Pro-Life marches for Self-Destruction
Category: Cutting off your nose [despite /in spite of/ to spite...pick one!] your face. You may also be shooting yourself in the foot!
“SBA [Susan B. Anthony] List is engaged in a multimillion-dollar attack on its former allies, replete with bus tours and billboards alleging that members “voted for taxpayer-funded abortion.” The group invested $1.5 million in its “Votes Have Consequences” bus tour in August, targeting anti-abortion Democrats who supported health reform. Just last week, SBA List spent $55,000 on 32 billboards dotting the districts of three vulnerable Democrats.”
Kathy Dahlkamper (D.-PA) is in their sights: “All along, I have donated. I have marched. I have been an unmarried pregnant woman who chose life. I have lived this. Now I’m 52, and in the last six months, all of a sudden, people are questioning who I am.”
Q: Who benefits from wiping out pro-life Democrats? A:…..hint: it begins with an R.
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=7F04A9EA-F14D-F8DF-671E9D1CAC17E6D4
It is not enough to be Pro-Life. One also needs to be a pro-life Republican, apparently. and pull all of the other circus wagons in their demented parade. The elephant wept.
Thanks for posting this. Ouch–but thanks.
What seems particularly short-sighted: When it comes to the health-care regulations, who is more likely to keep a Democratic Administration’s feet to the fire than pro-life Democratic members of Congress?
They’re hypocrites. They don’t care about “life” at all. It’s all about destroying Democrats.
(In the days before legal abortion, I worked at a hospital that provided therapeutic abortions. One day a woman brought her teenage daughter in for a “tab”. The woman was a famous singer and a harsh critic of the growing movement to legalize abortion. I was shocked, but now I know it’s typical.)
(Isn’t it to spite your face, not despite your face?)
Gerelyn: so many possibilities. See above.
Thanks, Margaret.
The nose knows.
It’s been a staple of pro-life rhetoric since I’ve been plugged in that party membership of legislators is critical.
The party in charge of a legislative branch appoints committee chairpersons and determines majority committee membership. It effectively controls the legislative agenda. The Senate has the ability to approve or reject cabinet and judicial appointments. Party control of the legislature probably is as important as the positions of individual candidates.
If you took a poll of pro-life activists, I’d think that 90%+ would say that it is better for pro-life issues that the GOP controls the legislature.
One of the things that dotCom has really made me rethink is the preconception I brought here that the Democratic Party is the enemy of the prolife movement. Of course, no objective person can conclude that the Democratic Party is *friendly* to pro-life causes; the party as a whole still tilts significantly toward pro-choice positions and constituencies.
But the health care passage has opened my eyes to the possibility that the country is best off if both parties have viable, effective pro-life wings.
All those who support legalized abortion, including the Democratic Party, benefit from wiping out Pro-Life Democrats.
I’ve always believed that the pro-life movement was being used by the far right to impose their nefarious policies that deviate so strongly from Catholic social teaching. The healthcare debate vindicated this, and then some. We learned that the real opposition to this reform was the fact that we are being asked to subsidize the healthcare of the least among us, directly through subsidies and indirectly through the individual mandate. But in our Calvinist culture, this goes against personal responsibility and it strikes at the heart of freedom! I have yet to see a single right-wing Catholic who could supported healthcare once assured about abortion (in Congress, Joseph Cao was the only one). But no, it is the usual Thomas Peters brigade using the unborn in defense of their own indefensible positions.
When the issue of supposedly pro-life groups spending millions of dollars attacking pro-life Democrats first appeared on Commonweal just after the health care bill passed, I showed my brother. His response was “Wow. Just wow. Those people, the ones doing the attacking? Baby killers.”
The partisan pro lifers were able to get pro lifer Dems like Bart Stupak to call it quits in disgust. I say the partisan pro-lifers are more motivated by Republican ideas than Christian.
FWIW, Jim Pauwels has it spot on:
“But the health care passage has opened my eyes to the possibility that the country is best off if both parties have viable, effective pro-life wings.”
It’s politics, and you need both parties competing for your votes and agendas to have influence.
Worst-case scenario: Dems hold Congress but lose most or all pro-life members.
“Worst-case scenario: Dems hold Congress but lose most or all pro-life members.”
Not that I’m an expert, but that also seems the most-likely scenario :-(
The SBA List folks can make whatever political judgments they want. It’s worth pointing out, just for the record, that the Affordable Care Act, along with its accompanying executive order, places additional restrictions on the funding for (and therefore the availability of) legal abortions.