Lieberman Defends Abortion Remarks (was "misrepresented")

Democratic presidential candidate Joseph I. Lieberman's position on abortion came under fire yesterday after a New Hampshire newspaper quoted him as saying that medical advances have shortened "the period of time in a pregnancy when the right to choose prevails."

The Connecticut senator's campaign said the Manchester Union Leader had quoted him accurately but misrepresented his position by saying that he had called for a reexamination of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide.

"In fact, Lieberman never suggested that Roe v. Wade should be revisited or reconsidered in any way, shape or form," said Lieberman spokesman Jano Cabrera.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A32997-2003Dec26.html

...whatever. Joe can't return to irrelevancy soon enough. Back into the political woodlands with ya Joe!

making him light-headed. :shrug:

Aussie paper says Bush leery of Joe as foe
(December 23, 2003)
New Haven Register


WASHINGTON -- Who strikes fear in the heart of our commander-in-chief?

According to the Australian, a daily newspaper Down Under, it's U.S. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn.

Editor and columnist Greg Sheridan reported as much in the newspaper's Dec. 18 edition:

"When U.S. President George W. Bush visited Canberra in October, he told his friend (Australian Prime Minister) John Howard that the Democratic candidate who, if he won the primaries, would be his most formidable opponent in the 2004 presidential election was Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman," Sheridan wrote.

In the piece, Sheridan notes the apparent blow the capture of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein dealt to former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's antiwar campaign.

"One thing you can say about Bush is that he is expert at winning elections and his assessment of Lieberman -- Al Gore's running mate in 2000 and the most hawkish of the Democrats -- is a fascinating insight into the role he thinks national security will play in November's election," Sheridan wrote.

Lieberman campaign spokesman Adam Kovacevich called Sheridan's assessment "very interesting."

"This is the same argument that Sen. Lieberman has been making, that he would be the toughest opponent for President Bush because he's both strong on defense and strong on the economy as well," Kovacevich said.

"George Bush has been a bad president, but we have no problem whatsoever with his political prognostication," Kovacevich said.

Kevin Madden, a spokesman for Bush's re-election campaign, said that he "can't comment on any private conversations that the president had with Mr. Howard."

Heather Layman, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, declined to speak specifically about Lieberman and Dean.

"Each of the Democratic candidates has strengths and weaknesses. Regardless of who the nominee is we expect a close election, and the party will rally around whoever the nominee is," Layman said.

Layman called Kovacevich's critical aside about Bush "pessimism and attack -- just another example of what all the (Democratic) candidates are doing.

Dean campaign spokesman Eric Schmeltzer accused Lieberman of being a conservative in Democrats' clothing.

"The fact is, the only way to beat George Bush is to give voters a clear choice, not try to be 'Bush-lite,' " Schmeltzer said.

"One thing Howard Dean and Joe Lieberman agree on is that George W. Bush is hardly an expert at winning elections, considering Al Gore got more votes than him in 2000," Schmeltzer said.

Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press," House Majority Leader U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said that the leadership of the Republican party "would love to run against Howard Dean" in the November 2004 presidential election.

"He is so far out there on the fringe," DeLay said.

Recent polls of Democratic voters show Lieberman tied with retired Army Gen. Wesley Clark in second place nationally behind Dean.

doesn't that automatically bring into question the legality of R v W? Just because it wasn't said directly doesn't mean it wasn't part of the implied logic.

Does anyone say anything honestly and openly anymore?

think it refers to 'viability' of the fetus and not a specfic age

Under Roe, viability is what determines the cutoff point where states can begin to restrict abortions.
As far as I know, there has not been a court challenge on whether natural viability or viability resulting from heroic measures is what was intended. Seems to me the former is most reasonable.

Improvements in neonate technology make it possible for the fetus to survive outside the mother earlier and earlier. The Supreme Court recognized this in the 1990's by abandoning the trimester scheme of Roe, which once tied viability to the third trimester of pregnancy.

Before you scream, I am not a Lieberman fan, nor am I "pro-life." I am only stating facts.

Really, I am actually quite impressed with what Joe said. I've never considered that point before, and it is an interesting one. What should the Dems do to counter this? That seems to be the "debate" Joe is calling for with regard to Roe v. Wade. Makes perfect sense to me.

but it was Judge Souter who convinced Justices Kennedy and O'Connor to uphold Roe on the basis of precedent.

