In a column headlined “A Vice President for Abortion,” Robert Novak discusses the Kansas City, Kan., archbishop’s recent rebuke of Gov. Kathleen Sebelius in light of the talk that Barack Obama might pick her as his running mate, also mentioning Sebelius’ vetoes of abortion bills. “Kansas is the fiercest state battleground for abortion wars, making Kathleen Sebelius the national pro-choice poster girl,” he wrote.
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94 Comments
Novak, the guy who outed a CIA agent’s identity? That Novak? Why does that traitor still have a job much less his freedom?
Was Novak shocked that a candidate for a Democratic V.P. is pro-choice? I understand Sebelius personal opinion, I have the same feelings too.
When I look at this difficult and agonizing issue, I cannot single out Governor Sebelius any more than I can fail to reflect upon my own history – and the inadequacies of many (on both sides) to properly address the ramifications and moral dimensions of abortion.
We have failed – all of us.
We have failed, and continue to fail, to properly address the double effect rule which would seek to honor the health of expectant mothers while avoiding late-term abortions. I have asked about the current protocol regarding C-sections and cannot receive a definitive answer. (I have, however, received definite threats of damnation because I had a first-trimester abortion 33 years ago.)
I cannot even begin to stomach the thought of partial-birth abortions; these procedures are monstrous in the extreme. Owing to our vastly heightened technology – and greatly improved methods for pain alleviation – I fail to understand why, in the 21st century, these atrocities would be called for.
And, quite frankly, I have yet to hear a politician give a satisfactory answer.
33 long years have passed since that dismal winter of 1975; even then, I did not understand the rationale for late-term abortions. I do, however, understand the need for women to receive proper and humane medical care – especially in life-threatening situations.
I do, of course, support legislation that would regulate abortion clinics without divulging patient information.
This past winter, I viewed a rancorous debate between Alan Keyes and Barack Obama. These two gentlemen – and their markedly differing views – illustrated a common problem attendant to this issue. One combatant (Keyes) was belligerent and disdainful. The other (guess who) was evasive and unperturbed (to a fault).
For many of us (and there are far more of us than you may think), this divisive issue hasn’t remained static through the decades. Difficult questions need to be asked – and answered thoughtfully. With respect from both sides.
Bullying and hatred are outdated concepts. They haven’t stood the test of time. And, when so many women have had abortions, I fail to understand how the morality of these procedures can be placed inordinately upon Sebelius.
Creating an improved society is incumbent on all of us.
“Creating an inproved society is incumbent on all of us.”
So as we concurrently move in that direction, why, pray tell, do we not hold elected officials to a higher standard of this calling? Through force of law, Governor Sebellius could indeed help create an “improved society,” yet we wiggle and waggle her off the hook and impose equal blame on “all of us.” Tis hogwash..enlighted, lofty rhetorical hogwash, but hogwash all the same.
First the Archbishop. Now the running dog of the Republican Party, Robert Novak, starting to swiftboat Sebellius. Do I detect a trend? Are the Republicans so afraid of our governor? Or are they just spewing their random hate towards anybody that might, just might, possibly, be a threat to them? She has already shown she isn’t afraid to fight them face-to-face.
I find it somewhat inconsistent that the Archbishop doesn’t seem to be concerned with Brownback etc supporting the Iraq war that the Pope has called immoral.
bth
Posted May 27, 2008 at 3:34 pm | Permalink
I find it somewhat inconsistent that the Archbishop doesn’t seem to be concerned with Brownback etc supporting the Iraq war that the Pope has called immoral.
————————
Since we are posting off-topic ben, let’s see…
I find it inconsistent that Obama refuses to acknowledge his training in a Madrassa even though there are records of him being there.
“I find it inconsistent that Obama refuses to acknowledge his training in a Madrassa even though there are records of him being there.”
Debunk several times over – just more hypocrisy from the right wing – posting what they know are lies.
Song…er..FilmFan: A thought provoking post. Ultimately I still believe it’s a woman’s right to make her own medical choices.
And Ben, I totally agree with your post.
“Was Novak shocked that a candidate for a Democratic V.P. is pro-choice?”
Is that a requirement of the Democratic Party?
WichiWomn seems to be unable to understand that women at large having abortions has moral implications that negatively affect all of society.
Even pro-choice politicians want to reduce the number of abortions for the obvious reasons that pro-lifer want them eliminated. If an abortion were simply a medical decision, then there would be no need for a pro-choice politician (such as Hillary Clinton) to seek to limit them.
WichiWmn likes to live under the false presupposition that an abortion is no different than having a root canal. After all, its simply a medical decision. Wrong.
“WichiWmn likes to live under the false presupposition that an abortion is no different than having a root canal. After all, its simply a medical decision”
I think you are way off base here. Just my opnion. I think many in the “pro choice” camp are sincere about wanting fewer abortions, but not wanting the government to have any say. I disagree with them, but I do not think that for the most part they are that callous.
“Is that a requirement of the Democratic Party?”
Actually, one of Obama’s top supporters and a pledged superdelegate is Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, a life long pro-life candidate.
Well, as I recall, Senator Casey had some troubles in the past for his position, but yeah, it might not be a requirment, but I would expect it to be the position of any Democratic Party leader. Inmy opinion, they would not be able to be a party leader with being so, at least on the national scale.
lj,
If an abortion is simply a medical decision (as WichiWomn has stated), what incentive is there for limiting them?
Perhaps WichiWomn can comment about her desire to reduce abortions and why she feels they need to be reduced (if she indeed has those feelings).
Are not medical decisions good for both patient and society? I see no grounds for claiming to desire fewer abortions if at the same time one believes that it is simply a medical decision.
“In my opinion, they would not be able to be a party leader with being so, at least on the national scale.”
I believe that there are several other leading Dems that are pro-life, but there names don’t come to mind at the moment. There are also a few pro-choice Republicans.
You are right, however, that it would be difficult for a Democrat to reach the heights within the Party if he or she took a pro-life position.
I think we can agree that the best course of action is to make abortion safe, legal and rare.
If heart bypass surgery was simply a medical decision, then there would be no need for a anti-heart attack politician to seek to limit them.
If that sentence seems ridiculous, so does the one it is modeled on.
“Are not medical decisions good for both patient and society?”
Please define “good”. I have seen many medical decisions made for the short term health of a patient that was detrimental to the patient in the long term, and minimally good for society.
Jeez, major brain cramp
“that are pro-life, but THEIR names”
For the benefit of all who believe that pro-choicers geniunely want to reduce abortions, I have to re-post a gem from the Capn last week to show how flawed this premise is.
http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2008/05/mccain-listening-to-brownback-on-courts/#comment-352192
“All those violent criminals didn’t get born thanks to legal and safe abortion.
So . . . yes, abortion does benefit society”
-Capn
Cons these days remind be of the butt of one of Will Rogers’ jokes:
“When a politician says he’s joking it sounds like he’s serious. And when a politician says he’s serious, it’s a joke.” Something like that.
The best satire cuts close to the nerve. That’s why Stephen Colbert’s show is such a hit. He portrays a blow-hard conservative so close to contemporary CONservative rhetoric, he always gets laughs.
The Landover Baptist site and Betty Bowers simply take religious right-wingnut rhetoric to their natural conclusions. (I’m not familiar with the other site mentioned in this thread.)
lj,
Just off the top of my head, I can say that medical procedures are in all cases intended to extend the life of an individual, mitigate pain, or provide a more enjoyable quality of living.
Allowing individuals the ability to do all of the above can only benefit both the individual and society.
