Onoekeh found this announcement about Catholic anti-Kerry ralliers. The announcement included an organizer's email address, so I sent a note. (Below the fold)
In college, one of my best friends was head of the campus pro-life group. Alas, we've lost touch, and I have some pro-life political questions. Could you please help me?
I'm starting with the understanding that the pro-life view is that the result of conception is fully human, and deserving recipient of all state-controlled rights, recognitions, and protections. Therefore, the intentional destruction of a fertilized embryo is identical to murder.
If I've got this right, then:
- Aren't In-Vitro Fertilization clinics that customarily store and destroy fertilized embryos committing mass-murder?
- Why do planned parenthood clinics get the visible protests, but not IVF clinics? Aren't all the embryos equally sacred?
- Do pro-life groups demand accountability for the countless negligent homocides in the form of spontaneous abortion resulting from exposure to industrial pollutants?
- What about spontaneous abortions potentially attributable to caffeine intake while pregnant? Is the would-be-mother guilty?
- What about spontaneous abortions resulting from absent pre-natal care among the 45 million Americans without health insurance?
These are hopefully tough to answer.
But the larger question, is that from a pro-life (only) perspective it's not clear to me that Bush is the better candidate.
- Kerry is pro-life (at the beginning of life and at the end), but is against legislating a ban on abortions.
- Bush is not pro-life, but is anti-abortion. He is not pro-life, since he not only favors the death penalty, but has executed more prisoners than any other governor or president.
- Bush has presided over a one-party government (essentially), but has not reduced the number of abortions in the U.S. at all in 4 years (the partial-birth-abortion ban has to have a safety loophole to be Constitutional, and that's the only reason they're done).
- Kerry is against the "partial-birth-abortion" procedure.
- Bush, like Kerry, is not against IVF clinics.
- Bush has favored polluting corporations and reduced government regulations on clean air, water, and food. A poisonous environment most accutely endangers the unborn.
- Kerry will protect our environment and the health of all Americans.
- Under Bush's watch, 5 million more Americans lost their health insurance. You can bet that included thousands of pregnant women, and a number of spontaneous abortions.
- Kerry has a plan to increase the number of insured Americans that makes it easier and less costly for businesses to insure their employees by pooling catastrophic coverage nationally.
- And can any truly pro-life perspective support Bush's disastrous, unwarranted, costly, and tragic choices in Iraq?
In the balance, a pro-life person may favor Bush, but it seems far from clear that such support derives purely from a pro-life perspective.
Just as there are many pro-choice folks in the Republican party, there are many pro-life folks in the Democratic party. And there are degrees of "pro-life" stances. At one extreme is the Alan Keyes view - all abortion is wrong, even if the health/life of the mother is at risk, even if the pregnancy resulted from rape or incest. At the other end, some think it's okay to use abortion as a method of birth-control. Most of us are in-between, and many people who consider themselves pro-life would not take the extreme position of Alan Keyes. And many pro-choice folks abhor the idea of abortion as birth-control. The extremes are easy to label, but many pro-lifers take more moderate views, still consider themselves pro-life, and are quite happy in the Democratic party, and happily support John Kerry from a pro-life perspective.
I appreciate your thoughts.
Best wishes,
bribri