Here's a letter I have to a friend who was shocked that I as someone who is pro life could support Barack Obama.
I would like to explain why I now support Obama and why I am no longer a Republican even though I have been since 1980 and was a Republican Caucus chair this year. *****, you raised some important issues in which I will try to address.
An extremist...he voted that even if a child survives an abortion, no medical care should be rendered and the child should be left to die.
That's a lie, pure and simple. Here's the quote in context. This does not apply to late-term abortions at all. Note the term previable throughout.
Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we're really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a -- a child, a nine-month-old -- child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it -- it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an anti-abortion statute.
He continues:
The second reason that it would probably be found unconstitutional is that this essentially says that a doctor is required to provide treatment to a previable child, or fetus, however way you want to describe it. Viability is the line that has been drawn by the Supreme Court to determine whether or not an abortion can or cannot take place. And if we're placing a burden on the doctor that says you have to keep alive even a previable child as long as possible and give them as much medical attention as -- as is necessary to try to keep that child alive, then we're probably crossing the line in terms of unconstitutionality.
The bottom line is Obama noted that the law in question would have been found unconstitutional. As for late-term abortions he wants to make sure there are protections for the health of the mother and the bills in Congress didn't do that to his satisfaction. The question remains why I would support a mainstream pro choice politician. It's because I'm conservative and by that I mean that it is not sufficient to have good goals but also you should have good means to get there.
In the 35 years since Roe the Republicans have done nothing that saved even one life. We need to be patient as we somehow are going to put a judge on the bench that reverses Roe. Sorry, it ain't gonna happen. Evangelicals are supposed to get whipped up every four years, vote for the Republican, go home, and shut up. On the other hand we can look at things that actually reduce the number of abortions.
The one thing that is most closely correlated to the abortion rate is poverty. In fact the following formula works very well. The rate of abortions is 2.06 + 1.71*the poverty rate. One consequence of this relationship is that the abortion rate went down the fastest during the Clinton Administration. (It's still going down now but very, very slowly.) In fact, abortions went down in the Clinton Administration more than the Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II Administrations combined. The other factor that is important is the teen pregnancy rate which also correlates with lower abortion rates. This was also going down during the Clinton Administration but has recently risen. Note the following report from last year:
The birth rate among teenagers 15 to 19 in the United States rose 3 percent in 2006, according to a report issued Wednesday, the first such increase since 1991. The finding surprised scholars and fueled a debate about whether the Bush administration's abstinence-only sexual education efforts are working.
The federal government spends $176 million annually on such programs. But a landmark study recently failed to demonstrate that they have any effect on delaying sexual activity among teenagers, and some studies suggest that they may actually increase pregnancy rates.
This also marks another lie by the McCain camp about sex ed where we were -- cue the scary music -- teaching sex to Kindergarteners. What was to be taught was letting the kids know whether they were being inappropriately touched by perverts. Another crazy policy promoted by the pro life crowd is the opposition to cervical cancer vaccines. Even if our daughters abstain until marriage a lying future husband can give them cervical cancer. This is because, as you know, HPV vaccines only work prior to first exposure to the virus. In short, the approach of the right in its deregulatory fervor almost -- dear God I pray almost -- caused a worldwide Depression which would cause more abortions, supported abstinence-only sex ed which causes more abortions, and is against HPV vaccines which causes women to die of cancer. Since I am very much pro-life, I support Barack Obama. I want to see provably fewer abortions and not empty and inflammatory rhetoric.
The inflammatory rhetoric I have find to be extremely unhelpful in being able to rationally discuss these matter with people who are pro choice. When I describe their position accurately I have their respect. But, for most people the view of Republicans and Evangelicals is that we're liers and thugs. Because of this most of the time when I am discussing things with unbelievers I have to do a lot of "damage control".
In that regard what I have seen on YouTube recently has been deeply disturbing. You will recall how Benjamin Netanyahu accused Itzak Rabin of being soft on terrorism. Rabin ended up being assassinated by a right-wing student. We have Palin describing Obama as "palin' around with terrorists" (how one person can be a plural I don't know) and a baby killer with respect to the lie above. The crowd has responded by crying "terrorist", "traitor", "off with his head", and "kill him". Video footage showed a whole host of supporters coming out of Strongville Ohio saying that Obama is "a one man terror cell" and of course he was a terrorist because it's in "his line". He's been accused of being a Muslim (which he is not and never was) and an Arab. Other footage shows a man with a Curious George doll having Obama sticker around his head he joked with the other people in the line that the name of the monkey was "Hussein". When a CBS News camera showed up he removed the sticker and tried to hide. Now I don't want to lay all the blame on John McCain but he did allow Sarah Palin to have this rhetoric and when he asked the crowd to have a more civil debate and argued that Barack Obama was a decent man he was booed by the crowd. He lit the match and now complains of the fire. In the last week his ads have been 100% negative.
Because of the hateful -- and to be blunt -- racist rhetoric out there it's going to be increasingly difficult to preach the Gospel in this country, particularly if we are so tightly coupled to the thug fringe of the party. Thinking conservatives have and are bailing, e.g. Chris Buckley the son of William Buckley, Franky Schaefer the son of Francis Schaefer, George Will, Charles Krauthammer, David Brooks, and David Frum. The combination of hate and rampant anti-intellectualism has put a possibly fatal wound in the Republican "brand". I for one for practical and more importantly moral reasons want nothing to do with it. Why should we go down with this if all that it stands for is so profoundly unbiblical?