Rest of article:
Reid's reputation as an opponent of abortion rests partly on votes in 1999 and 2003 against the Harkin amendment, which endorsed Roe v. Wade. Today, Reid is the only remaining Democratic senator who voted no both times. He also voted for a ban on partial-birth abortion and for a bill making the killer of a pregnant woman guilty of two murders--one for the woman's life and one for the unborn child's. Those votes bolster Reid's pro-life credentials.
But there's more to the story. The Harkin resolution was merely an expression of Senate sentiment. It wasn't binding. On partial-birth abortion, Reid voted initially for a substitute bill that would have gutted the ban. And on the two-victims legislation, he demonstrably backed a measure proposed by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California that would have done just the opposite, codified that only one victim was involved. Reid and then-Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle ostentatiously cast the first two votes for the Feinstein bill. It lost by one vote.
After President Bush reinstated the so-called Mexico City policy which bars funds from overseas organizations that perform or promote abortions, Reid moved to block the president's action. His amendment was never enacted. Reid also supported attempts to revive American funds for the United Nations Population Fund, some of whose money aids coercive abortions in China. These attempts to stymie the pro-life efforts failed. So what's the bottom line on Reid as a reliable legislative battler on behalf of the unborn? He's not one.
Finally, there's the matter of Reid's allies
and opponents on abortion. Klein quotes Kate Michelman, the former head of NARAL Pro-Choice America, as saying of Reid, "I'm honored to be his friend." When Reid ran for Democratic leader, neither NARAL nor Planned Parenthood voiced a peep of opposition. And WeNews, an online publication for women, concluded Reid's ascension wouldn't affect the strong pro-abortion position of Senate Democrats. Meanwhile, Douglas Johnson, the chief lobbyist for National Right to Life, said Reid "is certainly no ally of the pro-life movement. He usually votes against pro-life interests when it matters most." Thus, Reid turns out to be, again, closer to the pro-abortion side than the pro-life.
In 1985, when Reid was a House member, he published a newspaper ad citing ten antiabortion votes he'd made. Better yet, the ad included an endorsement by Republican Rep. Henry Hyde of Illinois, the leading pro-life spokesman on Capitol Hill. Reid, Hyde said, "has never failed to support . . . the issues that concern the family and the pre-born." A decade later, Reid had found wiggle room on abortion. He'd come up with a different take.
Voters in Reid's home state approved a referendum in 1990 making Roe v. Wade the law in Nevada. "I respect that decision and believe it should only be changed by another vote of the people of Nevada," Reid wrote constituents a few years later. "I will review all proposed abortion legislation with this perspective." And so he has. A real pro-lifer wouldn't have.
Democrats are very good at pretending to be what they are not. Remember that Kerry was opposed to abortion.
Not always a good indication. There was a case a couple of years ago of a vote on somatic cell nuclear transplantation that came up in the Kentucky legislature. National Right to Life said that a "yes" vote was not in direct opposition to their standards. Kentucky Right to Life, however, decided that a "yes" vote was a bad vote.
Several Republican legislators that, under any other circumstance could never be considered pro-choice, voted for the bill. The Kentucky Right to Life went after some of them unmercifully the next year, despite the fact that these legislators had always been staunch supporters of the Kentucky Right to Life's initiatives.
Pro-life citizen lobbyists . . . not always the sanest group.
I know you shouldn't judge someone by the way they look, but Reid has those little, squinty, piggy eyes, and I wouldn't trust him or anything he says. Typical dem-lib-socialist.
Harry Reid is a useful fool. Every time I have met and talked with him, he has to ask his aid what his position is on that subject. He is just a puppet on DemocRat strings.
Sounds like Clinton when he claimed he longed for a day when abortion was "safe, legal and rare".
Who said he was?
Reid is a sick man if he chooses Barbara Boxer to be as close to him as a sister.....PITIFUL.....small brained lefty....Reid is so limp-wristed maybe Boxer beats up his enemies for him.
The bolded words are mutually exclusive. All democrats are pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, and anti-Christian. They are the domestic enemies of the Constitution
bttt