Excerpt: "I'm honestly perplexed about the distinction represented by the cervical wall. On one side, people should be prosecuted if they do anything to harm the fetus, but once on the outside, sorry kid, whatever happens happens. You're on your own."
A homeless American family holds signs asking for help. (photo: Change the World)
Republicans, What About Children Outside the Womb?
30 August 12
he Republican Party platform includes support for the "Human Life Amendment," also known as HR 212. It gives a fertilized egg inside the womb the same rights as a person outside the womb. It's designed to ban all abortions.
Now, we all know how deeply the issue of abortion hits people -- in both parties. It's hard. It's sensitive and personal, and there are no easy answers. But even if we are divided over the question of when life begins, one thing we should agree on is this: Vulnerable children outside the womb deserve at least as much focus and care as those not yet born. Shouldn't those concerned about the lives of the unborn be equally concerned about the lives of the recently born?
I'm honestly perplexed about the distinction represented by the cervical wall. On one side, people should be prosecuted if they do anything to harm the fetus, but once on the outside, sorry kid, whatever happens happens. You're on your own.
A 71-year-old viewer wrote to me this weekend and got me thinking about the terms we use in the debate: "pro-life" vs. "pro-choice." Democrats have allowed the Republicans to frame the issue and have ceded the territory of "life."
Republicans are definitely pro-birth (they'll do everything they can to make sure that that baby comes out, regardless of how it got in), but are they pro-life?
Can you be pro-life and vote to cut funding that supports the life of a child? Paul Ryan's cut-at-all-costs budget and philosophy, which 100 percent of the pro-life Republicans voted for, would gut the funding that supports at-risk babies and children: food stamps, temporary assistance to needy families, day care, Head Start, early childhood education, children's health care.
At the state level GOP governors are cutting the child protection workers who handle child abuse and neglect cases -- you know, those awful public employees who must have caused the financial crisis. Programs that would benefit at-risk children outside the womb are all on the chopping block.
For example, Republicans have introduced HR 3803, a bill called the "Pain-capable Unborn Child Protection Act." And the bill to protect born children from pain is...?
Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun, had this to say on Bill Moyers' show in November of 2004:
I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion, that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking if all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed. And why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.
So true, Sister Joan. I say Democrats should not be afraid to talk about the morality of life, of caring for children who are born. It seems the Republican obsession with being pro-life lasts about nine months. After that, it's each baby for herself. So Democrats, let's be clear and strong: Being pro-birth is not automatically the same thing as being pro-life.
Gov. Jennifer M. Granholm, former governor of Michigan; host, 'The War Room' on Current TV; columnist, Politico; faculty member, UC Berkeley
Originally aired on The War Room with Jennifer Granholm. The War Room airs weeknights at 9 p.m. EST on Current TV. Follow Jennifer Granholm on Facebook and Twitter, and The War Room on Facebook and Twitter.
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Comments
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See, for example: http://www.amazon.com/Redesigning-Distribution-Stakeholder-Cornerstones-Egalitarian/dp/1844675173
The idea of a guaranteed income was even supported years ago by that "free market" darling of the right, Milton Friedman, during the days of Richard Nixon (Friedman did not like the idea but supported it because he said he believed it would be cheaper, more efficient, and more effective than the existing system of welfare -- all absolutely true.
At the very least, by raising the issue, we can finally begin to talk about how existing resources are used in this country and why the richest country on earth cannot provide for all of its citizens. In addition, if we couple this with calls for publicly controlled financial institutions and for the government to take back its powers to create money (currently done as debt through the private banks) we have the beginnings of real comprehensive, revolutionary reforms.
http://youtu.be/AvF1Q3UidWM
Enjoy!
Will all the anti-abortion people agree to support all the children they would compel to be born? Probably not.
Now consider warfare. What is warfare but very, very late term abortion?
If all life matters, then it matters throughout a life's trajectory, not simply during gestation.
Finally, if all life matters, then life other than human life matters equally.
(If we are all "god's" creatures.)
Curious, this obsession with the rights of the fetus, combined with a total lack of care for the wellbeing of children already born, let alone the vastly greater number as yet unconceived: OUR POSTERITY.
Lack of care is bad enough yet, by their every act of commission or omission, those who call themselves pro-life (and aggressively proclaim themselves pro-choice in every area of life except that of the zygote) may condemn untold millions to lives of untold misery followed by early death.
It is because we have no sense of context, none of personal responsibility or of the consequences of our actions or inaction, that we cannot see the hell on earth that we are laying up for others, even our own grandchildren and their children.
Humanity demands that we concern ourselves with the good of all beings, not just a limited category. The politicization of “pro-life” positions is a lowdown attempt to utilize people’s at best well-motivated prejudices as a tool to control them and drive them towards other unspoken but ignoble goals. At worst, there’s evil at work at all levels: arousing in the self-righteous a sadistic desire to punish “sinful” women. And to visit that punishment lifelong on the fruits of sin, their children… Manipulating people’s instincts. After the better ones, the baser.
I've told people that our bombs all contain microchips that guarantee that they can't hit pregnant women. Babies have to be born before we kill them.
They want to use our bodies for their purposes. If men, how come they haven't supported research to transplant fetuses to their bodies? If "they" are men, birth would have to be by caeserian section, of course. Pro-fetus women should be volunteering to carry the babies of women who don't want these fetuses in their bodies.
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