Posted on 09/23/2005 3:20:12 PM PDT by Crackingham
Republicans who support abortion rights should take back their party, the grandson of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger told a Peoria audience Thursday. Alex Sanger, 57, spoke at the 40th anniversary celebration and awards dinner of Planned Parenthood Heart of Illinois at the Hotel Pere Marquette.
"Reproductive freedom is in the hands of the Republican Party," he said. "No freedom, no right is safe if one party platform opposes it."
Sanger said polls show 73 percent of registered Republicans support abortion rights in at least some circumstances.
"The Republican Party is pro-choice," he said. This group must be encouraged to "show up in primaries and precinct meetings and vote that way."
Sanger, the married father of three adult sons, lives in New York City, and is an author and activist in the reproductive rights movement. He wrote "Beyond Choice: Reproductive Freedom in the 21st Century," chairs the International Planned Parenthood Council and serves as a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund. His grandmother's greatest achievement, he said, was to make birth control respectable and discussed by everyone.
"We failed to do that with abortion," he said.
The debate should be reframed, he said, and not in the way the Democratic Party has in mind. "We've got to be rid of the shame. We should be asking why we should have reproductive freedom."
The answer, he said, is to put reproductive freedom in a biological context, "about wanting children, healthy babies and grandchildren," so that all children are wanted.
"The vast group in the middle," the 60 percent of people who support abortion rights in some or most circumstances, can be reached in this way, he said,
I have my grandmothers last name. My father's mother?
Sanger was her married name. I forgot what her maiden name was.
Margaret was the youngest of 11 or 12 children in an Irish-Catholic family. If we are to believe Margaret's account, her father was an abusive drunk.
I'm willing to venture that even her abusive, drunk father didn't murder his own children.
My favorite Margaret Sanger quote:
The most merciful thing a large family can do for one of its infant members is to kill it.
Wonder if she was ever thankful that her supposedly abusive, drunk father didn't kill her, seeing as she was an infant member of a large family.
What a bitter, socialist SHREW.
She makes Hillary look almost human.
All this obscures the difference between an abortion and saving the life of the mother in a way that results in the death of the baby. Apparently, most Freepers don't either. Example: In an ectopic pregnancy, the doctor could go in and unwrap the baby from the umbilical cord. The baby is most likely going to die. As opposed to performing an abortion, which is going into the womb with the express purpose of killing the baby by cutting it up and extracting it.
His grandmother was actually not endorsing abortion.
I'm most certainly "pro-choice". I just happen to believe that the "choice" is made BEFORE conception. After conception, birth is the only option!
Mrs
Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if it was higher than 73%. Or, to put it another way, I wouldn't be surprised if fewer than 27% of people would oppose the removal/destruction of an embryo/fetus which was implanted within the fallopian tube. There is at present no technology which can rescue such an embryo/fetus, and the only course of action to minimize severe risks to the mother is to remove it as soon as practical.
On the other hand, I would be very surprised if even 50% of Democrats favor allowing child molesters to have the evidence of their crimes anonymously disposed of in abortion mills. Any effort to stop such things, however, is met with loud howls by PP et al.
What universe does this 73 percent exist?
Sadly, that is probably not as wrong as many here seem to think. I think the vast majority of REPUBLICANS (as opposed to true-blue conservatives) do favor abortion in some circuimstances. Whether it is 73 percent or not, I do not know, but if I had a dollar for every time I heard or read "I am against abortion, except [but]..."
His Grandmother may not have endorsed abortion , but he sure is.
What would you suggest that a doctor should do if a sonogram reveals a developing embryo within a fallopian tube? Not supposed to happen, but sometimes it does. Assuming enough diagnostics were done to confirm the real situation, what course of action would you suggest?
So if a child isn't perfect, by their definition healthy, they cannot possible be wanted?
This isn't about the "fringe" running the Republican Party. Anything but. The Republican Party has boomed largely because pro-Life Faith based folks have left the Democrats because of their moral bankruptcy. Disingenous soul. Why don't you break down those numbers of when Republicans in Majority accept abortion? Rape, Incest and life of the mother. Which is what the President stated when he ran for election in 2000, because that was the mainstream and remains mainstream thought of the Republican Party.
