Posted on 07/27/2004 9:35:04 AM PDT by dead
Conner Peterson is dead, but he is still playing a critical role in this year's presidential election.
Republicans are using him to show how deeply they care about the unborn.
Democrats are ignoring him, because they do not want a debate over whether or not he had rights.
Protesters at this week's Democratic Convention in Boston are raising his name to showcase what they say are some of the main differences between the two candidates for the White House.
For many voters abortion is the most important political issue. Strangely, Conner was not an aborted baby. He was a much-wanted baby who died violently.
For those who are not familiar with the case, Conner Peterson was the name that a young Californian , Laci Peterson, gave to the eight-month-old foetus she was carrying when she disappeared in 2002.
After her body washed up in April last year police charged her husband, Scott Peterson, not only with her murder, but that of her foetus, and is now on trial.
They were able to do so because California has laws that protect foetuses from violent crime.
About 20 states do not, which troubled Ms Peterson's mother, who began lobbying President George Bush to make violence against the foetus a federal crime, punishable in all 50 states.
In April Mr Bush signed the so-called Laci and Conner bill into law, saying Conner was "a precious soul, waiting to be born" and deserving protection.
The law does not affect a woman's right to abortion, which is legal in the US.
But John Kerry, who will be chosen this week as the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, opposed the Laci and Conner bill, and that has now become an election issue.
Senator Kerry has also voted against laws that require doctors to notify parents if a minor asks for an abortion.
Supporters of abortion oppose these laws, saying they are part of a campaign to grant legal rights to the foetus and restrict access to abortion. They were dismayed when Mr Bush this year signed a law that bans "partial-birth" abortion - in which the foetus is partly delivered, before being killed.
"Bush is chipping away at a woman's right to choose," said David Broder, 25, who has been handing out pro-abortion stickers to delegates at the Democratic Party's hotel in Boston.
"I am pro-choice because if you don't have control over your own body what else are they going to try to control?"
Mr Broder is one of hundreds of abortion supporters who have come to Boston to make sure their party stands firmly behind abortion, when access to it is considered to be under threat.
A volunteer for the National Abortion Rights Action League, Becca Gerner, 27, said she travelled to the convention because "I'm completely pro-choice".
"I feel very strongly that Bush is trying to take away a woman's right to choose."
But opponents of abortion are also in Boston and, on Monday, the two groups met at an intersection. Strong words were exchanged, and one person had his shirt ripped and his poster destroyed.
It was a small scuffle, but the Secret Service, anxious to avoid trouble,
revoked a permit given to a group opposed to abortion that wanted to raise placards outside Senator Kerry's Boston home.
The group immediately challenged the decision in a Boston court, but Judge Nathaniel Gorton denied their request, saying he would not "second-guess the Secret Service's idea of how they feel they need to protect a presidential candidate".
Opponents think Senator Kerry may be swayed on the issue of abortion, because his public support of the procedure is not backed by personal convictions. He is a Roman Catholic and has said that he believes life begins at conception.
"I oppose abortion personally," Senator Kerry said recently. "I don't like abortion. But I can't take my Catholic belief, my article of faith, and legislate it on a Protestant or a Jew or an atheist who doesn't share it."
Senator Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, recently told an interviewer that she almost aborted her fourth child because she had been taking heavy doses of cortisone, not knowing she was pregnant.
"I didn't want to have an abortion, and the night before I was due to go in I miscarried it, so God was very kind."
The abortion issue always flares at election time, but supporters of the procedure appear to have the numbers. According to a poll taken by the Pew Research Centre in Washington this year, 58 per cent of Americans oppose measures to make abortion more difficult, and even more support aborting defective foetuses.
BOSTON, MA – In what has been built as a “Drive Across America” Operation Rescue West’s fleet of large billboard vehicles are blazing a path to Boston, the site of the Democratic National Convention.
The billboard-size vehicles trucks are dubbed Truth Trucks by the organization’s president, Troy Newman. The truths they display are enlarged, full-color graphic photos of real aborted children. The truck’s images expose nominee John Kerry and John Edwards as politicians supporting the gruesome act of child-killing.
The Truth Trucks should make a dramatic entry into Boston by Friday evening, and plan to roll thought the streets well into next week.
“John Kerry’s votes have sent millions of babies to their early deaths. Now it is time for America to see the terrible aftermath of Kerry’s abortion politics.”
Troy Newman, President Operation Rescue West
See pictures in next section.
A couple days ago, I heard Kerry's rendition of his distinction between "Pro-Choice" and "Life at Conception" dilemma. It was so tortured that I was completely unable to follow whatever it was that he said. I tried - but I just couldn't comprehend what the words meant. Sure, I knew what the individual words meant, but when assembled in the same message- it become incoherant.
I DID understand him to say that he is a Viet Nam veteran. Did anybody else catch THAT little tid-bit?
It is inconsistant thst she had the right to choose to kill the baby, but that he could be executed if he is convicted of doing it.
I agree. If the mother has "right to choose", the father should have that right as well. Why should a mother have more rights than a father?
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