Mitt Romney Calls Roe v. Wade "One of the Darkest Moments in Supreme Court History"
Can you believe this is the same man who got an endorsement from NARAL in 2002, because he said the pro-choice organization needed "a friend like him" in office? Boy, was that a big flip flop from today:
Romney made the following statement on the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade:
“Today marks the 39th anniversary of one of the darkest moments in Supreme Court history, when the court in Roe v. Wade claimed authority over the fundamental question regarding the rights of the unborn. The result is millions of lives since that day have been tragically silenced. Since that day, the pro-life movement has been working tirelessly in an effort to change hearts and minds and protect the weakest and most vulnerable among us. Today, we recommit ourselves to reversing that decision, for in the quiet of conscience, people of both political parties know that more than a million abortions a year cannot be squared with the good heart of America.”
What a load of crap, pardon my French. The "pro-life" movement has done nothing to protect the weakest and most vulnerable, because they do nothing to educate mothers, they do nothing to raise the circumstances of these babies they demand must be born, they offer nothing to help the family. They hold the fetus in higher regard than the mother and ignore the child once it's born.
That is the very opposite of being pro-life. I wonder if any of these Republicans have learned the lessons of what happened in Romania after Nicholas Ceausescu outlawed abortion and all forms of contraception and sex education. Hint: it didn't turn out too well for him.
.. and explain to him what it's used for ..
.. and its tragic consequences ..
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
Traitor.
Maybe we should start tarring anti-choice politicians as pro-crime. I don't think they'd like that.
what about their tireless work to change hearts and minds?
“Why would anyone with a functioning brain believe this guy?”
Some guy with an eating disorder
that it is just a matter of time before they request that we that we stop normal trade relations with China, who has a habit of waiting until after the child is born before aborting it, much like Republicans wait decades to abort humans with the death penalty.
In a nation with 3 times our population, I have to wonder how the numbers compare.
"We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it's easy, but when it is hard."
BARACK OBAMA, Nobel Lecture, Dec. 10, 2009
I have made many of the anti-choice people admit what this is all about... punishing sex.
That is the main driving force behind these people; they want to see people having consequences for unapproved sex.
How can their desire to promote abstinence only be interpreted as anything else?
"We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it's easy, but when it is hard."
BARACK OBAMA, Nobel Lecture, Dec. 10, 2009
Get it on, bang the gong, get it on
"Ironic, isn't it Smithers? This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That's democracy for you." --Mr. Burns
Blame God for making our urge to mate so strong.
I feel sorry for these people, so uncomfortable in the world the Lord provided.
What is it like to loath ones self so badly?
Sad.
That video is disturbing. Regardless of what the fellow says, his theory does implicitly endorse abortion as an anti-crime tool. That's eugenics, and it's creepy.
Another question - the crime rate has certainly fallen since Roe v. Wade, but the prison population has skyrocketed in the US due to 3-strikes laws, the failed War on Drugs and tougher sentencing. Minorities tend to be arrested and prosecuted more frequently for the same crimes than whites. They are jailed more frequently and longer for the same crimes. If the argument in the video holds true, that crime has fallen because of abortion, then why are the prisons packed to overflowing, with minorities over-represented in the convict population? It would appear that racial discrimination in the justice system is worse than even the current statistics indicate.
It's not eugenics unless it's specifically targeting race. It's not. It's basically saying "If you don't want the kid, you're probably not going to make the effort to raise it right, and it's probably going to become a burden on society." Unless you think ONLY black people commit crime.
I don't think only black people commit crimes - but there's obviously a pre-existing racial bias in the justice system.
And there's plenty of knee-jerk racial prejudice out there, among conservatives in particular, of the subtle dog-whistle variety - and the overt Willie Horton kind, too. Let's not forget William Bennett's comment a few years back that if you aborted all the black babies, the crime rate would fall.
For better or worse, the data presented in this video will feed the superficial perceptions and rationalizations of racists, whether the researcher intended this or not.
The most important fact about crime, that it has been in decline for a generation, is generally ignored by the media and politicians. Abortion can only be part of the picture, even if it is a valid reason for some of the decline. Most of the falling crime rate is attributable to an aging population - fewer young men per capita, ergo fewer rapes, murders, assaults and robberies.
