Abortion and the "Right to Privacy"

On Wednesday night, I attended an event held by Illinois Young Republicans for McCain. They all gathered together in a bar just southeast of DePaul University. I rarely go to bars, unless there's a particularly good band I want to hear (and I haven't done that in quite a few years). On the rare occasions when I do go to a bar, I order non-alcoholic drinks (which are almost invariably overpriced at such places). On Wednesday night, I had a glass of cola, which cost $2. The fellow Republicans I invited to join me at my table were also kind enough to share a few small pieces of their pizza with me.

Like most of the folks there that night, I was really there to watch the third presidential debate, not to eat or drink. There were a lot of big screen TV sets positioned around the bar, and there was a good sound system, so there wasn't a bad seat in the house.

Regarding the debate, I was particularly interested in whether or not the candidates and the moderator would address issues pertaining to the right to life. John McCain didn't disappoint me, inasmuch as he addressed those issues directly, although he wasn't as eloquent when discussing those issues as I might have preferred.

I later visited a web page and obtained the entire transcript for the debate in order to review the transcript for myself. I suspected that I was going to want to quote from it in one or more of my blog posts.

Here's the part of the transcript which I want to discuss in this blog post. It's a quote from Barack Obama:

I am somebody who believes that Roe versus Wade was rightly decided. I think that abortion is a very difficult issue and it is a moral issue and one that I think good people on both sides can disagree on.

But what ultimately I believe is that women in consultation with their families, their doctors, their religious advisers, are in the best position to make this decision. And I think that the Constitution has a right to privacy in it that shouldn't be subject to state referendum, any more than our First Amendment rights are subject to state referendum, any more than many of the other rights that we have should be subject to popular vote.

There are a number of aspects of that brief quote which could and should be addressed. Let's start with the idea that abortion is "a moral issue" on which "good people on both sides" can disagree.

Describing abortion as a moral issue is certainly accurate, on one level, but it can also be misleading, because such a description lends itself to claims by liberals such as Obama that pro-life people are trying to "force their morality" onto others who don't share their beliefs. The trouble with that simplistic characterization is that there are times when morality and public policies do, and should, intersect. In fact, many of the policies which liberal politicians and their allies seek to impose on the general populace stem directly from those folks' views pertaining to morality. They are not at all averse to imposing their moral views on others when it suits their purposes to do so, so it's hypocritical for them to criticize religious conservatives for doing the same thing.

The slavery issue which dominated the 19th century was a profoundly moral issue. But it was not a sectarian issue, or even an exclusively Christian issue. It was no accident that the most ardent opponents of slavery were zealous religious believers, but one didn't need to be a believer in God or Christ in order to perceive that slavery contradicted the fundamental premises on which the nation had been founded. One merely needed to be a person who believed that our nation ought to enact and enforce policies and laws which were consistent with those premises.

Unlike Barack Obama, I believe that the abortion issue falls into that same category. Again, I believe that it's no accident that strong believers in Christ are disproportionately likely to favor the pro-life point of view. But I don't think that one needs to be a Christian in order to see that abortion constitutes the taking of a human life, or to see that we have a moral and ethical obligation to protect all human beings from those who would seek to deprive them of life for reasons unrelated to self-protection or the need to uphold the principles of reciprocity and justice. In a previous blog post, I talked about how Bernard Nathanson, a former abortionist who once identified himself as an atheistic Jew, had been persuaded to reverse his position on that subject after being confronted with the scientific evidence in favor of the view that unborn children were human beings, not the "blobs of tissue" they'd been called by people in favor of legal abortion.

Do "good" people disagree on the abortion issue, as Barack Obama believes? That depends on how one defines the term "good," now doesn't it! I personally think it is disingenuous to describe anyone as "good" when he or she defends a practice which has already taken the lives of tens of millions of innocent human beings.