What this is really about is that they own the Democrats, but because they own the Democrats, the Democrats have lost power. So now they want the Republican Party too.
I'm putting this warning out now. McCain getting support from Indy's and Dems in 2000 will not be the end. There are going to be people trying to use our primaries to get the candidate of their choice to sabotage conservatives. WE need to vote in force in 2008 in the primaries to outnumber these interlopers.
As for the comment about "We've got to be rid of the shame", this is a standard tactic of the left. It's part of the whole attitude that being judgemental in any way is by definition bad. We can't judge anyone, therefore bringing morality into a discussion is forbidden. This then allows all sorts of behavior to be promoted without having to justify it.
I think the 73 percent figure is probably correct and is due to the exceptions that you have all mentioned. They are legitimate exceptions but they also represent the backdoor to allowing a lot of elective abortions. All a woman has to do is get a willing doctor to say that carrying the pregnancy to term would threaten her health. The way around this would be that any legislation must explicitly define what constitutes such risk in the same way that clinical death should be defined for purposes of terminating life support. Allowing the politicians to just get away with broad phrases like "posing a risk to the life or health of the mother" just won't cut it.
If you think about it, the exceptions to the rule are the way that most things liberal or socialistic get passed. The very great majority of people, when questioned specifically about various issues are lopsidedly conservative....but we've all got our little exceptions. How many times have we all heard "I don't believe the government has any business doing this or that or the other....except for..."
Murder is still murder, no matter what the circumstances. And what ever happened to parents putting their children before themselves? About the "three exceptions rule," there would be no way to prove them, and therefore legislation against the rest of abortions would be useless. McCain has said in such cases the women should be given the benefit of the doubt, but I don't expect a murderer not to be a liar as well.
Also, murder is a legal term that pertains to the killing of a person. A fetus is not a persson. So, as much as I agree with you that abortion is wrong, except in the case of saving the mothers life, and that abortion on demand is an abomination, it can't considered murder. Maybe in the Biblical sense, but certainly not in the modern legal textual term.
Oh, I get it. So, someone decided to have a child and then when the child is, say, 5 years old no longer wants him/her, we should kill the kid. This way the remaning ones are all "wanted." Makes perfect sense.
She wanted to rid the world of unatics, blacks, Eastern Europeans, 'biological mistakes of race'......everyone but the superior white elites.
She was a real gem. And the pride of the present day left.
Conceptually, aren't there at least two species of abortion?
I mean there are "elective" abortions, if you will, where the procedure is used in a sort of retro-contraceptive context, for want of a better term, (clearly the kind of abortion that is problematic for those who value the sanctity of life above all else), and there are "necessary" abortions, where mom's life is threatened, or a gestating fetus is the result of incest or rape, or incestual rape.
I appreciate the latter species of abortion is not "necessary" in the true sense of the word, and there may even be some latitude in the definition of "elective", but perhaps these terms might help to focus the issue a little better. That's why I employ them.
If we're talking about "necessary" abortions, I would hazard most people, regardless of their political stripe, would probably oppose their complete prohibition.
However, "elective" abortions are a root of significant division in our society. And this brings me to the issue of whether reproduction is a right.
If there is a reproductive right, isn't there a corollary right not to reproduce? And doesn't that mean the exercise of that right shouldn't be interfered with by the state, or the majority, or anyone?
Or is the right to reproduce not really a right, but simply a side-effect of sexual activity, sometimes wanted, sometimes not wanted? And if that's the case, is sexual activity between unrelated consenting adults something that needs to be regulated by the state, and crucially here in this context, in advance of conception?
That would clearly run counter to a minimally invasive notion of the role of government in a free republic, wouldn't it? And I'd hazard it would run counter to many people's idea of freedom, whether they believe in a right to privacy or not.
Its also uncontroversial to say people will have consensual sex with each other no matter what the state, or the majority, or other people say.
If one of those consenting unrelated adults ends up in a pre-natal state, and the other has no stake in the outcome, shouldn't she be able to elect not to reproduce?
Or does the authority of the post-natal "responsibility" outweigh the authority of the pre-natal "right"? And if so, what is the source of that authority?
Be very interested to hear responses from people that don't seek to donate that authority to their deity.
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