Abortion is claimed to improve the quality of life of the mother. In the process, the life of the unborn child is destroyed. Such a “procedure” is a net detriment since it operates from the belief that life is not intrinsically valuable. It is more then a simple medical procedure. The very life that the mother seeks to improve (her own) is predicated on the belief a life can be discarded based upon relativistic ad hoc parameters applied to her baby.
It’s contradicting belief which many suscribe to but on a large scale is irrefutably not good for a society.
At our core, we are all raised by Mothers and Fathers who unselfishly give of their time and livelihood to prepare us to be the people we are today. However, the relationship is beneficial to both parties. Having children allows parents to enjoy the joy of giving. Parents are actually advangaged by having children since it fosters the very unselfish behaviour that we all enjoy from one another.
“Was Novak shocked that a candidate for a Democratic V.P. is pro-choice?”
Is that a requirement of the Democratic Party?”
A woman’s right to choose IS a core conviction of the Democratic party.
We know now that MOST women who make this choice do so for economic reasons. Democrats are also the party of addressing those economic reasons.
The upshot is, the pro choice side of the debate is actually more in the direction of being truly pro life in actual practice.
Virulent “pro lifers” can often be found at odds with addressing the economic reasons for a woman to make her choice.
A political party that has as its “core conviction” support for the right of women to ahem…,terminate.. their kids. Gives me the slick willies.
It’s the reason that I abandoned the party when I decided abortion on demand was wrong. Were it not for Roe v Wade, the Democrat party would never have lost power. It is a big reason they will never hold on. A culture of death can never be sustained.
I wonder if Novak is going to list any posterboys for the pro-abortion Republicans? Pro-aborts like Tiahrt and Brownback have no problem with birth defects since they vote to excuse corporations when it’s discovered they pollute the land and cause birth deformities and stillbirths.
Using BlueJay’s logic, one would be in favor of a 100% abortion rate to end all poverty.
But this paltry <20% rate is just not getting it done. Poverty remains so abortions must increase.
We have exactly ONE what I would call truly pro life poster on this forum.
And she’s shaky.
It isn’t RFL or outlander.n Note how quickly RFL wants to get away from the REAL reason for a woman to choose abortion and back on his agenda?
A woman making this choice is an end result.
You do not solve a problem by attacking it at the result. You can TRY that. It won’t work.
Posted May 27, 2008 at 4:22 pm | Permalink
WichiWomn seems to be unable to understand that women at large having abortions has moral implications that negatively affect all of society.
Even pro-choice politicians want to reduce the number of abortions for the obvious reasons that pro-lifer want them eliminated. If an abortion were simply a medical decision, then there would be no need for a pro-choice politician (such as Hillary Clinton) to seek to limit them.
WichiWmn likes to live under the false presupposition that an abortion is no different than having a root canal. After all, its simply a medical decision. Wrong.
_____________
What moral implication negatively affects society so far? Can you name one? All I can name are POSITIVE effects on society.
We want to reduce the need for abortions because its not just like a root canal, there are deep emotional and medical issues associated with ANY choice a woman makes in a crisis pregnancy, …that is why we advocate so strongly to not get pregnant in the first place.
Here’s an inconsistency I see – and I have yet to hear an adequate explanation…………
Why did the ardent pro-life advocating Archbishop fail to excoriate his superior, Boston’s ex-Cardinal Law, when he was (initially) unrepentant for covering up the despicable crimes of pedophile priests? Anyone think I’m lying or need their memories refreshed? Here’s a delightful gem from the Law(breaker) – after he was outed, of course…………
“By all means, we call the power of the Almighty down upon the Boston Globe.” (hint-hint: He wasn’t conferring papal blessings here…..)
I will not accuse the Archbishop of sexism: Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, and Mario Cuomo have all been admonished by their respective priests. But I am somewhat confused – why is the issue of abortion considered more worthy of condemnation than the rape of the innocents?
When I had my abortion, the following could not be denied: 1) I did not have it to derive sexual pleasure; 2) I was not inflicting unnatural sex acts upon a cognizant, post-birth human being who was wholly unwilling and pre-pubescent; and 3) I did not have the heart of a murderer – someone (or some thing) who sadistically inflicts mortal damage – just because he or she can. And revels in it.
That does not mean that abortion carries no moral concerns. It does, in my view. But I cannot work to criminalize other women for an act I wish I could have avoided – but was not able to avoid.
Is abortion grave matter? Yes, in my opinion. But are millions of us worse than pedophiles? Hardly – as seems obvious through the ages.
“Ultimately I still believe it’s a woman’s right to make her own medical choices.”
Agreed, when they involve only her.
But who speaks for the other person involved, that being the baby who can not speak for itself yet, and loses it’s very life if the decision goes the wrong way.
Do we not have some moral obligation to stand and speak out to protect the most helpless from death?
“Do we not have some moral obligation to stand and speak out to protect the most helpless from death?”
The same people that are so anti-choice are also the ones that were so anti-expansion of SCHIP.
What hypocrisy.
“The same people that are so anti-choice are also the ones that were so anti-expansion of SCHIP.
What hypocrisy”
No, not hypocrisy. What a ignoranus you are WS, a person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
SCHIP was an expensive expansion of a program that would have caused people that could afford health care to go on the government dole. If it had been limited to those who truly needed it…fine, but it wasn’t. It was an incremental step to more socialized medicine. Government provided health care for those families making three times the poverty level or approx. $60,000/yr.
Ridiculous!
Bilious Sebelius refuses to accept overwhelming scientific, medical, and scriptural evidence that unborn babies are living human beings, and worthy of mercy. Why? So she can continue engaging in a criminal conspiracy to cover up abortion mill crimes and thereby protect the source of huge, blood-soaked “contributions” to Democrat campaigns.
We will have criminal abortionist quacks prosecuted and in prison, and also those who obstruct justice to cover up their abortion mill crimes.
We will have justice.
You won’t care but you are also notified that you do not qualify as pro life boxy.
Legislating or otherwise restricting a womans right to choose is not pro life. It is descrimination against the poor. The wealthy women who wanted them would continue to seek and get abortions because they could afford to do so.
Ask bush.
“No, not hypocrisy. What a ignoranus you are WS, a person who’s both stupid and an asshole.”
Well thank you, Boxhead. To be insulted by you is quite an honor.
“SCHIP was an expensive expansion of a program that would have caused people that could afford health care to go on the government dole”
Expensive. Seven billion per year, but we can AFFORD $275 billion a year in Iraq – a war of choice that had nothing to do with 9/11 or the war on terror(ism.)
And you are concerned about abortion.
What a mothafukin’ hypocrite.
As long as you get yours, you are happy, right Boxhead?
Phuck the rest, right?
Heartless son of a bitch.
WS,
Ha, ha….what’s the matter child, something get to you. Lose control there, throw a little tantrum, your Tourettes acting up again, or do you just use that kind of language all the time.
What a degenerate jerk you are much of the time WS, a slug, actually a Jabba The Hut.
Here you are between Tourettes Disorder attacks;
http://www.pbase.com/image/2564925
“your Tourettes acting up again, or do you just”
And you just called me an asshole and you are complaining about my language, Boxhead?
Loser.
Sucks to be you.
The expansion would have been financed by increasing the tax on cigarettes…cigarettes for children’s health care…it made too much sense, so of course it didn’t pass, too many politicians (Tiahart in particular) in the pockets of the tobacco lobbyists.
It says a lot about someone who doesn’t care about providing healthcare for children. But yet they’re often the same ones who support the Iraqi war…I guess there’s no hypocrisy in that, at least they’re consistant in their apathetic attitude regarding children…whether children are dying from lack of medical care or from bombs.
Mary,
Simply spending more money does not in anyway guarantee helping those who actually need it, look at education and the K.C. schools for instance.