(Of course, the Bible also makes it clear that no one is "good" or "righteous," in the sense that God defines those terms, apart from the saving grace and mercy of Jesus Christ. But that's another topic. I understand that it would be political suicide for a politician to come right out and state that Christians or Old Testament saints who preceded Christ are the only people who could be legitimately described as good, even though that is what the scriptures teach and what millions of Christians believe.)

In any event, let's move on to the argument Obama makes in the second paragraph quoted above. He argues, essentially, that the "right to privacy" cited by the Supreme Court is comparable to the rights enumerated in the First Amendment. This, of course, is nonsense.

The "right to privacy" is found nowhere in the Constitution or any of its many amendments. When Roe v. Wade was written, the assertion that such a right existed was derived from a fairly recent previous case known as Griswold v. The State of Connecticut. Griswold was the first time in the history of American jurisprudence that such a right had been claimed to exist. In order to make that claim, they had to use the obscure term "penumbra" in order to describe that alleged right. A lot of people couldn't define that term if their lives depended on it. What does it mean? Here's how the American Heritage dictionary defines the term "penumbra" in relation to jurisprudence:

An area in which something exists to a lesser or uncertain degree: "The First Amendment has a penumbra where privacy is protected from governmental intrusion" (Joseph A. Califano, Jr.)

Even if there is a Constitutional right to privacy at all (and the fact that a "penumbra" is defined with the phrase "uncertain degree" makes it clear that that's a questionable contention), it should be clear that it exists to a "lesser" degree than the rights which are explicitly described and listed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In other words, Barack Obama's claim that our First Amendment rights are comparable to the "right to privacy" is proof of his ignorance of the meaning of the term which was originally used by the Supreme Court to support the argument that a constitutional right to privacy existed. In Griswold, the court freely admitted that a general "right to privacy" could not be found in the Bill of Rights or the Constitution, but it was argued that the "right to privacy" was based on "emanations" from those documents.

When the Supreme Court decided that a "right to privacy" existed during the course of the Roe v Wade trial, it based that conclusion on a different argument; namely, that the "right to privacy" was located in the "due process" clause of the Constitution.

In my opinion, the tortured logic which was used in order to arrive at such a conclusion did not in any way support the contention that the right to due process ought to have any bearing on whether or not a woman could kill her unborn child.

The idea that taking an unborn child's life deprives the unborn child of due process seems to have eluded the minds of the justices who voted in favor of legal abortion on that fateful day in 1973. In the years subsequent to Roe v Wade, it has been admitted by a number of people who believe that abortion should remain legal that the argumentation used by Harry Blackmun when he wrote the majority opinion in Roe was shoddy at best. But Barack Obama doesn't think so. He thinks that Roe v Wade was "rightly decided". His view of the Constitution is that it's a "living" document, which basically means that he thinks that activist judges should be able to impose their own personal agendas on the Constitution, and that they should be free to interpret the Constitution in whatever way is most expedient in terms of achieving the social results they deem desirable.

One of the ironies about the effect of Griswold and Roe is that both decisions were based primarily on a belief in a right to privacy. Yet, the social consequence of those decisions has been that sex has never been less private than it is today. Who would have imagined, prior to those fateful decisions, that people living in 2008 would be able to go to a public library, open their e-mail or visit a publicly accessible website, and view explicit videos of total strangers having sex with one another (or even, in some particularly revolting cases, with animals), in full view of anyone else who happens to be walking by at the time?

In Griswold, the reason cited for the need for a right to privacy was that they didn't want to allow the police to search "the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms". That's rather ironic, since the term "sacred" has strong religious connotations --- yet, the people which have cited Griswold in defense of the "right to privacy" are the people most likely to argue that nothing is truly sacred (or to argue, at the bare minimum, that people's religious convictions have no place in the public square), and to act as if that's the case.

Even if one believes that there is a constitutional right to privacy, it still doesn't follow that the right to privacy is a supreme right to which all other rights --- including the fundamental right to be protected from murder --- ought to be subordinate.

