Ed Morrissey @ Hot Air:
With the recent face-plant of Todd Akin in Missouri, Democrats think they have hit on a winning theme for their convention in Charlotte. Agenda changes show that Democrats will make Akin the poster boy of the GOP and focus the three-day affair on abortion and contraception policy, Paul Bedard reports:
Just as the Akin crisis was reaching a crescendo, the Democrats on Wednesday announced that three starlets of the pro-choice movement will be featured at the convention, an event that will now drive the liberal charge that the Republicans are anti-women.
Democrats said that they will feature Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parent Action Fund, Nancy Keenan, president of the NARAL Pro-Choice America and Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University student whose plea for federal birth control funding drew the ire–and a subsequent apology–from Rush Limbaugh.
What’s more, the Democrats are expanding their list of women ready to assail the GOP on women’s issue, adding Maryland Sen. Barbara Mikulski and actress Eva Longoria to the list that already includes Sen. John Kerry and Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren.
What a great idea! After all, the issue of abortion and contraception doesn’t even appear on the radar screen for voters in this cycle, as polls from Gallup and theCBS/NYT/Quinnipiac partnership attest. Jennifer Rubin has a few suggestions for Democrats as to how to stage their Abortion-palooza:
The Democrats, reports suggest, are going to focus their convention in Charlotte, N.C. ( a right-to-work state that voted to ban gay marriage), on Todd Akin, to a surprisingly large extent. This will be quite amusing when he eventually drops out. But at least we know they are attuned to abortion, an issue that registers at less than 1 percent in Gallup’s poll asking about voters’ most important issues.
It’s not clear if they will have a single abortion night or multiple nights on the subject. Maybe they could call their three convention nights “trimesters,” and on the last of these extol their devotion to late-term and partial-birth abortions. President Obama has spoken eloquently on the topic.
Note that the issue of abortion and contraception wasn’t even one of the 12 items that Gallup asked respondents to prioritize. It simply wasn’t there for respondents to consider.
Similarly, the issue of abortion and contraception wasn’t among the specifically named issues in the Quinpac poll. The Quinpac question was this:
Absolutely nothing can be concluded about the importance of an issue that is not specifically named in a poll or survey. In the first poll there would have been no way to register its importance to you at all; in the second, “something else” might as well read “no opinion.”
I don’t know why anyone pays attention to anything Ed Morrissey has to say. Half of the time his reasoning is transparently faulty, even if he has managed to get his facts straight.
Democrats have seen abortion and contraception as major 2012 election issues since the 2010 elections, because of what newly elected republican majorities at the federal and state level have actually been doing since taking office, and because of their clearly stated intentions. The right of women to chose and the continued availability of the most widely used contraceptives are both being clearly targeted. Anyone who reads the text of H.R. 212: Sanctity of Human Life Act and considers the broad implications should immediately understand that.
Greg, does it make you proud to belong to a party that wants to kill babies but allow murderers to live?
Does it make you proud to belong to a party that wants to force young women to bear their rapists’ babies?
A single-cell zygote should not have any Constitutionally guaranteed rights. The entire idea is ludicrous. The implications of actually extending such rights from the moment of fertilization–overruling the will of a woman who would then be forced to eventually bear a child that she does not want–is a moral travesty. It’s more contrary to spirit of the Constitution than almost anything I can imagine.
@Greg:
What does that “single cell zygote” become? A puppy? Perhaps a daisy? Or maybe a butterfly? I thought you progressives believed in evolution. Guess not since you don’t want a “single cell zygote” to evolve into what nature designed it to evolve into. Yet, you will march around with your “Free Mumbia” and “Che” t-shirts on singing the praises of murderers.
So, if the law stated that women who were raped, and it could be proven they were raped (because it is a crime, you know) would you go along with abolishing abortion on demand because the choice, that caused the consequence of pregnancy, had already been made prior to conception?
Or do you just like the thought of burning babies to death with a saline solution, dismembering them to remove them from the womb, or sticking a Metzenbaum scissors in the back of the baby’s head to kill it prior to dismemberment and removal from the womb?
What does it matter what something could become? If it hasn’t yet, whatever we’re talking about doesn’t exist. Your train of logic seems to have derailed before it even pulled out of the station.