Do you honestly think a family of four making $60,000+/yr. needs government handouts, paid for by some making less. Makes no since. The Dems simply saw a way to put political pressure on and maybe expand government, their continual agenda.
Actually Parkay, biblically your argument doesn’t hold water.
But I don’t believe in the bible, you do.
Religious right hypocrites, gotta love em.
Box, you’re a #1 Ahole.
Political_mama,
It doesn’t come easy, I have to work at it, but only for people like you and some of the other DemLibs on the blog.
It’s a mission!
“The Dems simply saw a way to put political pressure”
Forty three governors (Dem and Rep) and the majorities of both House of Congress were in favor of the expansion of SCHIP, and you call it a Democratic attempt to put political pressure on WHAT?
Damn, we can spend $275 billion a year on Iraq, but an additional $7 billion for AMERICAN children is something we cannot afford?
Heartless son of a bitch.
I think healthcare should be affordable to everyone, no matter how much they make. A family of four making $60,000 a year couldn’t afford to buy their own health insurance. That’s not that much money to raise a family on, and health insurance is really expensive for a family.
Healthcare should be a right for every American, not a luxury.
Oh Bull, Mary.
People make choices, they can make the choice to do what is responsible for their families best interest, and health care is certainly high on the list. Higher than a new car, or wide screen TV, or liqueur, or any one of an endless list of things that people make choices for that are not a necessity.
And you want to take from someone else so they can continue in that irresponsibility.
That’s irresponsible also.
Troy,
Please, get back in your cockroach diguise; you are so much more appealing in it.
It must take some real chutzpah to call somebody else a quack, since you are a quack activist yourself. For an activist you engage in about as little activism as you can get away with and still collect your salary! I’ve seen you make your mini-tribe, womwn, children and all, stand out in the cold and rain at the clinics while you sit and watch from the comfort of that big SUV your fancy salary from OR pays for. Any real activist would be out there with the troops come hell or high water, and for no pay whatsoever. Go crawl back under your very expensive rock.
The Queen of Kill, alias Killer Tiller’s Woman!!
Well, you do have to draw a line somewhere. But why draw lines? We got the credit. Our kids can just pay for it.
Hell WS, why stop there? Let’s just get everyone a car. Good transportation should be a right for all Americans. How about health club memberships? After all, it is in the government’s best interest that everyone be healthy. And of course everyone should own their own house. That should be a right too. And if you work, you should be able to get away. Public financed vacations! Yeah, that should definitely be paid for by the government.
I wonder where the government will get the money?
Her term limit is coming near so she doesn’t have to do the will of her constituents. I guess she is just trying to secure a future job in DC. The people of KS are just another stepping stone.
If both parties were serious about healt care, they would at least make it a tax deduction on the income tax and not just part of it. Now you may deduct only the amount by which your total medical care expenses for the year exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income.
Years ago, you could deduct all you medical expense.
Both parties want it expensive so you will vote for them to solve the problem.
EXACTLY john_s…EXACTLY!
For her it’s all a political, “what’s in it for me”.
If you have an adjusted gross income of 60,000 – you must have over $4,500 in medical expense before you can deduct a penny
“Good transportation should be a right for all Americans.”
What a hypocritical statement. You are okay with corporate welfare and billions for the War of Choice on Iraq, but $7 billion a year for SCHIP is too much money.
Heartless son of a bitch.
Boxic,
I had the honor of getting to talk with many of the actual patients who came to the clinics. One of the most cited reasons for getting abortions was because they had lost healthcare coverage when their husbands were laid off. When you’re trying to support a family on unemployment, a thousand or so a month for health insurance is out of the question if you also have to provide them with food and shelter, and a simple no-complications delivery starts at about $2500 and increases in a hurry if any complications occur. And that doesn’t include formula, diapers or post-natal healthcare. This isn’t about new cars or wide-screen TV’s, it’s about having food on the table!
Now if you really want to cut down on the number of abortions, the one thing that would make the most difference is a national healthcare plan. Now either get behind that, or quit bellyaching about abortion. You don’t get it both ways!
Oh, well in that case lets just kill the little babies…it would be to inconvienant otherwise.
Sure, that’s all we have to do. It’s an easy solution to that problem, lets kill them.
Our only truly pro life poster Mary weighed in.
She is wrong in lots of other things. But here she is correct.
And outlander makes me right.
”
Let’s just get everyone a car. Good transportation should be a right for all Americans. How about health club memberships? After all, it is in the government’s best interest that everyone be healthy. And of course everyone should own their own house. That should be a right too. And if you work, you should be able to get away. Public financed vacations!”
Everything you list here (except maybe for the car) would HELP a woman to choose the choice you want to force on her. Again, you want to treat the problem at its end and contribute nothing to solution.
Oh my gosh, my lifestyle is going to be altered, possibly for the worst, if I let this child live.
We can’t have that now can we, all I need to do is kill this inconvenient ‘creature’ and I’ll be back to LIVING EXACTLY AS I WANT.
And it’s all private too, I mean…how easy is this!
Did your meds just kick in Boxhead?
“What a hypocritical statement. You are okay with corporate welfare and billions for the War of Choice on Iraq, but $7 billion a year for SCHIP is too much money.”
———–
And you know all this because… you’re psychic?
So WS, you say 7 billion more is the right place to draw the line. Why not 70 billion? After all, we are spending 275 billion in Iraq. Or 700 billion. Aren’t our children are three times more important than a war?
Point is, there is no rational and it is just your opinion. Nothing more.
And for the record, I have stated it was a dumb place for Bush to make a stand.
And outlander makes me right.
———-
JR, it would take a heckuva a lot more than I could ever do to make you right!
“Why not 70 billion?”
Okay – Americans are much more important than Iraqis.
You are not pro life outlander.
You are anti sex. Or worse.
See the thing is outlander? That god you so believe in? He doesn’t provide.
You spoke once that a child was “a blessing from God not to be trifled with”.
Well that blessing doesn’t come with anything but negatives in the economic real world we live in. Health care, food, diapers, deprived sleep. These things do not fall from the sky to help.
Now society can take that function. Or not.
Either way, abortion is going to happen. It will happen because of economics.
Boxic,
Maybe you consider sending your children to bed hungry or to school in wornout shoes “inconvenient” but some of us don’t; we consider it horrendous. And if you think I’m being melodramatic, go spend a few weeks volunteering at the food bank or homeless shelter. Children have become the luxury some of us can’t afford. Now if you’re willing to afford them for us, well….. But since you’ve already bitched about that, I assume you won’t. And since you wouldn’t dream of helping poor women pay for birth control, I don’t see where you’ve got a bitch coming regarding abortions.
The rebirth of abortion
With an absurd attack on a Democratic rising star who’s Catholic, the right is once again seizing on the issue.
Tim Rutten
If there’s one issue that epitomizes the culture wars that have so deeply divided American politics over the last eight years, it’s abortion. That’s why those who benefited most from those wars are desperate to revive abortion’s single-issue virulence in this presidential cycle.
For the GOP’s hard cultural right, abortion was the centerpiece of a grand strategy to link traditionally minded Roman Catholics and socially conservative evangelical Protestants in a great coalition of the religious right that would paint the electoral map ruby red, cementing the Rust Belt and the Sun Belt into a permanent Republican majority.
Now, because of Sen. Barack Obama’s perceived problems with blue-collar Catholic voters in the late Democratic primaries, some on the right think they see an opportunity to hammer once more on the abortion wedge. Their most public target is Kansas’ second-term governor, Kathleen Sebelius, who many believe is the front-runner for the vice presidential slot if Obama secures the nomination.