If a man wants to force his child to commit incest in the privacy of that family's home, the fact that the deed took place behind closed doors will not, and should not, protect that man from prosecution for having committed a heinous crime. One could cite numerous other examples to demonstrate that there legitimate legal limits to the alleged right to privacy, just as there are legitimate legal limits to the Constitutional right to free speech (as indicated by our laws which forbid libel).

The primary issue, then, is not whether or not there's a constitutional "right to privacy"; rather, the issue is whether or not the existence of such a right can legitimately be used to justify a public policy of looking the other way while millions of innocent human beings are killed in the name of deceptive euphemisms such as "choice" and "reproductive freedom".

Regardless of whether or not the Supreme Court was correct in arguing that there was a constitutional right to privacy, I believe that such a right, if it exists, ought to be subordinate to the unborn child's right to life, since the right to life is the most fundamental right of all, without which all other human rights lose all meaning.

From what I've seen, John McCain agrees, as does his running mate, Sarah Palin. That's why they will be getting my vote.

Ten Very Good Reasons To Vote for John McCain

I just found a blog post which I thought was particularly well written. Here's a link.

A Poem For Election Day

Something's stinkin' in the Land of Lincoln.
If you vote for B.O., you're really not thinkin'.
If you have a brain, you'll vote for McCain.
A vote for Obama is surely insane.

Unless of course, you approve of infanticide,
or if you think that the right to life should be denied.
If killing little babies is part of your plan,
then vote for Obama. He's your man.

---------------------
Great poetry? No. But true nevertheless.

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NOTE: To download additional Christ-centered poems I've written (stored online in the form of PDF files which can be downloaded from a public SkyDrive folder), visit this link, then select the poem in which you have an interest, and then click the Download button.

Morons In The News

Yesterday's issue of the Chicago Sun-Times seemed as if most of it was written by propagandists for the Obama campaign.

For instance, there was the fascinating blurb which quoted "P Diddy", whose opposition to Sarah Palin seemed to be based solely on the fact that she was from Alaska. (He repeated the word "Alaska" four times, just to make sure that everyone understood him clearly.) Diddy argued that people from Alaska were unqualified to serve as Vice President because of the scarcity of black folks in that state. Diddy also took issue with Alaska because "there aren't even any crackheads in Alaska". Personally, I would have thought that that would be a strong selling point in favor of Alaska. But Diddy apparently thinks we'd be better off with a VP hailing from some place like Chicago's Englewood neighborhood, known for its problems with drugs, gangs, drive-by shootings and kids who feel fortunate to make it past their tenth birthdays.

P Diddy, by the way, used to be known as Puff Daddy. The next time he decides to change his nickname once again, I'd suggest that he seriously consider going with Piss Doody.

Then there was an article, on the next page of the Sun-Times, by TV news anchor Carol Marin (or, as I like to think of her, Marin the Moron). She essentially argued that the "production values" seen during TV coverage of the Republican convention had been below par in comparison with the stellar production values seen earlier in Denver at the Democratic convention. Well, that's hardly surprising. Obama has about 90% of the people in Hollywood in his pocket.

PT Barnum has been quoted as saying that "there's a sucker born every minute". He was a man known for putting on a great show. Abraham Lincoln, relatively speaking, was not. But I'm glad that it was Lincoln, not Barnum, who was elected to serve as President.

Barnum isn't alive, of course, but there are plenty of Barnum-like characters running around today, like Cher, or like Madonna (who infamously mocked Christ by having herself "crucified" on stage, and who later had the audacity to compare George W. Bush to Adolph Hitler). Perhaps Carol Marin would prefer that we elect Cher or Madonna to the presidency.

Maybe Ms. Marin should worry less about production values and more about moral values. Or is that asking too much?

Incidentally, I realize that some folks consider the use of the word "morons" to be offensive. But actually, I would never use the word to describe anyone who was genuinely retarded, because such people can't help the fact that they lack intelligence.

