My friend, a bleeding heart, thinks he is repub for abortion

I have a friend: he is a very religious Catholic. He is against the death penalty, gives to the poor, cares about the health care issue, is not at all comfortable with the war and definitely not comfortable with torture (doesn't want to hear about it - actually runs away from me when I hammer him with it) and he thinks he is a republican. Why??? Because he is 100% against abortion. Now, I tried to tell him the Dems are not pro-abortion. I tell him we just feel it is a personal decision between a woman and her doctor. But he doesn't want to hear it. He perceives that to be a Dem, you must be pro-choice. So I think it is healthy for the Dem party to have some pro-life/anti-choice people in very visible positions. Aren't we tolerant enough to tolerate what is a very personal and painful subject for some??

Your thoughts are appreciated.

If we are running a pro-choice Democrat in a local election, and that issue dwarfs all other issues for your friend, voting Republican is the rational thing for him to do.

and Kerry personally didn't support abortion, altho he is a great believer in minding his own business

ask your friend if he remembers the part of the bible that counsels "let he who is without sin, cast the first stone" and "judge not lest you be judged" and then gently remind him a woman's decision on child birth is really none of his business at all.

in fact IMHO men should have very little say at all about birthing babies since it is a life changing decision for women in every case, whether she keeps the child, gives it up for adoption or chooses the heartrending choice of abortion.


just a thought.....

the main issue.

If children are well educated about sex, they know what can occur if they do not use protection.

The Republicans WANT abstinence programs that keep our children stupid. Only because they cannot handle the thought of kids having sex. The issue is not going away, but they prefer to pretend that the problem does not exist, therefore nothing will happen.

Abortions have actually gone UP under Bush because so many women and their partners are out of work or in desperate financial straits.

No one WANTS to have an abortion.

We should be working to REDUCE the number of abortions. The Republicans don't want to do that. They just don't want anyone having sex. And they don't want women having any say-so in their own lives.

You may want to point your friend to people like Harry Reid, who is pro-life.

FSC

of the "safe, legal and rare" mantra) and they have increased under Bush.

I also think Clinton's formulation of the issue was correct.

Pro-life? Look at the fruits
by Dr. Glen Harold Stassen

I am a Christian ethicist, and trained in statistical analysis. I am consistently pro-life. My son David is one witness. For my family, "pro-life" is personal. My wife caught rubella in the eighth week of her pregnancy. We decided not to terminate, to love and raise our baby. David is legally blind and severely handicapped; he also is a blessing to us and to the world.

I look at the fruits of political policies more than words. I analyzed the data on abortion during the George W. Bush presidency. There is no single source for this information - federal reports go only to 2000, and many states do not report - but I found enough data to identify trends. My findings are counterintuitive and disturbing.

Abortion was decreasing. When President Bush took office, the nation's abortion rates were at a 24-year low, after a 17.4% decline during the 1990s. This was an average decrease of 1.7% per year, mostly during the latter part of the decade. (This data comes from Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life using the Guttmacher Institute's studies).

Enter George W. Bush in 2001. One would expect the abortion rate to continue its consistent course downward, if not plunge. Instead, the opposite happened.

http://www.sojo.net/index.cfm?action=sojomail.display&issue=041013#5

Ok - that link requires registration but I got it through the site below which came up during a google search and also includes this essay.

http://thereitis.org/displayarticle785.html

The intro states " Here's an interesting piece presenting an argument that if you are "prolife," you ought to vote against Bush because of the relationship between increased abortion and decreased funding for social programs.

You also might want to get your friend Jim Wallis's book - God's Politics. I bought it but haven't read it yet (I will soon) but it would probably be something he would be interested in.

Surely he can agree that it is obvious that to be a Democrat you don't have to be pro-choice.

First of all, I know a lot of people who use the issue of choice as ax excuse to vote Republican. They can simply use it as an emotional argument instead of having to try to defend the myriad of horrors the Republican position entails. Maybe they really are, deep down, afraid of homosexuals, or really just want to get as much money for themselves ... who knows? So, my point is, if the issue of abortion was taken off the table, those types would find some other reason to continue to vote Republican.

The point is, if a person truly cares about life, then they would not be voting Republican. Those of us who believe in personal choice will defend it.

And specfically on abortion, why don't people who care so much try to prevent unwanted pregnancies instead of focusing on trying to force women who are already pregnant to give birth?

Just my opinion based on my life experiences.

http://www.sapphireblue.com/25years/

And explain what happens when women are desperate to avoid a pregnancy. The woman in this picture was afraid for her life.

Not only did her unborn child die, but she died as well. This is humane? We want women to die along with their babies? That's two lives snuffed out instead of just one.

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I certainly can understand his religious feeling. I'd just ask whether he pays for baby clothes and diapers? Does your friend take little children of single mothers, or orphans, to the park? Does he stay up with them if they have fevers? Does he explain why daddy doesn't want to have anything to do with them?