Yet the prison population has spiked exponentially - why? That's the most important question to be asked in following up this research.
Unwanted babies know no race or class boundary. And the fact is that if someone is forced to have a child they don't want, they aren't going to take care of it and make sure that the child is a productive member of society. This has nothing to do with the institutionalized racism of the justice system. A woman no matter her race or class, if she finds herself with an unwanted pregnancy, is better off aborting that child. Society is better off if she aborts that child. As the video said, having an abortion when you're 19 is not going to change your likelihood of having another child later on in life when you're ready to care for it. There is literally no room for eugenics in any of that.
The key word is Unwanted.
Bill Bennet was actually referring to this very book when he made that remark. He's making the same mistake. He's assuming that only poor people or only black people can find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy. And I've lived in big cities and small towns and I can promise you, the problem is that the child is Unwanted, not that the child is Unwanted and from a certain background.
Much as I hate it, these guys have a point, MP.
First, I agree completely with your analysis.
OTOH, 'the tide goes in, the tide goes out. You can't explain that!' As long as that level of idiocy is supported and broadcast as truthiness, there is a big chance that simply pointing out facts and explaining the simple logic so evident to you (and me) will be lost in the gale of nonsense.
Alas
which is all the more reason we should keep pointing this out. Don't let bullshit go unchallenged.
Thanks for that.
Let's keep in mind what we are up against tho. We have to be super prepared because stuff will come flying out of left field and treated as divine wisdom; and sensible talk, like yours, will be treated as if it was nonsense. I hate watching OReilly talking away, acting as though he is the most reasonable guy in the world - spouting bullshit and refusing to let anyone with a different view have a voice (reminds me of dad!)
Remember the saying from the 70s-80s that women needed to be twice as good to be considered for a job at half the wage - or something like that.
uh, sure?
I am super-prepared. Having facts on your side and being unsentimental about the realities of pregnancy and motherhood is a pretty good way to take this on. Believe me, I've actually managed to do what people thought to be impossible: I've changed people's minds about abortion.
Most of it really is just ignorance. It really is that people haven't thought about the ramifications of what pregnancy and parenthood actually MEAN. They also haven't really thought about what their platitudes actually mean. When you start challenging them to take their half-assed rehearsed lines to make people think they're a moral person out on the open road, you can usually get them to concede stuff like:
Saying you're against abortion in the case of rape or incest is intellectually lazy and dishonest,
Railing against women who "use abortion as a form of birth control" (as opposed to what? A form of dental hygiene? Anyway), is really bass-ackwards--we shouldn't have such irresponsible people in charge of babies and should be praising women who stop that trainwreck before it leaves the station,
Babies can not be both God's most precious miracle and a punishment device for dirty sluts. Pick one.
Saying "I would *never* have one personally" is empty, because really the only person who should be allowed to say that is a mother of living children who died in order to deliver a baby that followed her to the grave shortly thereafter, and those women notoriously cannot speak, being dead and all. There are always going to be "special circumstances" that make your abortion special. Now just recognize that everyone's circumstance is special.
It's good to know yoiu are out there, and I appreciate the reminder that I don't have to despair just because the clowns are in charge.
52 percent of the women who get abortions are white.
not because more violent crime was committed but because we started criminalizing more.
You've got people in prison on a minor possession charge, because we're must be tough in the "war on drugs".
You've got less and less mental health services where some of these inmates would likely be.
You've got more and more privatization of prisons, which puts a profit motive behind incarceration and being tough.
You've got a three strikes law in most states.
Violent crime statistics have dropped. But the fact that prison numbers haven't commensurately dropped says more about how we look at law enforcement than anything else.
That must be the reason why they haven't charged any of the Bankster's and Wall Street crowd that Made-off (as in Bernie style) with trillions of OUR dollars.
They're is no room at the
Innprison.If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
Like most of the Freakenomics theories its facile and not really well supported and it lends itself to a right wing interpretation. You migh want to check out Steven Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature. Although there is a lot in Pinker's book that I also disagree with he does a good job of showing why the Freakenomics theory doesn't hold up.
