The Catholics for Dean web site has the most tortured reason I have seen to not vote pro-life.
Catholics for Dean [Via My Domestic Church]
Let’s face it. As Catholics, we recognize legalized abortion as responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent people each year in our country. This is a huge issue.
Hundreds of thousands? Try 43 million plus.
That said, the relevant question here is who we should elect as president. Bush does select Supreme Court justices according to a pro-life litmus test, but we may ask whether this is what we want. The job of the Supreme Court is to interpret and apply the Constitution, and the Constitution is completely ambiguous on the issue of abortion. We do not need Supreme Court justices selected by any criteria other than their ability to interpret the Constitution faithfully and rationally. We need a Constitutional amendment to end legal abortion in the proper way, in a way that will last. This effort will have nothing to do with the Supreme Court and everything to do with the hearts and minds of all Americans.
Granted, but a nominee who interprets the Constitution faithfully will also always be against abortion as a Constitutional right. Activist judges will find any social fad including the right to abortion in the Constitution.
Besides appointing judges, the President has no other significant role in the abortion debate. His role *is* to act as Commander in Chief of the military, to guide the legislation of Congress, to act as our representative to the world, to appoint advisers and others to run our government, and so on. Dean is the man for this job. Bush has made an utter mess of it.
No significant role? That is just plain dumb. Besides voting for passing the Partial Birth Abortion ban his administration has been heavily involved on pro-life issues. President Bush might not be the most ardent pro-lifer but for the most part the people he has appointed are. When we vote for a President it is far more than just a vote for them and their vice president, but for the types of people they will select to posts. The administrations fight against the language and terms used in CEDAW at the UN was critical. His administration prevented the funding of organizations who were actively involved in abortions here and overseas. He signed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act and will also pass the Fetal murder bill if presented to him. He also opposed the destruction of embryos in research and is pushing for a cloning ban. There have been more pro-life advancements under this administration then any other administration in history. If Gore had won none of this would have happened. If Dean won there would be zero pro-life advances and all of his appointment to the judiciary would be abortion supporters. There is much that I would criticize President Bush for especially in regards to big government, but I am greatly thankful to him for what he has done to save lives.
Update: Kathy Shaidle weighs in here. Pete Vere weighs in here here, and here.
31 comments
Allow me to defend myself.
First, there are less than a million abortions each year in this country, although I trust your figure for the many-year total.
The Constitution does not specify that the unborn are to be counted as persons. Now that we recognize that deficiency, we should amend it, not allow “activist” judges of opposing ideologies go back and forth on it every couple decades!
I have acknowledged Bush’s other pro-life actions elsewhere on my site. However, they are insignificant compared to what Dean did in Vermont–decreased teen pregnancies by half. 4 of 10 teen pregnancies end tragically in abortion. As for Bush, his state had and has the 5th highest teen pregnancy rate in the country (Vermont now has the lowest), but he did nothing to address it. As a result, teen births decreased less in Texas during his time as governor than in every other state in the union. See my site for more details.
What you need to acknowledge is that Bush is not faultless on pro-life issues. He executed 152 people, for one, but I can see your argument coming that needless capital punishment is not as serious as abortion. He also supports abortion rights (i.e. murder rights) for victims of rape or incest. So the question becomes one of comparison between Bush and Dean. If we look at their words, Bush wins. If we look at their record in actually reducing the number of abortions, Dean wins hands down.
And we haven’t even gotten to the other issues…
Well there is the issue that Dean himself may have actually peformed abortions as an abortionist, but he’s a little fuzzy on that.
So Tim, did you go to all the Catholic Blogs defending your candidate? Don’t miss the “Pull My Finger.” My personal favorite!
” As for Bush, his state had and has the 5th highest teen pregnancy rate in the country (Vermont now has the lowest), but he did nothing to address it. As a result, teen births decreased less in Texas during his time as governor than in every other state in the union. See my site for more details.”
Artfully done, HugeTim, Artfully Done!!! Without outright acknowledging it, which would have sunk your point, you’ve still conveyed that teen pregnancy rates are dropping all across the country. This makes it far less likely that the Vermont drop is due to Dean’s efforts.