The problem with people like P Diddy and Carol Marin isn't that they were shortchanged at birth, in terms of intelligence. The problem is that they refuse to use the brains God gave to them. They say the first things that come to their heads, rather than taking the time to think about the implications of what they're about to say or write.

Why The Democrats Won't Get My Vote

It's way too early to predict who will be elected President of our country in 2008. However, if Barack Obama loses the fight for the Democratic presidential nomination, or if he loses the presidential election in November, it seems likely (based on the racial paranoia which afflicts large segments of this country) that numerous people will claim that he lost because he was black.

There may be some people in this country for whom Obama's race is considered an important factor. But I'm not one of them.

I'd be happy to vote for Alan Keyes, for example, if I thought he had any chance at all of winning during this election cycle. (In fact, I think Keyes would make a much better candidate than John McCain --- and maybe even a better candidate than Mike Huckabee, although that would be a close call for me.) Unfortunately, I think that the probability of Keyes winning is virtually nil. Even though McCain isn't my idea of the ideal candidate, he's still a much better choice than Obama or Clinton.

There are many issues facing our country, so it's important not to be a one-issue voter.

Having said that, I believe that some issues so outweigh other issues that those issues are pivotal in deciding how one ought to vote. During the antebellum era, that issue was slavery. In my opinion, that pivotal issue is now the abortion issue. In America, abortion has taken roughly 50 million human lives since being legalized in 1973. What could possibly be more important than passing laws (and amending our Constitution) in order to end America's national holocaust?

When it comes to the abortion issue, it really doesn't matter whether the Democratic nominee is Obama or Clinton. The views of both of them on that subject are equally abhorrent. Notwithstanding the fact that Bill Clinton wanted to make abortion "rare," and notwithstanding his written acknowledgment that human life begins at conception, his unwillingness to support pro-life legislation made his alleged dislike of abortion essentially worthless. Hillary's views on that subject are virtually indistinguishable from Bill's.

One doesn't need to be a conservative Republican or a Christian such as myself to understand the importance of the abortion issue. In an article by jazz critic and Democrat Nat Hentoff, Hentoff (a writer for the Village Voice) said that he was appalled by Barack Obama's extremely liberal views on the subject of abortion. (Here's a link to a longer, and earlier, article Hentoff wrote about abortion. Hentoff also wrote an excellent book about the hypocrisy of liberals who claimed to value civil liberties while simultaneously opposing the freedom of conservatives to express their opinions in the public square. The book contained a detailed consideration of the way in which "pro-choice" people suppressed the choice of people to make up their own minds about the abortion issue by hearing both sides of the argument.)

There have been a few rare pro-life Democrats (such as Bob Casey of Pennsylvania or Glenn Poshard of Illinois), but the overall evidence leads me to conclude that the Democratic party as a whole is on the wrong side of the most important issue currently facing our nation. That's particularly true when one considers the shameful way in which the Democratic party (which allegedly values "tolerance" highly) has excluded or marginalized people such as Casey and Poshard time and time again.

The Courage of John McCain

Few people question the idea that a man willing to risk death on the battlefield has a type of courage. But there are other types of courage as well. So I found this quotation interesting. I hope that you will give serious thought to the following words when you decide who to vote for during the upcoming presidential election in November.

Wisdom suggests that we should be willing to give an unborn child the same chance that our parents gave us, but it takes courage in this political climate to insist on the protection of unborn children who can't vote, have no voice, and can't reward you with support and donations. ... John McCain

Death By The Numbers

Today's edition of RedEye (published by the Chicago Tribune) reports that the total number of Americans killed in the Iraq war (which has lasted for five years) hit 4,000. So we're talking an approximate average of 800 deaths a year.

Democrats are appalled --- appalled, I say! --- by that number.

