Fight! Fight! Fight!
My friend Lindsay wrote:
Sometime pre-November, we should have an election debate. I don't consider myself democrat or republican, but I think Obama is the scariest thing that could happen to America...and my reasons for that include both international and domestic concerns. Anyway I won't flood your blog with my opinions, but it'd be fun to talk about some time :)
Please tell.
I love smart people that disagree with me.
Also if anyone can tell me how to get rid of my robo-comments.
Sometime pre-November, we should have an election debate. I don't consider myself democrat or republican, but I think Obama is the scariest thing that could happen to America...and my reasons for that include both international and domestic concerns. Anyway I won't flood your blog with my opinions, but it'd be fun to talk about some time :)
Please tell.
I love smart people that disagree with me.
Also if anyone can tell me how to get rid of my robo-comments.
5 Comments:
Isn't my wife cool (but Lindsey has an 'e' in it for future reference) ... we should definitely get together sometime post this semester, but pre-birth to talk babies, politics, and other stuff.
I have to admit Barrack gives a good speech, but I'm not sold on whether he's a political opportunist or really believes his speeches. But, we can save that for our discussion.
To keep SPAMers off your blog go to your settings on your profile, click the comments tab and set "yes" for the line Show word verification for comments?
Hope that everything is going well.
Peace out, homey.
For starters, here is a quote from Obama from a town hall meeting in PA recently:
"When it comes specifically to HIV/AIDS, the most important prevention is education, which should include -- which should include abstinence education and teaching the children -- teaching children, you know, that sex is not something casual. But it should also include -- it should also include other, you know, information about contraception because, look, I've got two daughters. 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals. But if they make a mistake, I don't want them punished with a baby. I don't want them punished with an STD at the age of 16. You know, so it doesn't make sense to not give them information."
PUNISHED WITH A BABY?!?!?!? I mean, please excuse my excessive punctuation here, but seriously. For a man so well versed in rhetoric, words like that make me cringe. But I'm not suprised, given Obama's history on life issues--look up the history of the Born Alive Infants Protection Act. (to whet your appetite, Obama, unlike Hillary Clinton and Ted Kennedy (to name a few liberals :) ) thinks it's okay for babies who survive botched late-term abortions to be left in hospital rooms to die. Thank God he wasn't president when this bill was passed nationally, so he couldn't veto it.
(but I told myself I wouldn't ramble on here, so i will stop)
Lindsay:
That ain't exactly so. It's more nuanced than that--the articles you're reading claim that the state and federal bills were identical. If you read the actual legislation the federal bill included modifications for the life of the mother; the state bill did not, and there were other possibly dangerous implications like making a doctor criminally liable for the death of baby or mother if things went wrong. My (non-expert) read of the Illinois bill was that it was a political football to paint liberals as evil baby-killers, and fundamentally bad law.
I'll expand on this in a further post.
1. I'm a law student, I don't base my arguments on right-wing propaganda articles :)
2. I disagree. Here is a link to the Senate transcript that discussed the Illinois bill. http://www.ilga.gov/senate/transcripts/strans92/ST033001.pdf
Obama's comments start on page 85. I guess Obama disagrees, but to me it seemed pretty clear that the text specifies viable, born babies who are outside the mother's body when the decision has to be made. And since the statute calls for another physician to be present, some of the pressure is taken off the abortionist. This could just be a difference of opinion on how to read the statute, and Obama did go to a better law school than I did so who knows. But I found his distinction between viability and pre-viability irrelevant in this context. The FACT of the matter is that today in America abortion is legal on would-be viable unborn babies, so at least on THAT point, Obama is wrong.
3. The abortion debate is a tough one, but it's a really important one. It's divisive. But Obama claims to be able to bring people together. I just don't see it happening here.
4. You didn't respond to the first paragraph of my comment :)
Lindsey:
Regarding your first couple of paragraphs--yeah it's pretty tough to find much to like about "I don't want my daughter to be punished with a baby." I'm about to have one and the sentiment makes me want to throw a chair.
Rather than saying "the article YOU'RE reading" I should have said, "the articles that come up first when you Google the Born Alive Infant Protection Act."
Regarding Obama's comments in the transcript, it's possible my judgment is off. Is Obama's argument about viability vs. previability legimitate? I'm ignorant on that I guess. My initial read of the law was the same as Obama's, essentially that the law did more than protect "infants born alive" but also redefine a person and thus unconstitutionally provide a de-facto overturn of Roe.
I'm not saying this is a bad thing, I'm just saying that if the constitutional argument he makes is legitimate, then support of the Illinois version of the law is not incongruous with a standard pro-life position.
In this analysis, I suppose the ratio decindendi (did I spell that right) would merely be the accuracy of Obama's constitutional argument.
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