Biden On Abortion: "I'm Prepared As A Matter Of Faith To Accept That Life Begins At The Moment Of Conception" (VIDEO)

On "Meet The Press" yesterday, Democratic vice presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden told Tom Brokaw that, as a Catholic, he believes that life begins at conception. He then went on to elaborate why, as a lawmaker, he believes one cannot legislate this point of view. The New York Times has a story, watch video of that portion of the interview below.

While Mr. Biden's views may not be new to Democrats in his circle, his comments, in an interview on "Meet the Press" on NBC, came at a time when his party is confronted with a new face: Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican vice-presidential nominee, whose anti-abortion stance and decision to give birth just five months ago to a baby with Down syndrome have revved up the conservative base of her party.

In the interview Sunday, Mr. Biden tried to walk the line between the staunch abortion-rights advocates in his party and his own religious beliefs. While he said he did not often talk about his faith, he said of those who disagree with him: "They believe in their faith and they believe in human life, and they have differing views as to when life -- I'm prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception."

Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, was also questioned about his views, on the ABC News program "This Week." Last month, in an interview with the Rev. Rick Warren at the Saddleback Church in California, Mr. Obama skirted a question about when life begins, saying that determining such a thing was "above my pay grade." On ABC on Sunday, Mr. Obama characterized his response then as a little "too flip," adding, "All I meant to communicate was that I don't presume to be able to answer these kinds of theological questions.

Watch:

Comments

[whoajack]

01:16 PM on 09/30/2008

This is the essence of Pro-Choice! I don't know one single person who is "FOR" abortion, only FOR the Right to make that choice if necessary. It is a very unfortunate decision have to make.

I too believe that life begins in the womb but, as for the exact moment of the soul's existence, anyone who tells you they know for certain, certainly lies. The idea of a soul is a belief. Science has not ever been able to confirm that it even exists, it is a mystery.

It is a choice, for the woman to make, it is a matter of privacy for the woman granted to her as a citizen of the US by the 14th Amendment. It is not our choice to make for her nor her bundle of cells. We cannot legislate on belief.

[condawg]

11:55 AM on 09/11/2008

Joe is just another wishy-washy liberal who can't make up his mind.

"I'm prepared to ...accept...."

Well folks, what did he state or what did he accept? I guess he won't actually promote himself into that "pay grade" either.

[XME]

11:34 PM on 09/08/2008

For me, this is the biggest difference between Democrats and Republicans:

Republicans try to force their beliefs on everyone else and want their beliefs to be the law

Democrats are less judgemental about what others believe and seem to get that it's OK if not everyone believes the same thing

[Tambulei]

01:10 AM on 09/09/2008

You mean like how the Republicans force the teaching of evolution in school?

[Quaoar]

08:30 AM on 09/09/2008

OMG! Next thing you know they'll force the teaching of Math, English and History. We can't have people actually thinking that two plus two equals four, can we?

[framante]

08:57 AM on 09/09/2008

What is your evidence that 9-11 conspiracy theorists are skewed to a particular political party? I expect that the inclination to such fringe thinking is randomly distributed in the population until you can show me evidence otherwise. I'm not aware that Democrats anywhere are rquiring watching films on anything. If you want to remain ignorant to the occurrence of global waming, feel free; ignorance is bliss. Whatever you think of hate speech laws, they are fairly universal, and not the products of one political party. How the teaching of well-established science like evolution, the theory of germs, electricity & magnetism, subatomic particle mechanics, astrophysics, etc. is "forcing" anything escapes me.

[Tambulei]

01:12 AM on 09/09/2008

You mean like how the Republicans try to legislate limits on the first amendment such as "hate speech"?

[framante]

11:16 PM on 09/08/2008

Could we be a little more precise about the meaning of "when life begins"? What does that mean exactly? It's pretty obvious that life began on this planet eons ago and that it goes on by replicating itself in a continuing, cyclic process. It began a long time ago, and it goes on. Since life has already begun, precisely what is the question that everyone is arguing about? Do they even know?

[futurefile]

12:39 PM on 09/28/2008

In what context, Charlie?

[jalyn]

10:26 PM on 09/08/2008

Is no one allowed a belief? He believes that life begins at the moment of conception. He also said in effect that that decision to believe this or not is between that individual and their God, and their doctor. He does not believe he can impose his belief on someone else. Some liiberals never seem to be happy with just that. I find sometimes the liberal party has another faction that is rooted in bitterness, where it's real motivation is not pro-choice, but to push for mandatory abortion.

[Quaoar]

09:08 PM on 09/08/2008

As long he doesn't try to make that view the law of the land and force people who don't believe the same to comply with his views there's no problem.