Liberman is demagoguing the issue!

More about that here:

The remarkable thing is that the Court was going to overturn Roe, but did not do so. In his inside the Court book Closed Chambers former clerk Edward Lazarus gives a rather telling account of how the Court, prompted by the likes of Solicitor General Ken Starr (among others), had decided to use Casey to overturn Roe. This would have happened had it not been for Judge Souter. Souter shared the same concern for due process and stare decisis of his hero Justice Harlan, the lone dissenter in the 1896 Plessy decision. Souter convinced Justices O'Connor and Kennedy to write an opinion in which they would uphold Roe not on its merits, but to preserve the Court's institutional integrity (Lazarus 459-476). The language was simply stunning; a decision to overturn Roe would be "a surrender to political pressure, and an unjustified repudiation of the principle on which the Court staked its authority in the first place... (Overruling Roe) would subvert the Court's legitimacy beyond any serious question" (Lazarus 476).

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=29426#30970

Viability is a sticking point. Perhaps artificial wombs may provide an answer. Now what about all those eggs and sperm still searching for a vital connection, if it doesn't happen, do we call that "reckless abandonment"?

Seriously, viability is the issue.

Quite frankly it appears to insult pro-choice and anti-abortionists
at the same time. Ouch!!!

I do believe Joe needs a good look in the mirror.

Oh well, some guys never learn.

...He's playing the attention-span game.

Day 1, he says he wants to re-examine Roe. Two kinds of people hear it, those who think it should be re-examined, and those who don't. Statistically, disagreers (is that a word?) tend to be more careful about looking into what he actually said.

Day 2, he backtracks on it. Mostly just the disagreers hear the "correction", meanwhile he's possibly picked up a few people on Day 1 who agree with his position (and never bothered to look into a correction), while covering his ass on the second group.

It's actually kind of clever. He's still a jerk, but it's kind of clever, and shows someone in his campaign understands media better than we're giving them credit for. :shrug:

Lieberman wants to be the pro-choice/pro-life candidate. That way, he thinks he can appeal to everybody. Compare: Dick Nixon on most issues.

This is something to think about though!

A little background might help the discussion here. The choices are neither simple nor pure.

Read this article:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=29426#30970

Beating up on poor Joe? They could have phrased it in such a way as to gain him some sort of popular support, so what is their game? proabaly just beating up on a figure of little consequence to roil the issue waters generally against he party.

(which automatically excludes the large number of Lieberman bashers around here who remain willfully ignorant) would know that he has compiled one of the most strongly pro-choice records of anyone in the Senate. There is exactly zero chance that Lieberman would appoint judges who would undermine the legal underpinnings to the constitutional right to an abortion. Why the Manchester Union would choose to suggest otherwise is beyond my comprehension. But then again, the Manchester Union is a right-wing publication, so I wouldn't expect to comprehend such things. Still, I find it amusing that so many DU'ers would choose to side with the Manchester Union leader instead of a life-long, pro-choice Democrat. Now THAT's something I'll never comprehend either. But kudos to those brave posters who actually decided to think this through instead of automatically jumping on the bash Joe bandwagon.

It is amazing how much the internet crowd and the more leftist elements of our party hates our former VEEP Nominee. He is the only major candidate who does not mince words and says what he means.

I like Dean, at least he is honest. Some of these other candidates don't know what they stand for. However I will be voting for Lieberman.

- James

I am in no way suggesting that it should be, and I think the above post that discusses Souter's reasoning in Casey is one reason why it won't be. It poses an interesting hypothetical....

1. Abortion would not go away. Many states would legalize abortion. In these states, abortion would remain relatively safe (as a medical procedure - remember, that there are still women who die every year as a result of legal abortion). Women in states where abortion would be illegal would either seek abortion in states where abortion would remain legal, seek an illegal abortion (done safely in a physician's office, or unsafely in a back alley). Complications and mortality rates among women would certainly rise.

