McCain offered an olive branch to the Christian right in a speech about the kind of judges he would nominate planned for Tuesday at Wake Forest University. The far right has been deeply suspicious of McCain, the expected GOP presidential nominee, because he has clashed with its leaders and worked against them on issues like campaign finance reform.McCain promised to appoint judges who, in the mold of Roberts and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, are likely to limit the reach of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

“They would serve as the model for my own nominees if that responsibility falls to me,” McCain said in his prepared speech.

Asheville Citizen-Times

I love how the author refers to those who have had reservations about McCain as the “far right.”

In any case, judges were a big issue with many conservatives concerned about what kind of judges McCain would nominate. I’m not too worried about it. The “Gang of 14″ that he forged to get Bush’s stalled nominees through, in hindsight was actually a decent idea on his behalf. I was critical of it at the time, but it allowed Bush to get some excellent judges through, like Janice Rogers Brown, whom we wouldn’t have been able to get if that hadn’t happened.

So, I’m not too concerned with McCain when it comes to judges, but quite honestly, I don’t know if it will be possible for him to get a pro-life judge through without cloture. Even in the best case scenario for Republicans this year we won’t have enough Senators to break a filibuster, which will definitely happen if the Democrats don’t think they can win an up or down vote.

Nearly 70 percent of Italian gynecologists now refuse to perform abortions on moral grounds and the number is increasing, a report by the country’s ministry of health said Tuesday.

Abortion was legalised in 1978 in Italy but pressure from the Vatican — which is strongly opposed to abortion — enabled doctors to claim a “conscientious objection” clause and refuse to carry out terminations.

Between 2003 and 2007 the number of gynecologists claiming the conscience clause to avoid carrying out abortions rose from 58.7 percent to 69.2 percent, according to the report.

For anesthetists helping in abortions, the figure of those refusing to participate rose from 45.7 percent to 50.4 percent.

Breitbart

I was surprised by such a high number when I read this. Overall, Europe has become a decadent society lacking moral fiber, but I wonder if we’re starting to see a change in Italy. They did just reelect Berlusconi last week too.

Here was a choice clip (H/T Redstate)

I want to preface this with two things. One, I am not a supporter of Alan Keyes. I personally think he does more harm to the conservative cause than good. Second, the part in here about “Who would Jesus vote for?” is not relevant to this post (that’s a completely stupid question). What I want you to pay attention to are the parts where Keyes talks about what a disgusting man Barack Obama is in his support of live birth abortion and his opposition to the Born Alive Infants Protection Act that passed the U.S. Senate unanimously in 2002 and how he held up a similar legislation in the Illinois State Senate from passing that same year.

The Virginia Senate voted Wednesday to cut off state funding to Planned Parenthood of Virginia because it offers abortions, an action that could endanger hundreds of thousands of dollars in state aid for women’s health-care programs.

The decision, a major setback for the Senate’s new Democratic majority, marks the first time in more than a decade that the Senate has decided against giving state aid to the organization because of its abortion-related activities.

The Washington Post

The interesting thing about this is that the Republicans had tried in the past to cut funding to Planned Parenthood when they were in the Senate majority, but the pro baby murdering Republicans stood in the way of it. Now that they are in the minority every Senate Republican voted for the bill and one Democrat crossed over to tie the vote leaving the tie breaking vote to the Republican Lieutenant Governor.

No tax dollars should go to fund abortions. That is simply immoral and that decision now lies in Tim Kaine’s hands. I don’t think it will be an easy decision for him because while he is a Democrat and was certainly elected with the votes of the pro-murder crowd, Virginia is still a socially conservative state. What’s a governor to do?

The Christian News Wire notes two different statements that Huckabee has made in the past concerning his Federalist approach to abortion. One is below:

“The issue divides strongly committed pro-life and pro-choice Republicans but is not a central issue to most other Republicans. A possible platform revision long under discussion would say the Republican Party, ‘unlike the Democratic Party, does not stand for abortion on demand and is basically a pro-life party.’ In the spirit of federalism, the proposed GOP revision also would replace the abortion amendment with a statement saying the issue should be left up to the individual state legislatures to deal with as each sees fit. ‘That’s exactly what we have looked for, and if it’s left up to the states, more of them are going to put some restrictions on abortion,’ Arkansas Lt. Gov. Mike Huckabee said in an interview after appearing on a conference panel yesterday.” (Ralph Z. Hallow, “Conservatives Hold Fire On Abortion,” Washington Times, 2/12/95).