However, you could still list these efforts, and their success rates. I’ll bet most of them are opposed to Catholic teaching as well though, so you might not want to. We’ll understand.
It is also impressive the way you have shifted the debate from abortion to teen pregnancy, all the while avoiding Dean’s anti-parental notification stance, and the lies he’s used to justify it. I only wish I could obfuscate an issue half so well.
Face it, one of these men is pro-life, in word and deed. The other one is avowedly not. You’ve just chosen wrong is all.
You can call this obfuscating all you want, but the fact remains: Dean has prevented many more abortions than Bush. This is because (I believe) Bush is primarily interested in abortion as a political issue. He has no reason to do all the hard work Dean did in Vermont to help women choose life (short of forcing them to, which I agree he should have done, if possible) when he can just label himself pro-life and pass a few laws he knows will be struck down by the courts, and still get all your votes.
(Briefly, on parental notification, Dean tells of a time when he saw a young female patient (as her family doctor) and he had reason to believe that she had become pregnant by her own father. (Now I believe abortion would only even be justified to save the life of the mother but) would parental notification really have made sense in this case? Imagine a doctor having to choose between fear of legal consequences and fear of this girl’s father “punishing” her for telling someone about what he had done?)
Excerpt from my site:
Now, Bush has done some admirable things on partial-birth abortion and embryonic stem cell research, but there is simply nothing more he can do in four more years, except appoint Supreme Court justices according to a litmus-test rather than make any kind of effort to win support for ammending the Constitution the right way (and *he* criticizes “activist judges”).
Dean has saved many more unborn lives than Bush. How? Primarily by reducing teen pregnancy. Teen pregnancy decreased by 49% during his time in Vermont, and Vermont now has the lowest teen pregnancy rate in the country. Can Dean really claim credit for this, you ask? Judge for yourself:
“Governor Howard Dean, M.D., has announced that teen pregnancy prevention was a continuing critical focus of effort during his address to the Youth Summit that was held in August, 1998. His policy included cooperation between state agencies, community providers, schools, parents, and teens. His comprehensive approach to the issue included expansion of health care access for teens, abuse prevention efforts, educational options for young people at risk, a strong focus on male responsibility, expansion of case management services, expansion of Parent/Child Center services, and the launching of a media campaign to encourage parents to talk with their children about the consequences of sex. The Governor, in his state-of-the-state address, mentioned Vermont’s outstanding work on teen pregnancy prevention as a model for addressing other issues of concern related to teens and their families.”
“Nearly 4 in 10 teen pregnancies (excluding those ending in miscarriages) are terminated by abortion. There were about 274,000 abortions among teens in 1996.” Yes, now you begin to see why Dean is the choice for all those concerned about the 4,000 abortions that occur every day. Only Dean is qualified to dramatically reduce that number and save hundreds of thousands of lives!
Some of Dean’s other policies in Vermont were addressed toward already pregnant women and empowering them to make the daunting decision to raise their child, to choose life. He provided health insurance for nearly every child and greatly improved education throughout the state, both of which take away some of the biggest worries that new mothers face. He also pioneered an innovative early childhood intervention program in Vermont, Success by Six, which resulted in 89% of pregnant women entering prenatal care in the first trimester of pregnancy. Moreover, 91% of families with a new birth now receive a community visit, and parents who need it get help and support. As a result, 81% of children are fully immunized by age 2 and 97% by the time they start kindergarten, and child and sexual abuse decreased by 45%. Dean has already announced his intention to expand these programs to a national scale.
Let’s compare Dean’s phenomenal record of action to Bush’s. The most recent teen pregnancy and abortion rate data I could find are from 1999, so we’ll examine Bush’s record as governor of Texas (1994-2000). Well, Texas had the smallest percentage decrease in teen births between 1991 and 2001 of any state in the union. The teen pregnancy rate in Texas is the 5th highest in the nation. The abortion rate in Texas is also higher than that in Vermont.