2. Abortion would not go away. Nobody on the "pro-life" side seems to realize that. The very sad thing, for those of us who think that abortion is a bad choice (although it should be a legal choice) for women and their children, is that we have the social policy tools to decrease abortion, by providing women with better choices and better opportunity. We don't have the political will to wield them. Democrats are guilty of this as well, by keeping the debate about abortion focused on Roe v Wade, we are unable to move beyond Roe v Wade (assuming that it will not, and should not, be overturned), and find a common ground that would be better for women, their unborn and their born children, and their families than the current public policy stalemate. And which would also neutralize this as an effective issue for Republicans.

3. Abortion would not go away. Some women will still choose abortion, usually for deeply personal and difficult reasons. While I cannot agree with their choice, this choice should remain legal.

4. This makes for enlightening discussion with "pro-lifers" who think that Roe v Wade is the cause of abortions.

"When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society - so when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged."
Mattie Brinkerhoff. The Revolution, 4(9):138-9 September 2, 1869

Availabilty of abortion is a very human issue with very real personal consequences. It is a medical procedure with valid reasons for its application. I don't think government has an overriding prohibitive function here. Regulation, perhaps.

From the post I am replying to:

"When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society - so when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged."
Mattie Brinkerhoff. The Revolution, 4(9):138-9 September 2, 1869

Now, that quote is one that Google will find for you in very many places ... pretty much to a one: anti-choice brigade outlets.

Here's a source I like to quote:

http://www.rtis.com/reg/bcs/pol/touchstone/summer00/04abort.htm

WHAT THE FOUNDERS OF FEMINISM REALLY THOUGHT ABOUT ABORTION
(Part One) by Barbara Finlay, Carol Walther, and Amy Hinze

Anti-choice groups try many different tactics to discredit pro-choice arguments. One interesting example can be found on the website of the Brazos Valley Coalition for Life (BVCL). They display a page entitled "The Founders of Women's Movement All Opposed Abortion: Authentic Feminism is Pro-Life" (http://www.respectlife.org/articles/a029.htm). The BVCL lists quotes from our feminist foremothers and implies that women like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton were actually "pro-life." ... We decided to research these quotes and report their true context to the faithful readers of The Touchstone.

... Mattie Brinkerhoff

BVCL website says: "'When a man steals to satisfy hunger, we may safely conclude that there is something wrong in society -- so when a woman destroys the life of her unborn child, it is an evidence that either by education or circumstances she has been greatly wronged.' (The Revolution 3(9): 138-9 September 2, 1869)" This quote appears not only on the list promoted by the BVCL but also on many anti-choice web pages across the web. (Evidently they all copied the quote from the same source, because all repeat the same mistake made above; the quote is not from volume 3, but from volume 4.)

(note: the error seems to have been corrected on the source site: http://www.feministsforlife.org/history/foremoth.htm)

However, no other information is available on Mattie Brinkerhoff. She apparently had no other publications. She is not mentioned in the most thorough texts about the women's movement. In fact, the article in which this quote appeared was not an article at all, but a letter to the editor. This raises the suspicion that whoever compiled the BVCL list had to search through a vast number of early feminist publications to find anything that could be interpreted as anti-choice.

Brinkerhoff's letter to the editor of The Revolution, a feminist newspaper published by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, is in response to a previous letter that suggested motherhood was the only proper endeavor for women. Her letter details the harm of this belief. The central point of Brinkerhoff's letter is that men should not be able to control women's reproduction. She attributes the incidence of abortion to the fact that women in the 1800s did not have the right to refuse to have sex with their husbands or the ability to obtain birth control.

Brinkerhoff stated that women should be able to decide when they want to bear children. She wrote, "We are forced to ask, by what law shall we decide when woman is sufficiently developed in mind and body to be a good mother? Before what tribunal shall she be judged? Does not reason answer, the council chamber of her own being?" ... In order to achieve this, Brinkerhoff advocated "making the mother...the owner of her own body, in short, the controller of her own destiny." ...

This example shows the lengths to which the anti-choice movement will go to find arguments that support their position. Even when they expand their definition of prominent leaders of the early feminist movement to include a woman who only wrote a letter to the editor, in these cases they are unable to find a quote that truly supports their stance on abortion.

Hmm. "pllib" suggests that there might be interesting conversation with "pro-lifers" <quotation marks in the original>. Me, I'm wondering what "pllib" might mean. Not wondering too hard, when I see what pllib writes.