They are cutting off food stamps for families with American born children because their parents are "Illegal" here in Kansas. Way to go! And these are families that believe in the sanctity of life and are trying to provide for the betterment of their children. Not sure how that squares with oh so smug and sanctimonious pro-life governor. What would Jesus do, indeed! Oh yes, starve children so their parents will go back where they came from...nice.
It's in the book of Cheney: Chapter 1, paragraph 3.
And the Lord shall take away all of those "icky" people we don't like.
If I were a psychopath, I would join the republican party, and get in on the gravy train taking the Teabircher morons to the cleaners.
Bush v. Gore was the darkest part of Supreme Court history that I can remember.
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Or maybe Citizens United. I think that's even darker.
Wasn't CU made more likely by B v. G? How many justices did Bush appoint?
trying to out-newt newt.
me-oww!
nothing to support anyone OUT OF THE WOMB...EXCEPT THE WHITE GUYS WHO WANT TO INVADE THE WOMBS OF WOMEN...AND control them!
Romany is a lying disafffected effete loser! .
Santorum: Rape Victims Should 'Make The Best Out Of A Bad Situation'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfbKR6qBa48
When will government of the people, by the politicians, for the corporations perish from this Earth?
Not soon enough!
Eugenics is never a good thing and it is one of those things like pedophilia and election fraud that people don't like to talk about. Up until the 1970's they were sterilizing black women in North Carolina against their will.
If we were smart birth control would be free and voluntary for anyone who wants it. But we aren't smart as a society.
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
Agreed. But legal abortion that women choose freely is the opposite of eugenics. Especially when the overwhelming majority of those women go on to have wanted babies later in life. Let's move on.
The understatement of the century.
"Someday somebody related to some of these sufferers, these victims, these collaterally damaged souls, may try to kill you. And I have to tell you, I think you’ll have it coming." - Christopher Cooper
It wouldn't surprise me if he called Mormonism a cult to pick up votes at this point.
He really is craven. You know if he does pick up the nom, he will swing a hard reverse to try and recapture the voters he's alienating right now.
$50 says if he is the nom, he tries to reclaim HCR while denouncing it as Obamacare.
Dude, ALL religions are cults.
Religion will be the downfall of Humanity.
"Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people." ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
They hold the fetus in higher regard than the mother and ignore the child once it's born.
For all that they yammer about fetuses being "babies", I don't think they believe that at all. Or more accurately, I think they believe that fetuses are some superior, angelic form of "baby" that disappears completely once the actual birth takes place. Then it's just the ordinary kind that's not worth thinking about anymore.
Their beliefs on this topic are bizarre in the extreme, and not in the slightest bit Christian (at least in the sense of having anything to do with anything Jesus ever said). They're more along the line of some weird pseudo-magickal fetish worship, somewhere in the realm of voudoun poppets or household gods, that must be protected at all costs or the worshipper's universe will collapse. Actual babies - those that are extant and visible in our presence - mean less than nothing to them, because there's no mystery to a plain ol' baby. It screams, it shits, it has to be taken care of day and night, and worst of all, it's just a human being like everyone else. These people have no interest in helping human beings (in direct contradiction to their savior's teachings).
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
They are afraid that someone, somewhere will abort the next coming of Jaysuus. Once the baby pops out and it's not Jaysuus, they walk away.
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
The crime rate going down is the result of a constitutional right. Our constitutional rights provide life, liberty and happiness. The fact that crime went down, when people exercised their constitutional rights is self evident.
Contrast that with the constitutional restriction of drinking alcohol. The evidence suggests that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was not served. Crime increased and society was worse off.
...and stupid.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc.
This is how things are taught at Glenn Beck University.
When you ask anti-choice people what the punishment should be for an illegal abortion they stare and drool like a moron staring at a Ferris wheel. Some of the really cruel bastards will call for locking up the mother and/or the doctor. But, ultimately they have no logical answer.
Until they can address the crime and punishment issue in a logical and intelligent manner then they should STFU.
Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
have to deny that there is an implicit right to privacy in the Consitution. Once that implicit right is gone the states automatically gains infinite power over everyone's private life. This includes the right to sterilize anyone the state wants, the right to observe people in the privacy of their bedroom to make sure they are obeying the rules on what sexual acts are legal. As we can see with the Citizen United case, the Supreme Court will not consider the ramifications of their decision. And as we can see with some states considering laws that would force a criminal investigation of miscarriages that once the right to privacy is gone all women will be subjected to yearly inspections to ensure that all pregnancy were carried to full term. Every instrusive and draconian thing their sick minds can think off will be implemented as law.
This is why Big Religion (tm) is behind anti-choice. Big Religion (tm) does not want people to have sex for pleasure. Big Religion (tm) only wants people to have sex for procreation, and that's it. The only pleasure you're supposed to have is in being a religious robot, in subservience to the heirarchy of the church, in being hypnotized by The Word (tm) of god, in obedience, in submission to authority. You are nothing but brainwashed chattel to Big Religion (tm) - but you must be controlled and obedient to have any value. Hence guilt and fear as means of "gentle" persuasion, all in the guise of "truth".
Big Religion (tm) is behind all anti-choice movements. First they want abortion outlawed, no matter the circumstances, then they'll want all forms of contraception outlawed, then they'll want sex education eliminated and abstinence-only taught, then they'll want all other sex-positions except "missionary' outlawed, then they'll want oral sex outlawed, and one of their favorites to be outlawed: pornography. This is their logical goal.
Irony is, most of thepeople who campaign and proselytize for sexual repression are often found to be quite active in the very things they would outlaw... (example: the Republican Party).
Religions and gods truly are the worst things ever invented by men.
Religion will be the downfall of Humanity.
It's remarkable that Romney has been able to express himself on any social issues, as his lips have been continually pressed against the anal sphincter of the Religious Right for the past two years.
Let us pause now for a moment of SCIENCE
Kelo v City of New London
Citizens United v FEC
Two horrible Supreme Court decisions in my lifetime that make Roe v Wade pale in comparison.
'Talk to the hand'
I beleive that the Christian Church is the ultimate target of the "Right to Life" movement. I suspect that as the Right Wing wins the Abortion argument they will drive people away from church and further away from the marvelous redeeming secrets hidden in the teachings of Jesus of Nazereth. We are seeing this to some extent already. As the Christian Church has gained political power (1990 on) the number of atheists as at least doubled maybe quadrupled and many mainstream evangelical denominations see most of the off-spring of their members leave the church in adulthood.
At it's core the Right to Life Movement worships Human Life. Violating several of the Ten Commandments (have no other Gods before me, don't take lords name in vain, no graven images) and further invalidates the amazing sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth: he could have avoided the cross. By throwing away his sacred life his spit in the face of God. How can such a horrible sinner offer anything of value?
Of course, abortion may have been outlawed before Roe but it happened anyway!
Howard Zinn quotes a number of one million abortions per year with 990 thousand illegal sending a third of the women who got them to the Emergency Room (and killing how many?). The Guttenmacher Institute estimates the number at between 600 and 800 thousand. This undercuts the Freakonomic argument.
When Religious Right through outlawing Abortion makes the women in your life (wife, girlfriend, sister, mom, grandma, coworker, whomever) into a criminal and sends them into a shady clinic for an extra risky abortion. When you get to watch as in agony they rush to an ER maybe even die, how eager will you be to associate in any way with the thugs (opps I meant good upstanding Christians) who did this to someone you love? Not very, I submit.
FYI: If Zinn and Guttenmacher are right the Freckonomic claims appear overstated. The freakonomics presentation implicitly assumes that 1.3 miilion abortions suddenly started happening after the Roe Decision. The above estimates suggest that at least half of them were already happening. However, since 40-45% of the women who have an abortion have recently (within 2-5 years) given birth to a child. There may be other children who were raised in loving homes who wouldn't have been without a timely abortion.
With the added stress of a second unplanned/unwanted childher, you can easily see how one unplanned birth yields two neglected children. So, the Freakonomics argument gets bolstered in part by the siblings who would have been neglected too.
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