Want to set some rational limits about cut off points for abortion on demand? Fine. I have no problem with that. In fact, I could approve of that. Rational compromises could be reached. But this personhood business–that a zygote is a child from the moment of fertilization–is total nonsense, which deprives women of a fundamental right to control what happens to their own bodies. And turns that control over to government, which I would think would run counter to everything republicans claim to believe in.
@Greg:
And a infant is not yet a toddler; a toddler is not yet a teenager; a teenager is not yet an adult (not even when they hit 25 according to Democrats). So your point is? Shall we allow for the extermination of any child that has not yet completely evolved into a full blown adult? So, tell us, Mr. Science Man, just exactly when does that “single cell zygote” become a human being?
You continue to dodge the real issue; that in 99% of the cases of abortion, the choice of what a woman would do with her body was made prior to conception.
One other point; why does Planned Parenthood, started by Margaret Sanger, generally put their major abortion centers in black neighborhoods?
@Greg:
More accurately, the zygote stage refers to the moment after the sperm fertilizes the egg, but before cell division begins. (Once cell division begins, it is a morulla.) The single cell stage lasts for a very short time.
When zygote first divides into two identical cells, (called blastomeres,) The cells continue to subdivide once every 12 to 20 hours, eventually creating an inner group of cells with an outer shell. This stage is called a blastocyst.
The blastocyst reaches the womb (uterus) 5 days after fertilization, and implants into the uterine wall on about day 6. At this point in the mother’s menstrual cycle, the lining of the uterus has grown and is ready to support a baby. The blastocyst sticks tightly to the lining, where it receives nourishment via the mother’s bloodstream.
The cells continue to divide and reach the embryo stage as they begin to take on specific functions. This process is called differentiation. It leads to the various cell types that make up a human being (such as blood cells, kidney cells, and nerve cells).
The end of the eighth week marks the end of the “embryonic period” and the beginning of the “fetal period.”
For a rough day by day look at fetal development go to this link
@Ditto, #7:
Yep. The single-cell stage—a zygote—is specifically where the personhood bill Paul Ryan co-sponsored in the House states full Constitutional rights commence. From H.R. 212: Sanctity of Human Life Act:
If this bill were to pass, not only would the door be opened for states to ban all abortions without exception, but also to ban hormonal contraceptives, IUDs, and the “morning after” pill.
@Greg:
[emphasis mine]
… just as intended by the Founders. The states always had the constitutional authority to do so until SCOTUS pretended otherwise in Griswold v. Connecticut and Roe vs. Wade. So what would be the result? The result would be that the issues would then be properly decided on a state by state basis in each state’s political arena.
There are only two groups I am aware of that morally oppose abortion in some sense without exception: Roman Catholicism and orthodox Buddhism. Just about everyone else, including the Greek Orthodox Church, accepts an exception of one sort or another, such as when the mother’s life is at risk and/or when the mother’s health is at serious risk. Is there any state in the union today where the voters would support such a ban? I’m unaware of any such state. I’d be surprised if such a ban would garner 30% of the vote in any state.
One has historical precedent to consider regarding situation with Griswold v. Connecticut. The Catholic Church in America opposes artificial birth control. Some Evangelical Protestant intellectuals have come around to the Catholic position on this matter over the decades. However, since artificial birth control does not involve the active taking of human life, homicide, the Catholic Church like perhaps all American protestant churches historically accepted Griswold vs. Connecticut because they did not believe it was proper for them to attempt to impose their moral standards on the general public on this matter in a democratic pluralist society. That was the historical position of these churches and that is how they indeed behaved since Griswold vs. Connecticut. Has anything changed in this regard? No, other than the widespread adopted of artificial birth control by the American public. I’d be surprised if there were a single state in which a popular vote to ban artificial birth control would garner more than 5% of the vote.
H.R. 212: Sanctity of Human Life Act, is not Constitutionally radical. It would have not practical impact on the use of artificial birth control by adults.
@Greg:
Further, as clear form the quoted text, H.R. 212: Sanctity of Human Life Act applies only to abortion and has no impact what so ever on the legality of artificial birth control unless one is referring to an aborticant that can be used to kill an unborn baby.