Sebelius would help the Illinois senator in several obvious ways — she’s a woman, a Catholic and a Democratic officeholder who has successfully reached across the aisle to make strong Republican allies in a deeply red state.
When she was selected to give her response to President Bush’s State of the Union address last January, she began: “In this time, normally reserved for the partisan response, I hope to offer you something more: An American response.”
Sebelius, in other words, is a Democratic politician who not only talks the Obama talk but walks the Obama walk.
Recently, however, she has run afoul of Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City in Kansas. As the Catholic News Service reported earlier this month, the bishop has told the governor that she “should stop receiving Communion until she publicly repudiates her support of abortion and makes a ‘worthy sacramental confession.’ ” In a column for his diocesan newspaper, Naumann wrote that he was particularly outraged by Sebelius’ veto of an antiabortion bill, which she — and nearly every legal scholar who examined it — believed was unconstitutional.
Naumann dismissed Sebelius’ insistence that she personally opposes abortion, and her assertion that because of her pro-adoption policies and improvements in public health services for pregnant women, Kansas’ abortion rate has declined significantly. The prelate said that in a private conversation he’d had with Sebelius, the governor said she was “obligated to uphold state and federal laws and court decisions related to abortion.” Naumann said he demanded that she show “a similar sense of obligation to honor divine law and the laws, teaching and legitimate authority within the church.”
Now there’s about as nasty and as utterly avoidable a church-state confrontation as you’re likely to see.
That’s probably why it was gleefully seized on this week by redoubtable right-wing hit man Robert Novak, who denounced Sebelius in a column titled “A Pro-Choicer’s Dream Veep.” In the column published in the Washington Post, Novak asserted that Sebelius’ “positions are necessary for Democratic politicians to pass their party’s pro-choice litmus test, but Sebelius’ connection with abortion is more intimate. … There is substantial evidence she has been involved in what pro-life advocates term ‘laundering’ abortion industry money for distribution to Kansas Democrats.”
The source of those allegations?
Operation Rescue.
Putting aside the question of whether there’s anything like an “abortion industry,” how does this laundering work? Well, according to Novak channeling Operation Rescue, a Wichita doctor who performs abortions contributed $120,000 two years ago to the Democratic Governors Assn. The governors have since distributed $200,000 to a Kansas political action fund controlled by Sebelius. Given the strictures of the campaign reporting laws — and the fact that the DGA has also given millions to other political action funds — that doesn’t seem like much of a laundering operation.
But hey, guilt by association is fun to play — and almost nobody is as practiced at it as Novak — so why not take it in a different direction? Novak is a relatively recent convert to Catholicism, and the priest who helped him into the church is Father C. John McCloskey, who also has been instrumental in obtaining the conversions of, among others, Alfred Regnery, the country’s foremost publisher of extreme right-wing literature; Lewis Lehrman, the former New York gubernatorial candidate and conservative think-tank impresario; former GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas; and economist and CNBC host Lawrence Kudlow.
McCloskey also happens to be a priest of the ultra-conservative and secretive — some would say sinister — Catholic organization Opus Dei. You don’t have to buy into Dan Brown’s preposterous caricature of Opus Dei in “The Da Vinci Code” to know that it really never has fallen all that far from its roots in Francisco Franco’s Spain.
So, does that make Novak’s rhetorical shivving of Sebelius part of a right-wing plot to bring the United States under the sway of neo-fascist clericism?
Of course not; it’s an absurd and rather vicious notion, but no more so than the implication that Sebelius — or by extension, Obama — is in the pay of something called “the abortion industry.”
One of the salutary characteristics of this election cycle is the way in which voters concerned with war and a failing economy have rejected single-issue appeals for the traditional American “politics of remedy.”
If the culture warriors somehow believe they still can convince the millions of Catholic voters who cast primary ballots for the very pro-choice Hillary Clinton that they now should switch to John McCain, they’re fighting the last war.
morality from the treasonous mr. novak? novak should be at gitmo for outing a cia agent during the iraq civil war. scott mc clellan has let out what everyone already knew…that the whitehouse once again lied to the american public repeatedly about the plame novak treason scandal……of course bush said if anyone in his administration was involved they would be fired…….uh yeah…….right.
Jed Posted May 27, 2008 at 11:31 pm |
“Boxic,
Maybe you consider sending your children to bed hungry or to school in wornout shoes “inconvenient” but some of us don’t;”
Hey, I was agreeing with you Jed, sarcastically.
Lets just solve our problems by taking the life of the one defenseless to stop us and who we consider to be causing them for us. No problem, complete privacy. Of course the abortion probably costs as much as a birth and there are no laws guaranting that care while there are for a birth.
Adoption, not an option because it’s too inconvenient, and involved, too public, so lets just kill the little booger and forget about it.
The vast, vast majority of abortions are done strictly out of convenience and not for ‘medical’ reasons. It is the height of placing ones will over another to the point of killing them.
The truth will be known and illuminated brilliantly, make no mistake.
Political_mama
“Box, you’re a #1 Ahole.”
Why, because I don’t let Jabba spew his liberal, kill the innocent baby, dogma or let him denigrate anyone that disagrees with him.
Fine, I take your pointless labels to stand against that crap any day.
……boxtop forgot to take his meds again this morning.
Isn’t hard to live with yourself?
“liberal, kill the innocent baby, dogma”…………….this is TOO funny!
Apophis posts;
“….this is TOO funny!”
Oedipus, good, because you’re not! You’re scroll over.
” You spoke once that a child was “a blessing from God not to be trifled with”.
Well that blessing doesn’t come with anything but negatives in the economic real world we live in. Health care, food, diapers, deprived sleep. These things do not fall from the sky to help.”
——————
Baloney JR. That is so sadly short-sighted and pessimistic. I think that you will find that the overwhelming majority of women who elected to give birth to their child in uncertain economic circumstances are glad they did.
outlander
Posted May 28, 2008 at 8:11 am
“Baloney JR. That is so sadly short-sighted and pessimistic. I think that you will find that the overwhelming majority of women who elected to give birth to their child in uncertain economic circumstances are glad they did.”
I totally agree ‘outlander’, and if I might add to what you express, those that kill their baby carry misgivings and even pain the rest of their lives. At least if they have a soul and and respect for humanity.
I have a question for the anti-choice proponents on this Blog. I don’t wish to pick on Parkay unduly; anyone who can impersonate a cockroach and therein bring laughter to this mirthless, malcontent can’t be all bad. However………….
If all abortion becomes illegal, what would be a proper and fitting punishment for all aborting women? ‘Cause if you’re going to punish all aborting women, you’d probably have to punish all post-aborts like the Flimflam, er, Filmfan.
What would be our just due? Female circumcision? Like that’s gonna do any good. That would be pure sadism and nothing more. A prison sentence? That’s rather tricky as well as time-consuming, because there’s a whole lot of us who have had abortions.
And that means a whole lot of impregnators could be indicted, too. And, since the law gives men no say in this matter, that would frequently be unfair. So, that would mean you’d have to lock up ALL impregnators – or only the drippiest dregs of society like my own impregnator. Both prospects are profoundly depressing.
‘Cause I’d rather feed on myself than share a cell with the Antichrist.
Then again, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Since he knocked up so many of us, I could share the wet nurse duties with at least four other women. (I’m not counting the 15-year-old he befouled in late 1973 who actually gave birth. The now-33-year-old young man has never known a scintilla of support from his father.)
If I’m incarcerated with this Enema of the Prostate, I wouldn’t ALWAYS have to adjust his back brace, push his wheelchair, refill his drug stash, and renew his “High Times” subscription. There’d be a quintet of unquiet mind, ready to do his bidding!
Gawd almighty, I’m getting sick here.