Now, I personally think that one unnecessary death is one unnecessary death too many. As one who obtained official status as a conscientious objector when I was called by my draft board in 1974 (shortly before the draft was abolished), no one with any brains would accuse me of being a warmongering ultraconservative.

However, I'd like to point out some inconvenient truths (to borrow Al Gore's phrase) which Democrats would prefer to gloss over or ignore.

1. The total number of Americans killed during the Iraq war is roughly equivalent to the average number of unborn children killed in abortion clinics every single day of the year. (In an excellent article about how African Americans have been sold down the river by the Democratic party, Rev. Clinard Childress writes, "Each day, 1452 African Americans are murdered by abortion. 4,000 children over all.") Hey, Democrats, how about a sense of proportion? Is that asking too much?
2. Unlike the aforementioned unborn children, most of the Americans killed in Iraq had a choice about whether or not to put themselves in harm's way, and most of them were well equipped to defend themselves.
3. Unlike the aforementioned unborn children (many of whom have been killed for reasons which could only be described as frivolous), the Iraqi war was initiated at least partially for the purpose of deposing an incontestably evil dictator who was oppressing his own people. One may legitimately question whether the circumstances met the criteria of St. Augustine's "just war," but regardless, there is a world of difference between killing people in order to depose a leader who is guilty of gassing his own people to death and killing an unborn child because having a child would interfere with one's career plans.
4. Very few Democrats are the pacifists they'd like you to think they are. With the notable exception of Mr. Obama, most Democratic leaders (including Hillary) voted to go to war. They now claim that they were deceived into doing so. Hey, since when are congressmen and senators incapable of conducting their own independent investigations? If they conducted such investigations and found nothing to persuade them to vote against the war, then how can they claim that they were deceived? If they found evidence that there were no actual weapons of mass destruction, and if they went ahead and voted to go to war anyway, then doesn't that make them even worse than President Bush and Colin Powell? If they didn't even bother to conduct their own research into the matter, then doesn't that just make them lazy and irresponsible? Any way that you look at it, it's utterly specious to claim that the Iraq war is solely a Republican war. The Democratic party bears a fair amount of the blame for the 4,000 deaths cited by RedEye. Therefore, it is irrational to base one's political affiliation on one's perception that this is somehow "Bush's war".

As I say, I am never happy when I learn about the preventable death of anyone. But it's clear to me, when I look at the actual facts of the matter, that it is the Democrats, not the Republicans, who deserve to be described as bloodthirsty.

That's particularly true of Barack Obama (notwithstanding his mild-mannered public demeanor). Not only is he extremely pro-choice when it comes to abortion, but he has even refused to endorse Illinois legislation which had the sole purpose of prohibiting infanticide, and which was written in such a way as to specifically limit the scope of that legislation to the killing of babies after they had been born.

What's particularly ironic is that many of the people now backing Obama are the same people whose denunciations of American soldiers during the Vietnam war included claims that our troops were "baby killers". Back then, they seemed to believe that killing babies was morally wrong and repugnant. Sadly, they seem to have changed their minds about that idea. Either that, or they're ignorant about what Obama really stands for.

John McCain might not be my first choice as President of the United States, since I would have preferred Alan Keyes or Mike Huckabee. But McCain is still a far better choice than anyone the Democrats currently offer to the American public.

UPDATE: McCain's choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate speaks very well for him indeed.

With Friends Like These

When I voted for President Bush during the 2000 election and the 2004 election, I did so in large part because he had paid lip service to the pro-life movement, whereas both Al Gore and John Kerry had openly paid homage to the abortion industry. To some extent, I knew that Bush's claims amounted to lip service, but I felt that even lip service was better than no service at all.

I passionately felt and still feel that abortion was and is the most important issue facing our nation. It wasn't that I didn't care about other issues. But public acceptance of an act which takes roughly a million innocent American human lives every year (and which took up to 1.5 million lives a year for many years) has got to qualify as a major national crisis.