I agree with Huckabee on this. The chances of the Federal Government passing an outright ban on abortion is a pipe dream and there are a lot of people in the pro-life community who need to come to that realization. The best approach is that being advocated by Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson, to overturn Roe and return the decision to the states. From there pro-life advocates can begin to lobby for bans on a state by state basis and actually make some progress instead of following the all or nothing approach.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee is under fire from Jewish groups after a speech he gave at a pro-life event the weekend before last. In the address to the Family Research Council, the former Arkansas governor referred to the deaths of 45-50 million unborn children from abortion as a holocaust.

In the speech, he linked the issues of abortion and illegal immigration — saying the destruction of tens of millions of unborn children has left the U.S. with a worker shortage.

“Sometimes we talk about why we’re importing so many people in our work force,” Huckabee said in the speech.

“It might be for the last 35 years, we have aborted more than a million people who would have been in our work force had we not had the holocaust of liberalized abortion under a flawed Supreme Court ruling in 1973,” he explained.

Life News

I don’t see the problem here.  Is what he said not true?  While the exact number will never be known, roughly 11 million people were killed during the Holocaust.  Since 1973, when the Supreme Court wrongly decided Roe ( to which Darth Vader Ginsburg herself has admitted is bad law) over 46 million lives have been snuffed out and slaughtered.  Many had sharp objects stabbed through their heads and their bodies dismembered and sucked out of a womb with a vacuum cleaner, thrown into a pan, and dumped into an incinerator.  That sounds a lot like a Holocaust type tragedy to me.

From The Corner at National Review Online:

On the one hand, the results look encouraging for Giuliani – 64 percent said his views on abortion and gay rights would either make them more likely to vote for him or make no difference. But that 21 percent for whom it would make them more likely to vote against him is a pretty big number. And in perhaps the most important finding in the poll, Gallup also asked Republicans and Republican leaners whether Giuliani is “generally pro-life or pro-choice, or are you unsure?” Eight percent said Giuliani is pro-life, 37 percent said pro-choice, and 55 percent said unsure. Those numbers are a change from January, when 16 percent said Giuliani was pro-life, 20 percent said he was pro-choice, and 64 percent weren’t sure. It could be that the voters for whom that matters greatly already know Giuliani’s position, or it could be that that 55 percent includes voters who will turn against him once they learn more about him.

If more than half of Republicans surveyed “don’t know” Mayor Giuliani’s position on life, but will certainly learn as primaries come nearer and nearer, this might explain his commanding lead that is confusing to some, and how easily it can (and will, in my opinion) slip away.

Pope Benedict rejected the concept that abortion could be considered a human right on Friday and urged European leaders to do everything possible to raise birth rates and make their countries more child-friendly.The 80-year-old German Pontiff told diplomats and representatives of international organizations that Europe could not deny its Christian roots because Christianity had played a decisive role in forging its history and culture.”It was in Europe that the notion of human rights was first formulated. The fundamental human right, the presupposition of every other right, is the right to life itself,” he said in an address at the former imperial Hofburg Palace.

“This is true of life from the moment of conception until its natural end. Abortion, consequently, cannot be a human right — it is the very opposite. It is a deep wound in society.”

Reuters

How much has western society decayed that so many think otherwise.

A bill prohibiting public funds from being used for most abortions has become law in Oklahoma after a deadline passed for the state’s governor to veto the measure.

“If the governor doesn’t act, it becomes law,” said his spokesman, Phil Bacharach. Gov. Brad Henry had until midnight on Wednesday night to veto the bill.

Henry, a Democrat, vetoed a previous bill that contained no exceptions for publicly funded abortions even in cases of rape or incest. The new version allows such an exception if the victim reports the crime to the police.

It easily passed the Republican-controlled House and got through the evenly divided state Senate with several votes from Democratic lawmakers.

Reuters

Another step forward for respecting life.

U.S. Republican presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani said he wouldn’t rule out the possibility of filling a future Supreme Court vacancy with an outspoken opponent of abortion.

Giuliani, the former New York City mayor who advocates keeping abortion legal, today said on “Fox News Sunday” that he would consider nominating a critic of abortion rights if the person had a strong overall record.

Bloomberg

Giuliani’s position on abortion is no secret and I respect him for not running away from it. He continues to make it clear that he is more than open to nominating pro-life judges to the Supreme Court and that he would not use someone’s opinions on abortion as a litmus test. Overturning Roe would return the issue of abortion back to the states where it belongs, not outlaw forthright, so based on his statements is it reasonable to conclude he would back an anti-Roe judge?

“If I thought that on 20 other issues they would be terrific, I might be able to, sure,” Giuliani said. “I don’t consider it a litmus test. If you don’t consider it a litmus test, you don’t consider it a litmus test either way.”