Is this what you want? To torture me most cruelly like this?
Jed makes some very salient points here. As he attests, he has actually talked to patients, unlike myself, who has only her own erstwhile idiocy to reflect upon.
Sadly, economic hardship and layoffs (largely due to outsourcing and Bush-league policies) will continue. In my view, the best solution would be more efficacious family planning methods. I would not exclude natural family planning – it has much to recommend it. For those fortunate couples who can make it work, abstention of five days per month is probably not prohibitive.
For many other persons, however, this is an untenable situation.
I believe it’s obvious that none of us has all the answers. But I believe all of us should work towards a better future.
flimflam’s impregnator must have been a mighty slick and slimy reptile. Consider how legal abortion might influence this self serving young man’s attitudes in pursuing a relationship with flimflam.
It seems that had the law forced flimflam’s immature impregnator to be responsible for his grown up actions, flimflam might have been spared a relationship with this salamander altogether.
Conclusion: Legal abortion allows pro-choice men to take advantage or women as a means to satisfay their own temporal desires. Naturally, selfish men are pro-choice.
The only way to be pro-woman is to be pro-life.
“I think that you will find that the overwhelming majority of women who elected to give birth to their child in uncertain economic circumstances are glad they did.”
Well, we aren’t talking about them are we?
We’re talking about women who made a different choice. Are they glad they did and do it? I don’t know. I don’t guess “glad” figures into it.
What WAS the big argument we heard back in the bad old Reagan administration….
Something about “welfare queens” or something? The idea that there were women on welfare driving around in Cadillacs, squeezing out another baby now and again to up their welfare allowance?
Oh yeah. I remember. Because I was on the other side then and helped make all their arguments.
So, I guess those of you who are still over on that side have yourselves a dilemna. Are you really pro life? Do you admit now that doing away with welfare only increased abortion?
Are you ready to admit that you were wrong and reverse welfare “reform”? So those babies can be born and fed and cared for?
HEY FELLOW EAGLE BLOGGERS:
ISN’T FREEDOM OF SPEECH WONDERFUL!!! WE ARE ALL LIVING IN EXCITING & GLORIOUS TIMES!!! I WANT TO SINCERELY THANK THE EGLE CURRENT & FORMER PUBLISHERS – PAM SIDDALL & LOU HELMAN FOR ALLOWING CITIZNES TO POST ENTRIES ONTHIS BLOG.
When I first started networking with local GOP politicians at the Wichita Pachyderm Club two years ago, my State Rep. Mario Goico (District 100) told me that there is a common saying among state legislators in Topeka: “ The issue is never the issue” which means that cynical politicians and journalists dwell on certain superficial issues that can never be resolved or fight over petty issues that easily be resolved instead of openly fighting over important issues that can be resolved such as government ethics reform or political leadership battles.
Once again the only thing that the national liberal & conservative press will discuss about Sebelius is abortion or that she is a rising star in the Democratic National Party because she was a Democrat governor re-elected in a GOP state. Both the liberal & conservative national press are too ashamed to report on the real issue which is that Governor Sebelius is a product of the bipartisan corrupt, fascist nepotistic elitist political, judicial & media establishment in Kansas that has committed, condoned & covered up human rights atrocities. The code of silence by the respective state party chairmen, GOP Kris Kobach (Rhodes scholar & constitutional law professor at UMKC) and Democrat Lawrence Gates (Johnson County Small Law Firm Attorney whose former partner is Congressman Dennis Moore) is especially reprehensible. I certainly hope that Libertarian Presidential Nominee Bob Barr from Atlanta reads this blog and actually comes to Kansas to speak with upper middle pro-life glass Christian Republicans who have been the victims of human rights atrocities committed by prosecutors working for Democrat Nola Foulston or greedy court-appointed forensic psychologists and mediators. These criminal acts have been condoned by GOP district court judges who claim to be conservative, family value pro life Christians.
The only real issue is the ability of the corrupt elitist nepotistic political & judiciary establishment to encourage employees of law enforcement agencies and child protective agencies to commit criminal and unethical acts that are condoned by the state regulatory professional licensing boards and never investigated by Kansas journalists. In Kansas power & status is measured by the ability to appropriate tax payer funds to select non-profits & construction contractors, the ability to selectively prosecute and adjudicate so that the guilty go unpunished and the victims who complain loudly are destroyed and the ability to publish propaganda to support certain politicians or to selectively print stories about scandals to destroy an elected official who attempts any type of reform.
This blog is essential to protecting our civil rights. Just for fun go to Google and do 3 searches “ameridad pilshaw” “kiakahahaha Hollander” “kiakahahaha pirner” and “kiakahahaha powell” read the early 2007 blog entries from Ameridad (Joe Liddle from Des Moines Iowa) & myself. You’ll read that Joe & I have used this blog to make specific charges of criminal conduct against several judges, SRS officials, Sedgwick County deputies, prosecutors for DA Nola Foulston including my allegation that Ross Hollander, law partner of Steve Joseph (Tiller’s attorney) suborned the perjury of Wichita Psychiatric Consultants psychologist, Alicia Landsverk to cover up for the unethical acts of her business partner, Marc Quillen who is the spouse of Marilyn Harp the executive director of Kansas Legal Services. Last week I sent out an e-mail to over 100 attorneys, journalists, politicians and judges asking the Kansas Lottery Commission to investigate the criminal allegations against Hollander who was a minority interest in the MGM casino project. I hope that my e-mail which included several other specific criminal allegations against judges & attorneys & mental health professionals caused MGM to pull out of Kansas due to reputations of Bob Knight, Steve Joseph & Ross Hollander.
Posted on Tue, May. 27, 2008
10 casino contracts move ahead; one applicant drops out
By CARL MANNING
Associated Press Writer
Ten proposals to manage three state-owned casinos were endorsed Tuesday by the Kansas Lottery Commission and forwarded to a review board that will make the final selections.
Developers of an 11th proposal dropped out of the competition to operate a casino in Sumner County, and the commission rejected a second proposal offered by Penn National Gaming Inc. for the same county.
The commission endorsed proposed contracts for two projects in Ford County, three in Sumner County and five in Wyandotte County. Earlier this month, it endorsed a contract with Penn National as the sole bidder for a Cherokee County casino.
“We’re not done yet, but this is a big step,” Keith Kocher, Lottery director of gaming, told the commission.
The next step for the creation of resort casinos under last year’s expanded gambling law will be scrutiny by the Kansas Lottery Gaming Facility Review Board. It will conduct its own study with its consultants and staff and have public hearings.
The review board will pick the managers for the Cherokee and Sumner casinos on Aug. 21-22 and the Ford and Wyandotte casinos on Sept. 18-19. All must pass a background check by the Kansas Racing and Gaming Commission.
Dropping out of the running was a partnership of MGM Mirage Inc., of Las Vegas, and Foxwoods Development Co., of St. Louis, for a casino at Mulvane. Its statement said only that negotiations didn’t result in a contract they were willing to sign.
There are commercial casinos in 12 states, but only Kansas would have state-owned and operated facilities, according to the American Gaming Association. The state has four tribal casinos on reservations in northeast Kansas.
“All they told us is that after further evaluation it didn’t make financial sense for them to go forward,” said Ed Van Petten, Lottery executive director. “We knew of the probability for a week. They weren’t negotiating.”
That decision left three proposals endorsed by the commission for Sumner County – Harrah’s Entertainment in Mulvane, and Marvel Gaming and Penn National at Wellington.
Also approved were five developers who want to operate the casino in Wyandotte County, all near or at Kansas Speedway: Golden Gaming Inc.; Kansas Entertainment Inc.; Pinnacle Entertainment; Legends Sun; and Sands Kansas.