It was clear, even during the 2000 election, that Bush was hardly the dream candidate I might have wished for. He seemed to want to take little baby steps in terms of moving the nation in a direction consistent with complete respect for all phases of human life. I would have much preferred an articulate and passionate pro-life spokesperson such as Alan Keyes, because Keyes really seemed to care about the unborn victims of abortion. But baby steps are better than no steps at all, and thanks to the inequitable way in which national primaries are held, I never got the chance to vote for Keyes when he was a candidate for President. So I took what I could get.

Sadly, with very few exceptions, Bush has consistently put the pro-life issue on the back burner in terms of his priorities. In that respect, he is not noticeably different from his father.

I realize that the war on terrorism and the war on Iraq were both important in Bush's mind, but even if he was right about both issues (and that's highly debatable in the case of Iraq), the fact of the matter is that the total number of people killed by both Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein combined are miniscule compared with the numbers of people legally killed every year by abortionists in the United States during the past 30 plus years.

Considering the extent to which the abortion issue and the pro-life vote played a major role in putting Bush in office and keeping him there, the fact that Bush has done so little to advance the pro-life cause seems like a betrayal to me. In my opinion, the significant political losses Republicans experienced in 2006 are due not only to Bush's mishandling of the war in Iraq, but also to the fact that most pro-life Republicans found it very hard to get excited about a political party which had promised much but delivered very little (despite its simultaneous control of the Senate, the House and the Presidency) in terms of saving unborn children.

One of the saddest ironies when it comes to the abortion issue is the extent to which Republicans, who are often characterized as defenders of the unborn, have played a role in terms of aiding and abetting the defenders of legal abortion time and time again.

After all, it was Nixon, not Kennedy or Johnson, who appointed Harry Blackmun, the Chief Justice who wrote the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade.

Later, when Nixon resigned amidst the scandal of Watergate, his successor Gerald Ford appointed Justice John Paul Stevens to the Supreme Court. According to this article, Stevens "joined a 2000 decision called Stenberg v. Carhart in which the court struck down a Nebraska law banning so-called 'partial-birth' abortions."

With "friends" like Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon, the pro-life movement needed no enemies. (Admittedly, there was no pro-life movement when Nixon first came into power. It was partially on account of Nixon's appointment of Harry Blackmun that such a movement became necessary.)

Gerald Ford took office a year after Roe v. Wade was made into law. If Ford had had any pro-life principles at all, he would have expended a considerable amount of effort making sure that the next judicial appointment went to a man who recognized the stupidity of the Roe v. Wade decision. Say what you will about Nixon, but at least he can be excused to some extent by the possibility that he may not have realized that Harry Blackmun would vote to overturn the abortion laws of most of the states in the union. Gerald Ford had no such excuse.

Instead of doing his best to appoint a judge who would have helped to overthrow Roe v. Wade, Ford turned the entire appointment process over to Attorney General Edward Levi, whose primary criterion when selecting Stevens seems to have been that the two men were buddies from Chicago, where Stevens was serving as a federal appeals court judge and where Levi had been the president of the University of Chicago. (Those who now blame Donald Rumsfeld for much that has gone wrong in Iraq should also pause to consider that Rumsfeld's suggestions to Ford regarding Edward Levi played a significant role in Ford's choice of Levi and in Levi's subsequent choice of John Paul Stevens. It would appear that conservatives and liberals both have good reason to dislike Mr. Rumsfeld.)

Ford's choice of Levi was based on his desire for a person who was "nonpolitical". Apparently, he got what he wanted, in spades. Levi apparently cared more about personal friendships than he did about political principles, despite the fact that it was his job to insure that justice was done throughout the land. It isn't clear from what I've read whether Levi was pro-life himself or not, but if he was pro-life, then he was incompetent. He put his personal friendship with John Paul Stevens ahead of his job responsibilities.

