The Republican Party platform includes support for the "Human Life Amendment," also known as HR 212. It gives a fertilized egg inside the womb the same rights as a person outside the womb. It's designed to ban all abortions.
Now, we all know how deeply the issue of abortion hits people -- in both parties. It's hard. It's sensitive and personal, and there are no easy answers. But even if we are divided over the question of when life begins, one thing we should agree on is this: Vulnerable children outside the womb deserve at least as much focus and care as those not yet born. Shouldn't those concerned about the lives of the unborn be equally concerned about the lives of the recently born?
I'm honestly perplexed about the distinction represented by the cervical wall. On one side, people should be prosecuted if they do anything to harm the fetus, but once on the outside, sorry kid, whatever happens happens. You're on your own.
A 71-year-old viewer wrote to me this weekend and got me thinking about the terms we use in the debate: "pro-life" vs. "pro-choice." Democrats have allowed the Republicans to frame the issue and have ceded the territory of "life."
Republicans are definitely pro-birth (they'll do everything they can to make sure that that baby comes out, regardless of how it got in), but are they pro-life?
Can you be pro-life and vote to cut funding that supports the life of a child? Paul Ryan's cut-at-all-costs budget and philosophy, which 100 percent of the pro-life Republicans voted for, would gut the funding that supports at-risk babies and children: food stamps, temporary assistance to needy families, day care, Head Start, early childhood education, children's health care.
At the state level GOP governors are cutting the child protection workers who handle child abuse and neglect cases -- you know, those awful public employees who must have caused the financial crisis. Programs that would benefit at-risk children outside the womb are all on the chopping block.
For example, Republicans have introduced HR 3803, a bill called the "Pain-capable Unborn Child Protection Act." And the bill to protect born children from pain is...?
Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, had this to say on Bill Moyers' show in November of 2004:
I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.
So true, Sister Joan. I say Democrats should not be afraid to talk about the morality of life, of caring for children who are born. It seems the Republican obsession with being pro-life lasts about nine months. After that, it's each baby for herself. So Democrats, let's be clear and strong: Being pro-birth is not automatically the same thing as being pro-life.
Originally aired on The War Room with Jennifer Granholm. The War Room airs weeknights at 9 p.m. EST on Current TV. Follow Jennifer Granholm on Facebook and Twitter, and The War Room on Facebook and Twitter.
Follow Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm on Twitter: www.twitter.com/JenGranholm
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BTW - < means less than.
Lastly, other than risk of life (for the mother or perhaps discovered heath issues w/baby), if your answer is something like < 6 months, would you consider yourself a pro-lifer under that exception? Or a simply pro-choice under 6 months?
At the same time they are against any taxes with which to care for unwanted children, or children who are very much loved and wanted, but whose families live under the grinding mill stone of poverty.
Sorry republicans........No way to have it both ways, unless you are willing to bear the cost.
Maybe you should narrow your criteria to having only the number of children a person desires and plans for makes one responsible?
Breeding unfettered like an animal is not necessarily responsible. In fact it can be argued it is quite the opposite.
Exciting.
True Gov. Granholm, I further put it that Pro-Choice has lost the moral cause that resulted in legalized abortions. They save the lives of women desperate not to have that child.
I also recongize I need to change my wording, no longer Pro-Life, but Pro-Birth it will hence forth ever be. Thank you.
Great idea, "Sasha Kelly!" Is there a possiblity that you'll be running for office in the near future? One could only hope. Apparently, you have all the answers.
http://murderdeathandabuseinfostercare.blogspot.com/
One? Two? Three?
It could twin, triple, octuple ... I don't think you get to tell me it's a person when you don't even know how many people its supposed to be yet.
What you have when an egg and sperm join is a blueprint and a worker cell. The worker cell is magic, a fetal stem cell, it can make any kind of human tissue but is not, itself, a human cell. Seriously. Ask your doctor. You don't have any cells like that in your body. If you did you could regrow lost limbs.
The worker makes a bunch more workers then the workers make some number of children off the blueprint.
aahhh, how the pro choicers LOVE the inanimate words for LIFE. zygotes, embryos, fetus, and now...the latest! "blueprint" and "worker cell."
i don't even need to ask anymore. i *know* how the pro choicers sleep at night.
What about the personhood of those languishing on transplant wait-lists who need another person's body to survive? Why don't we mandate people to donate their body parts involuntarily?
Because no person's 'right-to-life' entitles them access to another person's body to sustain themselves. You are trying to bestow rights on a fertilized egg that no already born person even has.