Two developers for Ford County – Dodge City Resort and Gaming Co., and Butler National Service Corp. – also advanced to the review board.
The law requires a minimum investment by the developers plus a privilege fee paid within 30 days of contract approval. For Cherokee, Sumner and Wyandotte counties, it’s a $225 million investment and a $25 million fee. For Ford County, a developer must invest $50 million and pay a $5 million fee.
All the proposals had the state’s share starting at the minimum 22 percent required by law, with higher percentages tied to specific revenue amounts. They also include 3 percent for local governments and 2 percent for the problem gambling and addictions fund.
After the commission’s vote endorsing the 10 contracts, Penn National asked the panel to also endorse a second Sumner County proposal that would have given ownership of the buildings to the state. Commissioners adjourned without commenting or voting on the proposal.
“It attempts to build on and strengthen the concept of state owned,” Penn National attorney John Petersen told the commission. “It gives the review board another avenue.”
Commissioner Joni Franklin, a Wichita attorney, said after the meeting there were questions among the commissioners about whether the proposal was a binding contract. She also said there were concerns that it was proposed two weeks ago and the Lottery staff didn’t have enough time to properly review it.
Lottery attorney Dan Biles recommended against endorsing the second proposal.
“It transferred the risk of operation to the state,” Biles said. “It transferred to the state the ongoing responsibility of bricks and mortar.”
Legislators enacted the law allowing the casinos last year. The law says the new gambling will be owned by the state, but it allows the Lottery to contract with developers to build and operate the casinos. The state hopes to eventually collect some $200 million a year from the new gambling.
The gambling law still is under review by the Kansas Supreme Court, chiefly over the question of whether the casinos truly would be owned by the state. The court has given no indication when it will rule, although its next scheduled day for decisions is June 27.
BLOG ENTRY CONTINUED
Yesterday I spoke by telephone with Dave Grant, News Director at the ABC Affiliate, KAKE TV, about the criminal activity committed by his wife, Rachel Pirner, law partner. I pleaded with Dave for him and Rachel to come clean and broadcast all of the criminal activity that is being committed or covered up by Nola Foulston & the GOP district court judges. I asked Dave if he worked closely with Randy Brown (spouse of Linda Parks – Hite Fanning Honeyman law partner & current Kansas Bar Association president) Dave told me that I was wrong to print in e-mails or blog entries that Randy Brown was ever his mentor. Dave told me that he will be replaced soon as station manager, I assume due to the Todd Wait scandal. I want to publicly apologize for assuming that Dave worked for Randy Brown at KAKE when Randy was the news editor at KAKE in the 1980’s. (For more info. Google Randy Brown kake eagle kiakahahaha” . If you review Randy Brown’s resume you’ll see that he is a key part of the corrupt elitist nepotistic clique of KBA officials, Democrat politicians, WSU professors and media experts.
However for the record Todd Wait me that he provided to KAKW investigative reporter Jeff Golamoski all of the evidence to support his allegations that Rachel Pirner (law partner at Tripplett Wolf Garretson & Board member of the Kansas Bar Association ) suborned perjury & forgery before Judge Douglas Roth retaliated against Wait by sentencing him to 28 days in jail for criminal contempt of court.
Because I am starting to gain some credibility, I want to print 3 more serious allegations:
1. Joni Franklin’s former law partner, Sheila Floodman , tried to exhort $100,000 in cash from her client b instructing him to pay it to the opposing attorney, Pat Walters who is running unopposed at the GOP candidate for Judge Pilshaw’s position.
2. Former Mayor Carlos Mayans confirmed to me that he told two credible citizens that he was offered $100,000 to keep quiet about the criminal corruption in the local government.
3. A credible witness is willing to testify that he observed several Sedgwick County District court judges meeting on a regular basis at the Broadview Hotel to what appeared to him as being prostitutes. It is noteworthy that the land that was stolen from Todd & Rhonda Wait’s was resold at a steep discount to Michelle the owner of Michelle’s Beach House.
I told Dave Grant that the main thing that Joe, Todd , activist Paul Rhodes & I want is the same thing that is being sought by Representative Jim Morrison (Chairman of the House Committee on Government Technology & Efficiency). We want transparency in the investigative & discipline system of judges, attorneys, doctors & mental health professionals. We want accountability so that these powerful individuals are not allowed to break the law. We want the entire legal, political, mental health & journalist establishment in Kansas to humble themselves by acknowledging all of the horrible human rights atrocities that are being committed. We want a logical mechanism for the judges, attorneys, law enforcement officials, doctors and mental health professionals to redeem themselves and for the victims to receive restorative justice.
Eric Melgren told Todd Wait, Paul Rhodes & myself at an Americans for Prosperity dinner that Rep. Jim Morrison is scheduled to meet with US Attorney Eric Melgren this week. I have written several blog entries stating that Eric Melgren, Attorney general Steve Six, the former deans and the ethics professors at both law schools and former KBI Director Larry Welch are well aware of all of the human rights atrocities. I have personally spoken to Sam Brownback & Todd Tiahrt and many legislators and attorneys. Some of the lawmakers and attorneys are scared of retaliation against their children by Nola Foulston & the SRS.
I have acted independently without Jim Morrison’s permission or coaching. However Morrison is a modern day Jedi knight fighting a epic battle of good vs. evil light vs. darkness. Joe, Paul & Todd are all my heroes that can be best described as Christian men with warrior spirits. I know that Joe fears for the spiritual welfare of Rebecca Pilshaw and her teenaged son who has been in trouble with the law several times. Joe is afraid even though his 14 year son, David, unnecessarily imprisoned due to the conspiracy of Christian pro-life conservative GOP juvenile court judges Brooks & Henderson, court appointed attorneys Mark Kahrs and Nola Foulston’s prosecutors. Todd is concerned about the spiritual welfare of Rachel Pirner, Paul is concerned about the spiritual welfare of retired judge Jim Beasley & Sheila Floodman. I admit that I have been snotty at time (to get your attention), but I sincerely hope that self-proclaimed Christians Judge Tony Powell & Laurence Williamson will not only redeem themselves but also serve in leadership positions to start a tsunami of ethical reform that can start in Sedgwick County. An Eliott Ness type outside prosecutor must file by the 6/10 deadline as the GOP challenger against the fascist wicket witch of Eastborough, Nola Foulston. I think that the Sebelius-Foulston-Joseph nepotism & corruption can best be illustrated by an easy to understand example. It’s interesting that Joni Franklin who was recently appointed by Sebelius as chairman of the powerful Kansas Lottery Commission was Sheila Floodman’s long-time law partner. Joni’s husband Kurt Breitenbach is a senior associate prosecutor for Nola Foulston. I read that Join & Kurt throw one heck of a XMAS party. Just ask Terry Pullman, my favorite Sedgwick County District Court Judge. I do want to thank Pullman for encouraging me on the court record to file a federal civil rights law suit. However the lawsuits will probably have to be a class action lawsuit filed in a different federal circuit district because I am sure that the FBI, the federal judges in Kansas including the husband of Kathleen Sebelius, Attorney General Steve Six (spouse of KU Law Professor Betsy Six & son of Fred Six (retired Kansas Supreme Court Judge) and Lily Six (retired long-time KU Law school admissions director), Eric Melgren (GOP US Attorney for Kansas and former Foulston Seifken partners in the Wichita office with Kansas Supreme Court Carol Beier, Jack Focht, Gloria Flentje and Todd Tedesco – nephew of Nola Tedesco Foulston, ) the Appellate Court in Denver are aware of the many allegations. When I have more time I will write a different blog about the hypocrisy of Eagle reporter & his wife, Gaye Tibbets. No elected official other than Jim Morrison has risked anything to protect the children & families in Kansas.