"... by keeping the debate about abortion focused on Roe v Wade, we are unable to move beyond Roe v Wade (assuming that it will not, and should not, be overturned), and find a common ground that would be better for women, their unborn and their born children, and their families than the current public policy stalemate."

Oh, hell. I'm so bored with writing commentary on this kind of crap that I'm not even going to bother. Wake me up when someone proposes that what pllib and his/her ilk can do with their bodies and their lives should be governed by what "would be better" FOR ME than what pllib thinks would be best for him/herself, and I'll show up for the demo that would undoubtedly be organized to protest this violation of pllib's fundamental human rights.

"Public policy stalemate"? When did that happen? Last I heard (me being north of the border and all, where we don't have any such problems), abortion was legal in the US, subject to various unconstitutional restrictions though it is. Stalemate? Wishful thinking on pllib's part I'd say ... or a desperate attempt to persuade somebody that some sort of compromise -- oh yes, "common ground" -- with the brigade of would-be rights violators is needed for some reason.

Me, I'm always looking for common ground with people who want to violate my fundamental human rights. (You can turn sarcasm off now, or just keep it on since it may be needed again soon.) Oh yeah, and I'm always up for a good compromise when it comes to other people's rights; make me an offer, and I might be willing to bargain them away too.


In this thread, pllib says (post 35):

"Why do women choose abortion? Most choose abortion out of desparation - they lack the support, emotional or financial, to carry them through a pregnancy or to support their child. Their choice of abortion is not really a 'choice'."

Again ... one does get too bored to comment after a while. But someone needs to point out to pllib, and anyone else trying to portray women, and women's choices, in this patronizing, trivializing manner that it is currently estimated that 43% of women in the US will have at least one abortion in their lifetimes. When you add in all the women with unwanted pregnancies that they carry to term (whether by choice or by lack of choice), and survey human history and geography, you quickly and unavoidably realize that unwanted pregnancy is quite simply a fact of women's lives, and that whether a pregnancy is wanted or unwanted will depend on a myriad of factors that can seldom be reduced to such simplistic equations as pllib offers us.

Unwanted pregnancy + guaranteed annual income just does not = wanted pregnancy.

To suggest that it does, or should, is to deny that women have, and are are entitled to have, slightly more complex goals and aspirations than to secure the minimum material conditions needed in order to bear and rear children. Women have personal, educational, occupational, social and a variety of other goals and aspirations with which unplanned childbearing and childrearing are very often not compatible. And like everyone else in whose lap life does not drop everything they want without effort or sacrifice or foregone options, women often have to make choices.

Yes indeed, it would be nice if women who wanted an unplanned pregnancy to lead to childbearing and childrearing had the material conditions to make this not just possible, but good, for both themselves and their children. It would also be nice if, oh, everyone who wanted to go to university could do so, regardless of financial resources.

Why should anyone's options, in matters of such importance to their future well-being, be limited by lack of those resources? Why should childbearing, a choice some people might like to make in their own interests and in fulfilment of their own goals and aspirations, but find themselves unable to make without extreme hardship, be different from the choice to go to university that some other people might like to make in their own interests and in fulfilment of their own goals and aspirations?

Are the pllibs of the world demanding free tuition for everyone capable of attending university or college?

"It is the unjust structures of our society - the lack of economic opportunity, universal health insurance, the still not equal rights of women in our society ... that lead many women to choose abortion."

Yeah. And all those things also lead many people to choose insecure employment that does not enable them to support themselves, let alone a family, decently; to choose to drop out of school and be doomed to a life of insecure, ill-paid employment (if any) and all the negative effects of low income (relatively poorer physical and mental health, premature death, etc.).

Why can't we just argue for more equal access to benefits that would enable EVERYONE to have a better chance of achieving his/her goals and aspirations -- educational opportunities, health care, decent housing, protective labour legislation ... one could go on and on -- ?

Why do these issues need to be tied to women's reproductive rights in such a way as to diminish the basis of those rights -- WOMEN'S HUMANITY and women's ability/entitlement to make choices for themselves -- by reducing them to accounting problems?

I know why, of course. I've heard that "transparency" has been voted word of the year for 2003. I'm sure the judges didn't have "pro-life liberals" in mind when they made the selection, but "transparent" is certainly the best word I can think of to describe them.

.

With all of his moralizing, it doesn't surprise me at all.