How did Gov. Bush achieve these appalling statistics (which represent thousands of devastated women and aborted children). Look for yourself, so you know I’m not making this up:
http://www.teenpregnancy.org/america/statestatisticsDisplay.asp?ID=1&sID=690&stateID=46
I would suggest that his priorities as governor may have been misplaced. I hear he did do a great job at making Texas the most polluted state in the union by removing restrictions on pollution, and I’m sure he was busy pandering to powerful corporations in other ways, but perhaps he could have devoted just a little bit of attention to reducing teen pregnancies, or to some other way of reducing the appalling number of abortions taking place in his state (76,121 in 2000). Oh, that’s right, he was also busy executing 152 prisoners and opposing efforts to reform Texas’s horrid capital punishment system. (Again, is this “bashing” or truth-telling?)
Vermont’s program did not have abstinence as part of it’s component but was the same old push on sex education and increased access to family planning clinics without any parental involvement.
I would be highly skeptical that this program caused less teenagers to engage in sexual activities. There was nothing in this program to discourage sexual activity. If more teenagers were using contraceptives then the result of chemical abortions through the use of the pill would be undocumented.
Under Dean’s health care program allowed low-income mothers to claim their unborn child for eligibility in the program, then gave them funds to abort the child.
Dean also wanted his citizen to be able to have an abortion with only a $5 dollar co-pay.
Under Governor Dean, Vermont ranked near the top of the nation in rate of abortion.
It averaged 359 abortions for every 1,000 live births in 1992, which is a higher percentage then Texas which you attack Bush for. If Dean had been the Governor of a larger state he could have been in the death of many more.
In the People magazine interview Howard Dean claimed neither performed abortions, in part, because, as internists, they are not allowed to perform abortions in Vermont. That was a lie since Vermont is one of only two states, including Montana, that allows non-physicians to perform abortions and, in 1998, more than half of the abortions performed in Vermont were performed by non-physicians. There was no barrier to his ability to perform abortions.
“(Briefly, on parental notification, Dean tells of a time when he saw a young female patient (as her family doctor) and he had reason to believe that she had become pregnant by her own father. (Now I believe abortion would only even be justified to save the life of the mother but) would parental notification really have made sense in this case? Imagine a doctor having to choose between fear of legal consequences and fear of this girl’s father “punishing” her for telling someone about what he had done?)”
Sorry, Huge Tim, you might want to watch Tim Russert. Dean admitted he made up that whole story to justify his opposition to parental notification.
To quote George Nuemayr:
“Under questioning from NBC’s Tim Russert, Dean had to admit his incest story was bogus. The girl’s father wasn’t involved. Russert: “�when you told the story, you knew otherwise.” Dean: “That’s right.” Russert: “Why didn’t you say that?” Dean: “Because it didn’t make any difference.”(It would have made a difference for his argument. He needed the incest fabrication to punctuate the story with the line: “You explain that to the American people who think that parental notification is a good idea.”)”
Face it, the good Doctor is a liar and a (probable) babykiller. Feel free to vote for him, its your soul. Of course, if you think intentionally aborting a child is ok if the mother is endangered, this probably doesn’t bother you in the least.
HugeTim: Admit it! You’re really Paul Begala, aren’t you? At least, Chris Lehane, yes? Either way, I’m going to submit your site to Andy Sullivan for consideration of his notable “Paul Begala Award”. Might be the first time that Paul actually receives his own namesake for the most outrageous falsehood of this crop of tall tales. To paraphrase advertising, watch [that] space! Exemplary results! Bravo! Really, masterfully done!
Jeff Miller,
Abstinance-only education such as Bush pushes is wrong. I support encouraging abstinance but we clearly need to educate kids on the basics of contraception. Do you really prefer abortion or teenage parents to contraception? Teens should avoid casual sex in the first place, for all kinds of reasons, but if they do have sex, it is much better to use contraception and greatly decrease the chances of making a child the victim of their irresponsibility. Do you want to prevent them from doing so? (They’re going to have sex anyway, any you know it.)