The Eagle recently has been routinely censoring my comments that I have made to their stories. This morning I made I just posted the following comment to the national AP story that Obama stated the incorrect name of the concentration camp that his great uncle help liberate at the end of WWII:
It’s absurd what the Associated Press & the Wichita Eagle consider to be newsworthy. Joe Hanna of the Associated Press’s Topeka Journal & Pam Siddall, publisher of the Eagle are sitting on stories about human rights atrocities in Wichita involving the SRS & criminal racketeering in the Sedgwick County Juvenile & Family Law District Courts and cover up of criminal activity by the Kansas Supreme Courts Commission on Judicial Qualifications, but the only thing that citizens are allowed to read is that Obama misspoke about the name of a concentration camp.
So called conservative national newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal & the Washington Times should be ashamed of themselves for not reporting on the incestuous relationship between the Kansas press and the fascist state & federal judiciary in Kansas which has lead to documented human rights atrocities against Joe Liddell, a disabled air force veteran from Iowa that was covered up by officials in the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and Democrat Governor Kathleen Sebelius. Someone in the national media needs to as Bob Barr, Barak Obama & John McCain how these human rights atrocities can occur. It will never happen because the dysfunctional local & national media are too ashamed to admit that have become nothing more than promoters & influence peddlers. The fascist local & national publishers understand that if their newspapers aggressively & objectively investigated government corruption stories to their logical conclusion that they would not be able to become king makers by selectively influence political campaigns or be able to ingratiate themselves to particular powerful politicians (such as Governor Sebelius, Senator Pat Roberts, Sam Brownback or congressman Jerry Moran or Todd Tiahrt)
Bill McKean kiakahahaha@yahoo.com 316 293-6079
Posted on Wed, May. 28, 2008
Obama mistaken on name of Nazi death camp
By CHRISTOPHER WILLS
Associated Press Writer
The Barack Obama campaign said Tuesday the candidate mistakenly referred to the wrong Nazi death camp when relating the story of a great-uncle who helped liberate the camps in World War II.
The Democratic presidential candidate said the story is accurate except that the camp was Buchenwald, not Auschwitz.
“Senator Obama’s family is proud of the service of his grandfather and uncles in World War II – especially the fact that his great-uncle was a part of liberating one of the concentration camps at Buchenwald,” campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement. “Yesterday he mistakenly referred to Auschwitz instead of Buchenwald in telling of his personal experience of a soldier in his family who served heroically.”
Aides said Tuesday that his grandmother’s brother, Charlie Payne, helped liberate a Buchenwald sub-camp in April 1945 as part of the 89th Infantry Division.
In a meeting Monday with veterans, Obama discussed the importance of improving treatment for soldiers suffering post-traumatic stress. To illustrate his point, he talked about his own family.
“I had an uncle who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz and liberate the concentration camps. The story in our family was that when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn’t leave the house for six months,” Obama said. “Now, obviously something had really affected him, but at that time there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain.”
Auschwitz was liberated by Soviet forces as they marched across Poland in January 1945. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum says Americans liberated several death camps in Germany, including Buchenwald, Dachau and Mauthausen.
“On April 4, 1945, the 89th overran Ohrdruf, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Ohrdruf was the first Nazi concentration camp liberated by U.S. troops in Germany,” according to the museum. “A week later, on April 12, Generals Dwight D. Eisenhower, George S. Patton, and Omar Bradley visited Ohrdruf to see, firsthand, evidence of Nazi atrocities against concentration camp prisoners.”
Obama’s mistaken mention of the camp on Monday quickly generated Internet chatter, ranging from puzzlement to outrage. The Republican Party demanded an explanation.
“It was Soviet troops that liberated Auschwitz, so unless his uncle was serving in the Red Army, there’s no way Obama’s statement yesterday can be true,” said Alex Conant, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.
© 200
Bill McKean kiakahahaha@yahoo.com 316 293-6079
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RFL: I can’t disagree with your keen insights here. However, since when are all men sub-animal degenerates – not to mention narcissists and drug users? Since when are all pregnant women idiotic enough to fail to discern this singular brand of delinquency? That’s where I disagree with you, sir – and where I shall likely always disagree. Moreover, to lump all pro-choice persons into the same disdainful category is direspectful.
And, you didn’t answer my original question. What do you think should happen to aborting females? Should we be arrested and hauled into court? Should we be forced to answer a battery of questions? (my first confession was sorta like that – and it set my teeth on edge….) I can hear it now:
Judge Randall Terry – circa 1975: “Young lady! Just what did you think you were doing? Where was your brain, anyway?”
Sixteen-year-old post-abort from Kansas: “Um, well, I…”
JRT: “ANSWER ME! I am your lord and master! I hold your fate in my hands! I am who am! I ask you again – WHERE WAS YOUR BRAIN?”
Mere female from the hinterlands: “Well, since you asked, I’m sitting on it, your honor……”
Gadfrey! Is this the fate that should have befallen me?
Nope – not in my opinion. But my mother and I were not impoverished 33 years ago. I was covered – at 100% – under her health insurance. Her job was secure. We had savings. My (physical) health was in tippy-top shape. I needed to be under a doctor’s care, even before pregnancy. The prospect of bringing joy to adoptive parents’ lives would have required much maturity, self-sacrifice, and a distinct lack of idiotic preoccupation.
I will not argue with you that my abortion was morally wrong. I will argue with you, though, about casting derision upon all of us. As has been proven throughout the decades, it’s not always appropriate – nor productive.
FilmFan-
I admire your candor about your own situation. THat is never an easy thing to do. I am decidely pro-life. At the same time, I do not paint any but the most vitrolic pro-choicers with any kind of brush. There are many that do, on both sides. I believe that at the age that the unborn child can be shown to have the same brainwaves that we say are the definition of not dead in a born person, then that unborn child deserves the same constitutional protections as a born person. Prior to that, legally, the woman has a right to do as she wishes. After that, only in the most extreme reasons. What would I do with the woman who has had, or does have, an abortion? Nothing. What would I do to the physician who performs an abortion past the time defined above? Hold a fair hearing, asking him what the compelling reason was, and find him justified of doing the procedure, or guilty of violating the law and his professional ethics. I would have the doctor lose his liscence at the least, and charged criminally at the most.
I also think that there is much counselling to be offered, for those who have chosen abortion, and those who did not. That needs to be addressed as well. Calling women babykillers does nothing but harm.
Boxic,
“Of course the abortion probably costs as much as a birth and there are no laws guaranting that care while there are for a birth.
Adoption, not an option because it’s too inconvenient, and involved, too public, so lets just kill the little booger and forget about it.”
Actually boxic, a first trimester abortion costs about $450, compared with an absolute minimum delivery with no complications at around $2500.
As for adoption, we already have several hundred thousand already born children in foster care who will age out of the system and get dumped on the street at eighteen without ever knowing the love of an adoptive family. Maybe we should consider getting families for them before we start producing more of those preferable pink healthy newborns who always get adopted first.
I spent some years talking with patients at the clinics (I was a volunteer escort) and I’ve really come to resent the way you anti’s fling the word “Inconvenient” at women who are very literally at the end of their rope. There might be a few women who have abortions because pregnancy might ruin their perfect figures or disrupt their party lifestyle, but I certainly never met them among the hundreds of women I’ve talked with. I have met women for whom the viable choices were between abortion and suicide. I’ve met women who had been raped and couldn’t bear the thought of bringing a child of their attacker into the world. I’ve met women who were told by their doctors that their very much wanted pregnancy very well might kill them. I’ve met a lot of women who had worked hard to build a life for their families, and the cost of another child would destroy the lives of their already-born children. I even met a nine year old girl who had been molested by her sunday school teacher, and for whom bringing a child to term at her age, if even possible, would have destroyed her future ability to bear children. Every woman who worked up the courage to push her way through that line of howling fundies was desperate; I never met one who came there because abortion was “convenient,” and your use of that word demonstrates your willful and typically christian ignorance and heartlessness.