Pro-lifers want to maintain lofty ideals but very often don't seem to deal with the reality of what they propose.

It's between a woman and her God, or whatever she believes. I don't have a right to interfere with that, although I am personally pro-life. The government CERTAINLY has no right to force a decision, which is why I am politically pro-choice.

and I think I'm pro-life to the extent that I actually do view abortion as ending a life. I think it could be acceptable only in very severe cases. I think we should have drastically better sex ed. and there should be drastically better adoption systems in place for the children who would be born.

The view that abortion is murder is hard to shake. It invalidates all the "choice" language. We don't allow people to choose to murder other people whenever they feel like it. It also invalidates all the "I don't care what men think" comments that always pop up. I'm not extreme on this issue, however, I just view myself as being TOTALLY pro-life, unlike the Repukes. Therefore, I am opposed to the death penalty, opposed to most wars, in favor of having firearms being illegal, opposed to environmentally irresponsible corporations, opposed to poverty-creating policies of the plutocrats in power, etc. Abortion is the one area I can't reconcile with my other liberal views.

It will never be a reason for me to vote for any repuke or DINO, however. The larger issue responsible for many deaths is greed. It's why companies pollute, repukes take all the money from the working class and create wage slaves with no health care, wars are fought, people in Africa have little AIDS medications, etc.

Dennis Kucinich had a perfect pro-life voting record until quite recently and I don't think he was given a hard time about it. Harry Reid is also anti-abortion and he has a very prominent position in the party.

You might point that out to your friend. You might also point out that Dems are not "pro-abortion". Everyone would like to see there be fewer abortions. Most Dems would prefer to accomplish that by improving contraception methods, access, and knowledge, and improving the social safety net so that poor women can afford to keep their babies if they so choose. The Repubs want to lower the number of abortions by coercing women into giving birth against their will.

You could also point out that the number of abortions has actually increased under Bush, mostly because of greater economic hardship. You could point out that criminalizing abortion has not been an effective means of stopping it in countries that have tried. They generally continue to have high abortion rates, they just resort to back alley abortions and large numbers of women die or are permanently damaged from them.

I hope that your friend will be open to reason when presented with all the facts.

I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life and when it begins. I'm a Catholic. Raised a Catholic I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life. Helped lead me through a war. Leads me today. I can't take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for someone who doesn't share that article of faith. But I can counsel people. I can talk reasonably about life and about responsibility. But as a president, I have to represent all the people in the nation and I have to make that judgment. You can take that position and not be pro-abortion, but you have to afford people their constitutional rights. And that means being smart about allowing people to be fully educated, to know what their options are in life, and making certain that you don't deny a poor person the right to be able to have whatever the Constitution affords them
http://www.issues2000.org/2004/John_Kerry_Abortion.htm

Reid, Kerry and others can be pro-life, but repubs paint us as the abortion party. Like Democrat women merrily run off to the abortion clinic to enjoy their frequent abortions!!! Oddly, I bet that Democratic women have fewer abortions than repub women, because we use birth control.

I still ask how we can let people like my Catholic friend know that, even though the party platform is pro-choice, we welcome people of all views on this. I mean, do we?? Really?? I think we do, but we have to be verbal about this, even if we personally cringe when we hear of anti-choice dems. I mean, it really is a very personal decision, and we can't get into someone else's heart and mind. I, completely pro-choice with no restrictions whatsoever, feel we should welcome those with whom we disagree.

Also, thank you for your suggestions. I am bookmarking them and I am going to put them to use.

and the treatment for it is ILLEGAL.

NO. We are NOT going back.

Sell us out and we'll leave you. All of us.

Antiabortion laws kill women. That's all your friend needs to know.

Then walk away.

Or we will.

Do you think there is not room for anti-choice people in the democratic party? Is this a defining issue for you? (I know it is for many, but how can we make it so it does not lose people who agree with us on 90% of the other issues?)

Looking for help, thanks

the right to sovereignty in ONE'S OWN BODY is SO fundamental that yes, it is THE defining right for many if not most Democratic women.

Abandon the plank and we'll leave. Period.

We're sick to death of our "brothers" selling us out in a heartbeat.

They've always done it. No more.

Stop dancing around it with bumper sticker slogans.

Is abortion a litmus test for being a Democrat?

Because as Warpy says, having control or sovereignty over your own body is a fundamental right of humanity. NO ONE has the right to tell another human being what he or she has to or cannot do to his/her own body. Period. If you can't understand that, you are not a Democrat.

If you want to be 'pro life', which is a term I abhore because most 'pro life' people don't give a flying fuck about infants and children getting decent food, shelter, and health care, fine. Don't get an abortion. Otherwise, it's none of your business.