Why did you cite Vermont’s abortion rate in 1992, at the beginning of Dean’s time there? In 2000, at the end of Dean’s time as governor, the rate was down to 274 per 1000 live births–a 24% decrease in 8 years.
Howard Dean did not claim that he was legally prevented from performing abortions because he was an internist. He was just saying that he didn’t do them because that is not the job of the internist. Don’t you realize that accusing someone of a lie is a big deal?! (Or has Bush lowered the threshold…)
That goes for you, too, Franklin Jennings! Dean did not make the story up with the girl he thought was pregnant by her father. When she first came to him, he thought that was the case, and that’s what he talks about in his speeches. He later found out that his conclusion was wrong and her father was not *the* father. I’ve heard him mention that he found this out later in his speeches. The reason it doesn’t make any difference is that he very well could have been right about the situation. Sexual abuse by parents is much more common than you might think, mainly because it goes unreported so often for obvious reasons. This is getting off topic…the point is that Dean did not lie.
I do not know who Paul Begala is, but I’d be happy to get any kind of award. If a negative award gets people to come to my site, some of these skeptics will actually read some of my site and see the truth about Howard Dean. Some might even learn his views on something other than abortion and civil unions.
“Postponing Sexual Involvement, a program for African-American 8th graders in Atlanta, GA, used peers (11th and 12th graders) to help youth understand social and peer pressures to have sex, and to develop and apply resistance skills. A unit of the program also taught about human sexuality, decision-making, and contraceptives. This program successfully reduced the number of abstinent students who initiated intercourse after the program, and increased contraceptive use among sexually experienced females.(12)
Healthy Oakland Teens (HOT) targets all 7th graders attending a junior high school in Oakland, CA. Health educators teach basic sex and drug education, and 9th grade peer educators lead interactive exercises on values, decision-making, communication, and condom-use skills. After one year, students in the program were much less likely to initiate sexual activities such as deep kissing, genital touching, and sexual intercourse.(13)
A review of 23 studies found that effective sex education programs share the following characteristics:(10)
1. Narrow focus on reducing sexual risk-taking behaviors that may lead to HIV/STD infection or unintended pregnancy.
2. Social learning theories as a foundation for program development, focusing on recognizing social influences, changing individual values, changing group norms, and building social skills.
3. Experimental activities designed to personalize basic, accurate information about the risks of unprotected intercourse and methods of avoiding unprotected intercourse.
4. Activities that address social or media influences on sexual behaviors.
5. Reinforcing clear and appropriate values to strengthen individual values and group norms against unprotected sex.
6. Modeling and practice in communication, negotiation, and refusal skills. ” (http://www.caps.ucsf.edu/sexedtext.html)
Do you trust your inclinations or the facts?
Despite the fact Bush is the most aggressively anit-abortion candidate, the rest of his actions are so generally despicable that I would never vote for him. He claims to be Christian, but his actions don’t reflect that.
Darcy,
I find it really ironic you attack Bush as not a Christian for not pushing contraceptives. Historic Christianity up to the 1930s condemned contraceptives as basically mutual masturbation. I am not concerned about facts that promote the culture of death, but living a moral life in union with Christ. That entails picking up the cross and not encouraging both fornication and contraception. Contraception and sexual promiscuity preach a Christless Christianity where pleasure rules. So instead of voting for Bush you would vote for a candidate that endorses abortion at any time, euthanasia, assisted suicide, homosexual marriage and then claim Bush does not act on his Christian beliefs?
John,
Do I prefer abortion or contraception? Most contraceptives (Pill, IUD) are abortafacient and can actually cause an embryo (human life) to starve to death. So do I prefer murder or murder, false question. St. Paul said that you can never do evil to do good. The end does not justify the means. We could end teenage pregnancy by forcing all teenage girls on norplant, but you have only replaced one intrinsic evil with another. Abortion is never justified and contraception is never justified. I took it for granted that you were a Catholic that just disagreed on the prudence of who would make the best president, yet you encourage practices that are totally contrary to the faith. Maybe you should change the name of your site to CafeteriaCatholicsforDean.com. I have no problem arguing about prudential matters of the Catholic faith, but when your arguments discard the infallible teaching authority of the Church this conversation is at an end.