[MadFae]

08:18 PM on 09/08/2008

Biden has come the closest to echoing my own thoughts about the "when does life begin" question. This question has been pondered by people of faith for a thousand years. It is a religious matter. I personally have no idea when the soul enters the body. If it's at conception, it seems to me that there are millions of senseless deaths every day as women have very early miscarriages...so early they didn't even know they were pregnant. This is a FACT OF LIFE. Are we going to pick their lives apart to figure out if they did some small thing to CAUSE these miscarriages? Are they going to regulate our diets? Our exercise plans? Are they going to see to it that we make sure all those early losses have the best possible chance of making it, or suffer litigation or worse?

No anti-abortion woman wants me telling her she has to abort her baby. I don't want her telling me I can't abort mine if I come to the conlusion that it's necessary. Can't we just stay our of each other's ideology, and keep the government out of our uteruses? I would think all women could agree on that.

Thank you, Joe Biden, for your clear-headed and thoughtful response to this issue.

[schatsie]

09:16 PM on 09/08/2008

When I was in nursing school, I was fortunate to see how the doctor diagnosed a baby with hydrocephaly.....If I was pregnant and had a baby with no brain (he just shined a flashlight thru the baby's skull and there was NOTHING there.) I have no clue what I would have done, but I will defend to the death the woman's right to make that decision for herself.... and if that baby was the result of rape or incest...

It is so easy to simplify these issues and they are not simple and Barack appreciates that... Thank God we have another choice after 8 years of Bush...

[futurefile]

12:46 PM on 09/28/2008

If everyone minded their own business we'd be doing a lot better.

New rules.... when in politics...running or in office...

Questions about religion can't be asked. Nunya bidness.
Questions about your family or paramours...nunya bidness
Questions about whether you hunt or own a gun...nunya

[wolf58]

07:35 PM on 09/08/2008

And with that is wrong in this country why the hell are we talking about this again. I'm having a flashback to 2000 ,2004. Wait for it flag waving, school pray, ten commandments, gay marriage....please stop this insanity these are not the real issue that we must fix...really!!!!

[Retrofuturistic]

06:33 PM on 09/08/2008

Life begins when the mother CHOOSES to support it. It is a bigger "sin" to give birth to a child you know you cannot nurture than it is to have an abortion.

[MadFae]

08:19 PM on 09/08/2008

I agree with your comment.

[DragonMama]

08:39 PM on 09/08/2008

It really annoys me when I see "your mother was pro life" bumper stickers. No, not every woman who gives birth is "pro-life". My mother had two abortions and a miscarriage between my birth and my brother's birth. If it hadn't been for one of those abortions, I might not be here (the father was abusive, she aborted before he knew she was pregnant, if she hadn't her family would have probably pressured her to marry him - first guy she got with after my dad decided he wanted to marry a woman 10 years his junior instead of the woman who he pledged "til death do us part" the first time around - how McCain of him, I do wonder how his daughter Sydney feels and if she's as forgiving as Carol is). Sometimes to abort a pregnancy protects the life of already-born children in the family, in many ways, or improves the outlook for others to come later when the woman IS ready to deal with pregnancy and support a child.

[cinemaven]

06:15 PM on 09/08/2008

Biden's view is the same as many of us who call ourselves pro-choice.

I doubt I would ever choose to have an abortion. I didn't for a minute question that I had a life inside me while pregnant, especially after I saw the hearts beating during the ultrasounds but that doesn't change my opinion that a woman shouldn't be forced to carry a child unless she chooses to. I've donated to Planned Parenthood monthly for more than 10 years. (I'm opposed to late term abortions unless there's medical risk)

Many of us have lived with choice all our grown lives but when I spoke with a few older women in my family for a paper in college, they were all suprisingly pro-choice. I learned it was mainly because each of them knew someone who almost lost their lives due to an abortion performed in secret. They talked about the outlandish "home remedies" women used to take to end a pregnancy and how difficult and dangerous it was to try to arrange an abortion.


It's been my experience that the children of those who are rabidly anti-abortion and anti sex ed are the kids who are most likely to get pregnant. A woman I know marches in anti-abortion rallies and pretends her "choice" didn't happen which saddens me since she's the one whos hand I personally held while she had the procedure performed when we were in high school.

[cobobs]

08:02 PM on 09/08/2008

Thank you for saying this. As a matter of fact, nobody is proabortion and everyone is prolife, but some are prochoice and others are antichoice. Framing of this and other issues has been dominated by the republicans for such a long time that the MSM and everyone else accepts these characterizations reflexively. I have lived in countries where abortion is illegal, and although I would not do one myself, I think the choice should be legal. In abortion illegal countries, the rich sneak to get abortions safely from competent doctor who perform them clandestinely. They also travel to foreign lands where legal abortions are available. It is just another way of dumping on the poor. Besides, the best way to reduce abortions is to reduce poverty and ignorance.

