Earlier this evening, FrankKnotts, a new (to me) contributor over at Delaware Politics posted a rather graphic and yet false description of abortion procedures. It has since been deleted by Burris, but I was able to save it from my Google Reader. But I won’t post it here. Suffice it to say, here is Joanne Christian’s response to it over there:
The graphic depiction you erroneously describe on multiple levels, does nothing to further a pro-life stance. You want emotion, you got emotion. You want the truth, you get Planned Parenthood, and unwanted, abused, neglected, babies, and children. Choose the crime we all have a hand in. Nobody walks away guiltless.
Here is RSmitty’s reaction:
I never wanted us to cover this here, ever. […] Despite your graphic details, my final stance is to be pro-choice, although not the final trimester, yet I would much, much rather women CHOOSE to go full-term.
Why am I pro-choice? First, you should hopefully know by now that I am not a government interventionist, but that’s not the top reason. A friend of mine, whom I grew up with, would not have even had a chance to have even been conceived had his mother not had one. Sounds odd, yes, but two years prior to his birth, his mother became pregnant, but it was a tubal pregnancy (I forget the technical-medical term). Not only would that had left his mother barren from the damage (mid-to-late 60’s medicine here), but very possibly she would have died from that kind of rupture. That’s a co-top-reason. The other is I do not ever want to see a return to back-alley procedures.
All that said, anyone that uses it as an option of birth-control (on the same level as the pill, for example) has woefully missed the point.
And from the “morally superior yet superiorly delusional” contingent, David Anderson:
Abortion of human offspring is an abomination to God and any part of civilized society. I lot of people have been indoctrinated to avoid the truth. Statistics show that when people understand the reality of abortion, they don’t have them or encourage there partner to get one. […] We have to speak up. Good post.
I am not going to criticize or praise Burris for deleting a post from one of his writers. It is his blog and he must run it as he sees fit. But I will comment on the larger issue: that the Republican Party has to grow up. And Dave Burris has shown a much welcome willingness to do just that recently, in his reactions to the defection of Arlen Specter and his push back on Rush Limbaugh’s idiocy. A child makes demands for what they want in absolute terms, and screams when they don’t get what they want immediately. That is David Anderson. That is FrankKnotts. That is the religious right. A faction of the party that has made the Republican Party so toxic that it just lost two elections in two years, each in landslide. A faction that made its most promising Presidential candidate, Jon Huntsman, so unwelcome that he has gone to work for a Democratic Administration. A faction that believes that Christine O’Donnell is a far superior candidate than Mike Castle.
It is fine to oppose abortion. It is fine to be pro-life. What makes you a child is how you go about achieving your goal in eliminating abortion. If you demand a litmus test, if you call those who are pro-choice immoral and evil, and if you do nothing else to prevent unwanted pregnancies, and in fact embrace policies like abstinence only that only increase unwanted pregnancies, then you are a child.
Indeed, such childish behavior alienates a potential partner in me. I am pro-choice but anti-abortion. I want to reduce abortions. I just don’t want to make it illegal. But David and Frank would rather call me a killer than work with me to reduce abortions.
A grown up realizes compromises must be reached to achieve any goal in life. We all make compromises in our everyday lives. So why is that not true in politics? You want to reduce abortions, then work with those you would oppose to do so. That is what grown ups do. Increase adoption funding. Allow gays to adopt unwanted children. Provide safe sex education to our teenagers. The rate of abortions fell the last time we pursued those policies, and increased when we abandoned them.
We are seeing the battle for the soul of the Republican Party over at DP. It will be interesting.