Your math is also quite strange, I cited a figure of a 34% abortion rate and you said that it went down to 27.4% a 24% decrease. Excuse me, 34-24 does not equal 27.4.
274/359 = 76%, i.e. 24% less abortions per 1000 births than occured 8 years earlier in Vermont, do to Dean. The percentage has indeed decreased by a full 10% as you point out, but that is a different way of stating the decrease.
Only about 20% of contraception use in the U.S. is the birth control pill. I don’t want to encourage contraception use at all-quite the contrary. But if some folks are going to have irresponsible casual sex anyway (which they are, though I don’t engourage it) I want them to use non-abortive contraception. Do you? (Or are you just trying to be difficult?)
The difficulty is not in myself but in the Gospel and moral law. I can not promote one evil to eliminate another. Even non-abortive contraception is an evil. The law of double effect does not apply in this situation. That is why the Vatican has strongly condemned those who have promoted condoms for the reasons you state. If you truly believe that contraception is wrong, why do you want a wrong taught. It is the denial of free will to say that people are going to do it anyway. Why is it they are able to be educated on using contraception but can’t be educated to avoid sex until marriage?
Should we also encourage safe burglary for those who will rob anyway? I don’t condone burglary but if they rob houses they should wear flak jackets to prevent them from being fatally shot. We should then train burglars and other criminals on safe use of these bullet proof vests, since they are going to behave in this behavior anyway.
The Culture of death moves on because people don’t actively fight it but instead make concessions to it.
Oh, come on! First I do want folks to be “educated to avoid sex until marriage.” And I am not trying to condone contraception by any means.
But you offer a useful analogy. I don’t condone burglary, but if a burglar does decide to rob despite my pleas, he should definitely do it without shooting anybody! (Analagously, teens having unprotected sex are really threatening to harm a potential child conceived in a highly unideal situation, more than they are harming themselves (although they are doing that also.))
Jeff, Even if we grant Tim all his facts and figures, there is a more fundamental problem. Abortion is murder. He supports a candidate who, in turn, supports the right of citizens so inclined to commit this act, and he would not take it away from them. Somewhat less heinous is the fact that any liberal unaware of Paul Begala’s identity is not worthy to shine Howard Dean’s shoes.
William,
Maybe I’m not a liberal, then, but an orthodox Catholic who can see that Dean is most in line with Catholic social teaching on all sorts of issues (except abortion, which is a very grave exception).
I fully agree that abortion is murder. However, Bush will also not take away the right to abortion, because he won’t be able to. (Personally, I doubt he cares because his main concern is the political gain he gets from calling himself pro-life. Evidence: the many other ways he speaks and labels himself without acting in any substantial way. I’ll make a list of these instances on my site soon.) Bush fully supports the right of rape and incest victims to murder, as well. So we have a false choice, of the sort that someone earlier pointed out in this thread. However, Dean will act to reduce unwanted pregnancies as he did in Vermont and hence greatly decrease the number of abortions in this country, which is the only thing we can hope for in the short run.
And on trade, the Iraq war, health insurance, and empowering all citizens to participate politically regardless of connections and wealth, Howard Dean emerges as consistently in step with Catholic teaching, in stark contrast to Bush.
Part of the difference in teen pregnancy rates in Vermont and Texas has more to do with the culture and ethnicity of their populations than with the actions (or lack therof ) of their governors. Texas in huge, ethnically diverse, with many immigrants who cross the border to give birth. There is an acceptance of teen pregnancy (as well as early marriage) among many traditional Hispanic families. I would really love to see the raw figures that are being tweaked to give the political support in the comments above.
I have personally distrusted Dean ever since he appeared on the radar screen. Maybe it is because I tend to distrust physicians who toe the AMA party line (which, by and large, has been seeking to regulate my profession to death – and not from any altruism towards patient rights). Maybe because I don’t live in the people’s republic of vermont not do I want to.
Mark Twain’s line “Liars figure, and figures lie”.