There have been a rash of these threads lately, it seems, bemoaning the votes "we" lose due to pro-choice. I think it's a crock, myself; as others noted, it's an easy out for someone unwilling to face the actual results of voting in the Theocratic Oligarchs.

And even if it's not, NO MORE. Not my life, not my body, not my daughter's and grand-daughter's, not one of my sisters. Enough.

It won't matter to the dead whether the power resides with the "Ds" or the "Rs."

Explain it like this. He is pro-choice. And "chooses" life. As it stands, he has the ability and legal right to make that choice. Repugs don't want anyone to have that choice. They want to tell people what to think. He has the right to have a chance to make that choice for himself BECAUSE of Democrats. Not in spite of them.

danger,

To risk bringing a pregnancy to term is to risk death.

The anatomically exempted never seem to understand that.

but just like repubs have a no-abortion plank, but "welcome" those who disagree (although they have no chance in hell in becoming president,) perhaps we should "welcome" those who disagree with our pro-choice plank. I am talking of walking the tightrope here between losing the votes of people who are really liberals at heart, and giving up our beliefs of abortion on demand, as I wholeheartedly believe in. I would never give up my fight for abortion when a woman/girl wants it - but I hate to give up millions of votes because we make them feel not welcome somehow (and I must admit, I don't know why they feel so unwelcome.)

Murder by the sperm donor is the number one cause of death of pregnant women in the US. So yes, abortion is a life-saving procedure whether you want to admit it or not.

And of course, nobody dies in childbirth anymore.:eyes:

some other wedge issue. The more control we give them over our lives, the more they will take.

This is a perfect example here. Republicans are willing to tolerate murder, torture, and any other crime or abuse, and for what reason? Whose life have they saved by doing that? They are in denial, and there is no help until they come out of it.

I don't know what to tell you about your friend. Some people say the Bush supporters are brainwashed, so maybe we should study how to counteract brainwashing.

We all know that many Democrats are anti-abortion and would never have one, while there are Republicans who would. So I don't understand why anyone would need to take a futile stand on this issue.

Edited "anti-abortion" to "anti-choice" for accuracy in usage, plus typo and addition, edited "not pro-abortion" to anti-abortion for accuracy in usage

Women would still have abortions without consequences as happened all along, and innocent women could be prosecuted for miscarriages. The way things have been going, I can imagine incredible scenarios.

I don't think these points will help, though. When you refer in a preceding post to how we are "painted," I think that says it all.

The moral Republican who can't get past the propaganda will not see.

The morally vain Republican who worries about being "painted" himself will never admit he sees. For him, it's all about how others see him.

The amoral Republican sees and is just playing a game.

Yes there is room for people in the party that dislike abortion. However, your friend comes off as rather stupid (what a mean thing to say). Basically if they think that the most troubling issue curently facing mankind or this nation is abortion then he probably has bigger problems than you realize. If he's not able to find a comfortable abortion position within the very broad spectrum that is the pro-choice movement then he probably hasn't tried very hard to look at the movement. For them the Clinton save, legal, rare motto probably rings truest.

but they are old family friends, so what can I do???
:(

try to educate.

The Politics of God, and specifically the chapter on a consistent ethic of life.

Also, ask him why the number of abortions go down under Democratic-led government and have increased every year under the current Republican regime. Poverty has a lot to do with it. If we don't do something about poverty and healthcare for poor and children then abortions will not abate. If we improve the quality of life for the poor then abortions will drop. It was proven by the decrease in abortions during the growing economy of the Clinton years and the increase in abortions during the economic disaster of the Bush Jr years.

Then ask them why the GOP has done nothing about abortions since they've been in control of the government. It is solely a campaign tool for a party full of Tools. They have no desire to do anything about abortion because it would take away one of the few really divisive issues on their side.

so he votes repub? yes that makes sense.

I hate single issue voters. They screw up democracy.

We keep hearing about these people who would vote D "if only" the Dems weren't percieved as pro-choice. I don't believe it.

How did Hillary, for instance, win in heavily R upstate NY? Or Maurice Hinchey same? Why didn't pro-choice defeat them if so many "otherwise" Dems voted for their anti-choice opponents?

How come we never hear about the R women who vote D for pro-choice candidates? They're out there too. You'll lose them, AND you'll lose a lot of women for whom this is a LIFE OR DEATH issue because it IS a LIFE OR DEATH issue.

Neither I nor many other women will EVER vote for an anti-choice candidate, Dem or not (and by anti-choice I mean supporting undoing or undermining Roe v. Wade - I don't care what his/her personal stance is).

It's our lives, and the lives of our daughters. It won't matter to us how good that candidate is on other issues when we're dead.

Catholic pro-choice Republicans.

Carl Sagan's insanely good essay about abortion (yes, he wrote an essay about abortion) from his book Billions And Billions. It's opened up a few eyes.

Edit: find it in your local library!!

I wasn't aware.