Since there has been a lot of beating up on Rudy Giuliani on the abortion issue, I thought it was only fair to bring up the Congressional National Political Awareness Test that Thompson took in 1994.  On the subject of abortion, Thompson checked the following box:

Abortions should be legal in all circumstances as long as the procedure is completed within the first trimester of the pregnancy.

Now he also check the box that indicated Congress should leave legislation on this issue in the hands of the states, which would tell me that he is in favor of overturning Roe, but that is inconclusive.

Partial-Birth Abortion Ban upheld.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority handed anti-abortion forces a major victory Wednesday in a decision that bans a controversial abortion procedure and set the stage for further restrictions.

For the first time since the court established a woman’s right to an abortion in 1973, the justices upheld a nationwide ban on a specific abortion method, labeled partial-birth abortion by its opponents.

The 5-4 decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

The law is constitutional despite not containing an exception that would allow the procedure if needed to preserve a woman’s health, Kennedy said. “The law need not give abortion doctors unfettered choice in the course of their medical practice,” he wrote in the majority opinion.

Well a conservative majority is laughable, but I am thankful they got this one right.

A Texas legislator has proposed that pregnant women considering abortion be offered $500 not to end their pregnancies.

Republican State Sen. Dan Patrick, who also is a conservative radio talk show host, said on Friday the money might convince the women to go ahead and have babies, then give them up for adoption.

He said during a legislative conference in New Braunfels, 45 miles south of Austin, there were 75,000 abortions in Texas last year.

“If this incentive would give pause and change the mind of 5 percent of those woman, that’s 3,000 lives. That’s almost as many people as we’ve lost in Iraq,” Patrick said.

Reuters

I am not going to poke fun at this guy because his heart is in the right place, but this is just an uber bad idea on a fiscal and moral ground. To begin with, nobody should be paid to have their baby. I really have to question the humanity of a woman who will place a $500 price tag on the life of her child. Not to mention what the psychological impact would be on that child as an adult if he ever found out the circumstances of his birth.

Additionally, the provisions of this law would render it ineffective anyway, in my opinion. This bill says that the money would be paid after the child is born and given to an adoption agency. This prevents fraud, but probably also defeats the purpose. I would think anyone shallow enough to participate in this program would probably want the money up front rather than after the birth. That, however, would open the door for fraud, so it’s a “Catch 22.”

Has our culture degraded this badly that this is what we now must resort to as a society?

Italian Judge Imposes Abortion on 13-Year-Old

H/T: Drudge

Filed under the “It could be worse, it could be Europe” label comes news that the Church of England has quasi-endorsed child murder. This is not hyperbole, certain physicians (do no harm) and ethics groups around the world want doctors to have the right to murder infants that they do not believe deserve to live. Men who think this way are monsters.

I will remember the moment that my pro-life convictions began to firm, when a feminist friend of mine in college defended a practice she called “post-term abortion”, the murder of a child after it had been born. I was disgusted, but assumed that even our culture of death would never go that far. Now I’m not so sure.

Bush Vetoes Stem Cell Bill

Coleman to vote against embryonic stem cell bill

After that, Coleman said, he hopes to move forward with his bill, which he called “a pro-life, pro-science common ground.”

And what exactly is this wonderful “common ground” bill? In Coleman’s own words:

“Let me be clear: these are existing stem cell lines that have already been created in the private sector,” continued Coleman. “The right to life or death has already been decided. My proposal does not open a window or create any opportunity in which further additional stem cell lines may be created. It just moves the goal post. We need to do all we can to promote life saving research, while recognizing that there is an important moral component to this. I believe human life is a sacred gift from our Creator and that embryonic stem cell research after great promise, but raises important ethical questions.”

Sorry Coleman, you can’t have it both ways. “The right to life or death” is not a foregone conclusion. There is such a thing as embryo adoption.

…

Proponents say the promise that stem cell research holds for treating and curing diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s outweighs the ethical concerns.

I’m sorry but the ends don’t justify the means. Scientific advancement does not justify killing people.

Just read his waffling in this interview. Sadly, Casey Sr would’ve stood up for his principles and talked about why the democratic party once was and could be again a pro-life party. Instead his son runs for the hills, its just sad.

From Waldo Jaquith (one of the brightest liberal bloggers in Virginia) by way of Shaun Kenney (one of the brightest and best conservative Virginia bloggers, and a fine Catholic to boot) we learn that bloggers have been posting do-it-yourself guides to abortion.

Kenney’s right: there’s a special place in hell for people like this.