According to MSNBC writer Tom Curry, Ford's most "profound" legacy was his appointment of John Paul Stevens. If appointing a man who helped to protect the status quo in terms of Roe v. Wade is Curry's idea of profundity, then Curry deserves to be in the pro-life hall of shame, along with Gerald Ford and our ostensibly pro-life president George W. Bush.

What does George W. Bush think of Gerald Ford? According to this article, Bush says Ford was a "great American". I beg to differ. Ford's legacy was to help insure that a bad judicial decision would remain in force for many years to come. And the fact that George W. Bush does not recognize that fact speaks volumes, it seems to me, about his level of intelligence and competence.

Am I sorry that I voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004? No. As bad as he was and is, his opponents were many times worse. But I may begin to obstain from the voting process altogether if the Republican party cannot begin to get its act together and elect principled Presidential candidates who can be counted on to represent the values of the numerous pro-life people like myself who, more often than not, have played a decisive role in putting them into office.

I am beginning to agree with those who use terms such as "Republicrats" to suggest that there isn't a very significant difference between the Republican party and the Democratic party anymore. This was made especially apparent during the 2006 gubernatorial race in Illinois.

Rod Blagojevitch had made some reprehensible decisions while in office, such as his executive order forcing pharmacists to violate their own consciences, by dispensing what they regarded as pharmaceutical abortifacients, in order to keep their jobs. (So much for "choice". Apparently, pharmacists ought not to have freedom of choice regarding whether or not their hands are stained with innocent blood.)

Nevertheless, Blagojevitch won, because his opponent, Judy Baar Topinka, and her running mate, Joe Birkett, were indistinguishable from the Democrats in terms of their positions on the issues of abortion and gay marriage.

Birkett, who had previously claimed to be pro-life, based his unprincipled alliance with Topinka on his belief that she was the only Republican who could beat Blagojevitch. I thought at the time that that was a major miscalculation on his part, and the election results would seem to bear that out.

Joe seemed oblivious to the fact that the only way to beat an incumbent politician is to offer voters a significantly better alternative and then to appeal to one's political base in order to insure that people who recognize the superiority of that alternative come out to vote. Topinka lost because she was basically Blagojevitch in a skirt, notwithstanding her specious claims that she was a Republican.

Ironically, now that Birkett's 2006 running mate has lost, Birkett is trying to regain credibility with pro-life Republicans by claiming to back certain marginally pro-life measures pertaining to parental consent. Here's what I'd say to Joe if I saw him face to face:

"Sorry, Joe, but conservative voters such as myself aren't buying it. We don't easily get amnesia. We won't forget you unprincipled alliance with Topinka in 2006 for a long, long time to come. By all means, do the right thing and vote in support of pro-life legislation. But don't expect it to do you any good in the next election. That ship has sailed. You had a chance to do the right thing when it would have counted the most, but you blew it, buddy."

What happened in Illinois was heartbreaking, but hardly unique. More often than not, the small difference which does exist between the two major political parties these days is a matter of rhetoric, not a matter of substantive action.

Which is worse? To proclaim that one is pro-abortion and then to demonstrate that that is indeed the case, or to proclaim that one is pro-life and then do nothing to change the status quo regarding legal abortion?

Say what you will about the Democrats, but at least they are honest about their pathetic and immoral indifference to the intrinsic value of human life. That doesn't make me any more likely to vote for them, but it does make me feel that I have been cheated out of the opportunity to vote for candidates who share my own priorities, not just in word but in deed.

UPDATE: It bears mentioning that when it comes to the 2008 presidential elections, there are some big differences between John McCain (who has said clearly that human life begins at conception) and Barack Obama (who not only claimed that answering such a question was "above (his) pay grade," but also opposed Illinois laws designed to prevent infanticide). For me, the choice is clear. Even though I'm not convinced that the pro-life agenda is at the top of McCain's list of priorities, it is at least on that list. Barack Obama's election would be a huge setback for the pro-life cause.