Alicia:
Thanks for stating the obvious: there is a world of difference between Vermont and Texas. To compare the two is silly. I mean there are probably more people attending a UofM football game in Ann Arbor on a Saturday than live in Vermont.
Tim:
I have a tough time telling whether you are serious or not. If you are serious about your faith, you might want to read some of the Bishops latest instructions to Catholic politicians on this issue. By the way, are you from the New England area? From my experience folks, if that is the case, this is a pretty common rationalization amongst New England Catholics.
No, Tim, he admitted in the interview I mentione dthat when he was telling the story on the stump, he knew it was false. He chose to tell the lie anyway, to defend his position on parental notification. Why not tell the truth instead?
As for choosing between teenage pregnancy or contraception, duh. Teenage pregnancy is worlds better than contraception, just as chastity is worlds better than teenage pregnancy.
Of course, as CS Lewis pointed out in Mere Christianity, some men are content with “good/bad” and are unwilling or unable to see “bad/worse/worst” or “good/better/best”.
The point is, butchered babies laying dead in a Planned Barrenhood dumpster have no need of socialized healthcare.
alicia, I compared *changes* in teen pregnancy rates, not just the rates themselves. The real story lies in these links (where you can also find my figures):
Dean:
http://www.teenpregnancy.org/america/statestatisticsDisplay.asp?ID=1&sID=692&stateID=48
Bush:
http://www.teenpregnancy.org/america/statestatisticsDisplay.asp?ID=1&sID=690&stateID=46
JACK, Dean does not claim to be a Catholic politician. Look, I wish he were pro-life, but he’s the best option available, hands down, even though he isn’t.
Franklin, you still misunderstand–on the stump he knew that the poor child’s father had not impregnated her because he found that out later, but that does not change the fact that he thought her father was *the* father when she first came to him.
I didn’t expect you to claim that teen pregnancy is better than contraception. I find that hard to believe. In an act of sex outside of marriage, the grave wrong is that it is fornication. Contraception is a matter of lesser, secondary significance in this case. Failing to use it just creates a new victim of the act. I find your view to the contrary a little sinister and cynical, frankly.
Pete “red herring” Vere, we all agree here that abortion is wrong.
Tim, I stopped by your website and found your (albeit unofficial) transcript of Dean’s comment comparring pro-lifers to the Taliban rather interesting…. “And the implication that the government has the right to tell a woman when she can and cannot bear a child is different,” Dean said, “but has the same philosophical root as the implications of the Taliban telling women how they’re to behave and how they’re to act.”
Call it what you want, compounding evils is never good.
This guy Tim has it completely backwards: appointing pro-life supreme court judges, which he says dismissively is “all” George Bush could do, is not a minor issue but the single biggest one in America and indeed the world.
There is a thin line of black-robed justices who defend abortion against the will of the American people, who frustrate every democratic initiative, who strike down every law to protect children in the womb. Nobody elected these people. Nothing in the constitution empowers them to do so, since the “constitutional” language protecting abortion is of their own invention. The majority are so proud and stubborn in their mistake that they would rather allow open infanticide than admit they were wrong on this issue.
It is of the utmost importance to replace these people with judges who have not twisted themselves into supporting murderous injustice.
What would you think of a old German who told you he was against the whole Holocaust thing, but voted Nazi because they banned smoking and other social ills?
Murder of the innocent is not one issue among others. It is THE issue.
Franklin, you still misunderstand–on the stump he knew that the poor child’s father had not impregnated her because he found that out later, but that does not change the fact that he thought her father was *the* father when she first came to him.
No, you still misunderstand. While on the stump, he told of a girl he suspected was impregnated by her father. He didn’t give any clarifying remarks that later he learned he was wrong. He left the impression that this man impregnated his daughter, to defend his position on parental notification.
I would be amazed at you, but that you think my position on life issues is cynical and sinister (use a dictionary, man!) I guess I am not the least nit amazed. I’ve quickly come to expect it from you.
In my opinion, “Catholics for Dean” is a sinister organization. It is nothing more than the now-discredited “seamless garment” theory from the Bernadin-Berrigan-Martin Sheen wing of the Church, in which the pro-life (anti-abortion) “ex cathedra” teaching is muted and ignored in favor of the liberals’ cause du jour.