[schatsie]

09:18 PM on 09/08/2008

I am in total agreement with you!

[jsarets]

05:41 PM on 09/08/2008

I think that the Fourteenth Amendment isn't cited nearly enough in defense of reproductive rights. It guarantees equal protection under the law only to "persons born or naturalized in the United States".

The pro-life movement isn't asking to redefine the meaning of "life", they're asking to redefine the meaning of "born". It doesn't matter when we believe life begins, it matters when birth happens, and there's not much disagreement on this issue.

If we confer the right to life upon embryos and fetuses, then by the Fourteenth we also confer the rights of citizenship. Would expectant households be able to claim their embryos as dependents for tax purposes? What other rights, besides that of not being terminated at its mother's request, are we granting to the unborn? Is this part of a larger "unborn bill of rights" or just an anti-abortion thing?

A much better talking point: "America was founded on the principle of religious freedom and our culture characterized by diversity. There is no one consensus on when life begins in a theological sense, and I strongly believe that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment implies that the federal government cannot grant any preferential treatment for or against any particular theology. The Fourteenth Amendment clearly defines citizenship to begin at birth or naturalization, and I will take an oath to protect, first and foremost, the Constitution of the United States of America and its citizens."

[sdskelton03]

05:35 PM on 09/08/2008

As a matter of science, life begins at conception as well.

[DragonMama]

08:51 PM on 09/08/2008

Then the zygote should move out and get an apartment and stop mootching off it's mother already.

Estimates are that up to 80% of conceptions wind up being miscarried, most of which we wouldn't know about except that home pregnancy tests have gotten so sensitive - many are written off as "false positives" (false positive pregnancy tests are extremely rare, false negatives fairly common especially early on - it took me more than 2 weeks after my missed period to test positive at home with my first pregnancy, which was very much a planned pregnancy so I was testing a LOT). What about all those lives?

Science also calls any "life" that is incapable of sustaining itself outside of another body "parasitic". This is why most thinking people I know distinguish between "life" and "life capable of self-sustaining behaviors - i.e. breathing, eating, eliminating wastes". Abortion is currently legal between those two points in time.

[LarBear]

05:28 PM on 09/08/2008

How can there be Freedom of Religion, without an underlying Freedom from Religion? First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof".........

Senator Biden has obviously pondered and framed this well... Religious Belief is not to be Legislatively enabled...

Enable: 1 a: to provide with the means or opportunity (training that enables people to earn a living) b: to make possible, practical, or easy (a deal that would enable passage of a new law) c: to cause to operate (software that enables the keyboard) 2: to give legal power, capacity, or sanction to (a law enabling admission of a state)

The question of when Life begins is a Religious belief and question... Even Scientist can not answer as to did Life "Begin", or did Life ever Not exist??? Or does Life ever cease to exist???

Perhaps a better question... Under G W Bush's Combined Directive NSPD /51 HSPD 20, the President can declare Martial Law, and suspend the Constitution... So, if, the day after McCain/Palin are sworn in, something happens to McCain, will Palin, for the "good of the Nation" declare Martial law and her Assembly of God Religion, the Official Religion and ban all others? Freedom being to attend, or Not attend? Going to Far???

ANY breaching of the Constitution is going to far... The First Amendment is very important... Free Speech is best enabled with respect...

[hoopesaz]

05:39 PM on 09/08/2008

Surely there are those who are not religious, yet who hold that same belief. Whether life starts at conception or 6 months or delivery...it certainly isn't a question that can be decided by science alone. It is the very definition of "life" that is being debated. A person's moral belief, whether shaped by religion or not, has to weigh in on the discussion.

[Daniboy]

05:02 PM on 09/08/2008

I know a man serving time for manslaughter-drunk driver killed seven month old fetus. Must have been right wing jury!!

[meltingpot101]

10:46 PM on 09/08/2008

If the fetus was seven months old then the mother intended to carry that baby full term. That seven month old fetus had a heart beat, maybe sucked his thumb and she probably already recognized her mothers voice.

Most drunk drivers don't intend to hurt anyone, but they are aware of the possibility. That mother intended to have her baby. She was robbed. Your friends foolish decision has negatively impacted at least two lives, and ended one. He should be in jail.

For the record I am anything but a member of the right wing.

[barackobama4prez]

04:58 PM on 09/08/2008

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