are many other hurdles, though, to clear. Such as the one about whether the president of the United States can be charged with crimes, or whether he can be compelled to testify before a judicial body. He once thought it was OK to compel a president to testify; then he seemed to have changed his mind.

That will be explored in detail, I presume, when the Senate Judiciary Committee considers Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court.

However, if Sen. Collins is correct and Brett Kavanaugh doesn’t want the high court to mess with Roe v. Wade, then he well might have won an important skirmish in the battle royale that is shaping up in his confirmation to the Supreme Court.