This from a post on my site:
“Those who vote for Bush expecting him to change the balance of the Supreme Court on Roe vs. Wade will be as disappointed as they were with his father’s choice of David Souter. Already George W. has announced that his first choice for a Supreme Court justice will be pro-choice Alberto Gonzales who Bush likes because he is Hispanic and has solid experience as a corporate lawyer working for his friends at Enron.”
here’s a source:
http://www.rnclife.org/reports/2002/Oct02/oct02.shtml
I’m as disappointed about this as you must be. The difference is that I expect this kind of thing from a man who has lied and misled time and again. There is no good reason to re-elect Mr. Bush.
44,670,812 abortions (to date) / 31 years = 1,440,994 abortions per year on average.
Tim, is that over or under a million per year? That’s what I thought.
All I know is that a) no one has ever gotten pregnant while observing abstinence; and b) giving condoms and promoting “safe sex” send the WRONG message to children. You want to lower teen pregnancy? Teach kids it’s okay NOT to have sex!
“Look, I wish he were pro-life, but he’s the best option available, hands down, even though he isn’t.”
Translated: we’re looking for a regular-sized guy, and he’s the tallest midget we can find.
Yes, I want Dean to win the Democratic nomination, because he’s a moron and so we can have Mondale II. Yeeaaarrgh!
You want to support Dean? Fine, Timmy, that’s your right. But don’t go claiming he’s friendly to Catholic and/or pro-life interests. You’re wrong on both counts, and that makes you either incredibly naive or a damnable liar. Your choice.
Tim,
This is no done deal and with Dean it is guaranteed that he will nominate the most severe anti-life candidates for the Court. The Judges Bush has actually nominated for the Bench so far are not judicial activists and will not find abortion in the Constitution. There will probably be two or more openings in the Supreme Court during the next four years. With Bush there is a possibility that one anti-life Judge could make it through. With Dean all nominees both federal and supreme will be pro-abortion.
Explain why you can vote for Dean in light of the Vatican Document CONSIDERATIONS REGARDING PROPOSALS TO GIVE LEGAL RECOGNITION TO UNIONS BETWEEN HOMOSEXUAL PERSONS,
“In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. One must refrain from any kind of formal cooperation in the enactment or application of such gravely unjust laws and, as far as possible, from material cooperation on the level of their application. In this area, everyone can exercise the right to conscientious objection.”
I would also like to know why you listed Gerard’s A Catholic Blog for Lovers on your hit list since he was nice enough to add your site to the St. Blogs list and made no comment as to your site. Was this a “loving action?” I would also like to know how mine and other blogs have declared war on you. Myself and others have tried to question the points you make based on the prudence of supporting Dean in light of the Faith. We have not directed our readers to go to your site and leave comments arguing with your position, yet you have. If a specific site has done the actions you alleged then please single them out and not use a broad brush on any site that disagrees with your position.
Tim:
Stick to Philosophy (or whatever) not law. The Constituion does not define person. Period. Thus, the Constitition does not specify slaves as persons, neither does it specify born human beings as person. Yet, we don’t need a Constititutional amendment telling us that YOU are a person, do we (or do we)? So what if it doesn’t specify, that’s the point. These judges MADE IT UP as they went along. If the Constitution doesn’t specify it, what happens? Under its own terms, the decision goes to the state or its people. Thus, it is left to the states to decide how to define it through the democratic process, not the SCOTUS.
I don’t want to get sucked into this, but I’d like to say that I wasn’t calling Bush unChristian for opposing contraceptives; I support a full curriculum of sex-ed as more effective but that’s a different issue. Teenagers won’t accept a decision, even a healthy one, if it has been made for us and without knowing why. Knowledge is power, and abstinence will be much more likely if a teen has the information and decides for his or herself instead of some adult telling them how to think.
However, Bush’s social policies, excess cronyism, and general lying behavior as well as many other things unrelated to this discussion, more than outweigh anything positive he could possibly do.
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