Thanks, Littlejohn.
I no longer criticize anti-choice persons for their convictions – only for the manner in which they sometimes express them. (Shelley Shannon might be a good example here……)
When it comes to hurling invective – I haven’t been a saint. But by golly, I’ve been provoked – not that I can always use that as an excuse…
I’m pleased that you wouldn’t hurl me at the mercy of The Dishonorable Judge Terry. Good gawd! He’d probably jump me right there in the courtroom – black robes and all! Right in front of a jury of my peers! Gag me with a sapphic spoon! (From what poor ol’ Randall’s rebukers have conveyed, Mr. Terry’s amatory wanderings have been quite prolific….)
And I agree with you about the parameters that should be more clearly defined.
Recently, I realized that I’ve lived here nearly three years and had never driven by Dr. Tiller’s clinic. So I did so a few times: The first time, I saw a woman praying the rosary – I wouldn’t wish to disturb her. Then, I saw a woman and man whom I didn’t recognize, so I drive on.
Most importantly, however, I observed that the Truth Truck’s continual presence did not feature a certain image which never fails to horrify me. Had I seen this picture, I would have had to put my car in reverse and drive away. Because I wouldn’t have been able to contain myself. As a wise priest once told me, “If you cannot avoid sin, avoid the occasion of that sin.”
And when I lose me temper, you can’t find it any place……..
What Jed has to say deserves much reflection and respect. This is where the anti-choice position leaves me as cold as a Titanic iceberg.
A nine-year-old child is raped and impregnated. Who are any of us to say, “Gee, don’t you know about birth control and/or abstinence?” I cannot accept the position that a child must be forced to continue a pregnancy past the early stages. It is my personal belief that, if a late-term pregnancy exists in tragedies such as this, we should do all we can to save the mother’s life. If an early C-section is performed to avoid requiring that child to undergo hours of labor, and the baby dies as a result – but not as an intended act – that would fall under the double effect rule.
All this heartfelt sentiment aside, however, this much must be said: Jed has actually spoken to patients. I have not – I have spoken to many post-abortive women in person and online. What right do I have to disdain his reflections – any less than I respect the rights of pro-life individuals to (respectfully) practice their faith?
I’ll say this again: The most saintlike, Christlike, wonderful individual could differ with me in cases of rape – and I would still honor their goodness. But I cannot agree with them in cases like these. It’s not in me.
If we illegalize all abortion, it will be the most innocent among us who will suffer the most wretchedly. That is something I cannot stomach.
FilmFan,
I am also old enough to remember the days before abortion was legalized, and I knew a local chiropractor whose practice was almost exclusively illegal abortions. Between him and three other chiropractors that I knew of, the doctors who did “prophylactic dilation and curettage,” a few nurses who did abortions on the side and a couple outright butchers, there were considerably more abortions being done in Wichita then than there are now. It seems the pill was late reaching Kansas and getting prescribed, and for a while, all birth control was illegal here. Of course sex was illegal too, but nobody enforced that.
The real difference between then and now is that when it was illegal, women who had complications from an abortion often waited far too long to go to the ER where they could be arrested, and often bled to death or died of infection. Legal abortions are much safer than they used to be, and are even safer than childbirth today.
” If we illegalize all abortion, it will be the most innocent among us who will suffer the most wretchedly. That is something I cannot stomach.”
I have to say that if we ban any abortion, it will cause some people to suffer, and I really believe that there is quite enough suffering in the world already. We don’t need to add any more!
Jed says
“I have to say that if we ban any abortion, it will cause some people to suffer, and I really believe that there is quite enough suffering in the world already. We don’t need to add any more!
I say
” I have to say that if we don;t ban some abortions, it will cause some people to die, and I really believe there is quite enough dying in the world already. We don;t need to add any more!”
Sorry Jed, I just have to disagree.
lj,
And which abortions would you ban?
My position is stated above. I have no hidden agenda. Ihave held the same position for quite some time THat position is”
“I believe that at the age that the unborn child can be shown to have the same brainwaves that we say are the definition of not dead in a born person, then that unborn child deserves the same constitutional protections as a born person. Prior to that, legally, the woman has a right to do as she wishes. After that, only in the most extreme reasons”
“
Hey Troyboy,
Just heard that your friend Randy-Randy has filed suit against you for use of the name Operation Rescue. You are now morally obligated to file a countersuit and take it all the way to the Supreme Court. And get yourself a high-dollar attorney, because you’re gonna need one!
lj,
The electrical activity at 56 days after fertilization that anti-choice groups love to interpret as “brain waves” is present in any living cell and not a brain wave in any medical sense of the term. Jackasses have been hooking EEG’s up to plants with exactly the same results and claiming proof of intelligent daisys for 30 some-odd years now. Only the most primitive cortical brain waves are detectable in fetuses over 150 days after fertilization. Cortical brain waves are one of several indications used to determine brain death, but their presence is not an indication of any level of consciousness or even “humanness.”
Jed posts;
“As for adoption, we already have several hundred thousand already born children in foster care who will age out of the system and get dumped on the street at eighteen without ever knowing the love of an adoptive family. Maybe we should consider getting families for them before we start producing more of those preferable pink healthy newborns who always get adopted first.”
Like I’ve already said….lets just kill them. That’s the easiest thing to do.
At least that’s what you propose.
And for all your other ’scenarios’ I say bullshit.
A very small percentage pregnancies resulting in abortion are the result rape and very few are the result of medical reasons. The vast, vast majority are purely elective…and that’s a fact.
I don’t believe for one second your vast experience talking with women seeking abortion, I say you lie.
You have an agenda of promoting death for what you think is freedom from any higher authority than yourself.
Jed…you are wrong.
Boxic,
“The vast, vast majority are purely elective…and that’s a fact.”
If that’s the case, it’s purely an elective decision that I don’t own a Ferrari or two. In fact, the cost today of raising a kid is equal to four or five Ferraris.
I have no idea what your net worth is, or how you got it (though judging from the quantity and lack of intelligence in your posts, not to mention your total ignorance of what poverty dictates, I’d guess you didn’t earn a penny of it), but a lot of us just don’t have that much filthy lucre.
Maybe you ought to follow Jesus’ teachings and give all you own to the poor before you try squeezing yourself through the eye of that needle.
Boxic,
If you doubt my word, ask your anti friends. They know who I am and have no doubt watched me talking to plenty of patients at the clinics.
The promoters of killing babies;
2 Peter 2
19 They promise freedom, but they themselves are slaves to sin and corruption. For you are a slave to whatever controls you.
And Jed, take care in what you promote with your mouth.
2 Peter 2, 22 “A dog returns to its vomit,”* and “A washed pig returns to the mud. Prov 26:11
You’re not pro life boxy James.
I don’t think you even fit into the anti-sex “pro life” wing.
I think that you know that if we ever got to the place that a woman could be FORCED to gestate, why then NOTHING would be denied the scrutiny of “personal responsibility”.
You’d do away with any help, rules, or anything that makes a society answerable to its members. THEN you’d tell anyone afoul of that they just aint right with God.
Yawn
Boxic,
“The promoters of killing babies;
2 Peter 2″
If you so-called pro-lifers had left Peter out of it, we wouldn’t have an abortion problem to get upset about.