[GilesB]

What dollar amount is acceptable? What percentage is acceptable? How do you calculate those figures, by the percentage and dollar amounts that abortions contribute to the bottom line, divided by the percentage of the business the pro-lifer owns?, or by the total invested in the parent corporation? Do you own shares of any company that is in anyway involved in abortions? Are you sure? How about the companies you hold shares in, do they, or thier boards of directors hold any stock in companies that are involved in abortions. What about your mutual funds?

Sure, you can divest, if you choose, and I would certainly applaud your conviction is doing so. But I am a "true pro-lifer" and I might hold such stock, I don't know. If we were talking about $5 million invested in abortion clinics I would be ready to agree with you. We are talking a large hospital/health-care conglomorate, of which some fraction of its holdings provide abortions as some small fraction of their business.

The percentage thing was used to show that this is a propoganda hit piece - nothing more or less. Ditto for the "reported" usage. This was used before any mention of the details. Rule one of good propoganda - get your accusation out there early, repeat it often.

Abortion is morally repugnant, and should not have any place in our society. Currently it does and this kind of "zero-tolerance" uncritical thinking does not make progress. It mires us in minutae, and as I pointed out earlier - Frist has a better chance to reduce and maybe end the number of abortions done by this conglomerate if he retains his ownership in the family business than if he just divested as you demand.

This is a dead issue, as silly as assuming that an unvetted remark about an old man's political history indicates a deep seated root of racism. This issue neither increases nor decreases Frist's trustworthiness. His actions have been consistant with his words. When a man speaks and his personal actions follow his speech - that carries far more weight with me than some distant, tenuous connection he might have with someone who does something he has spoken against.

Taking your path, we could easily come to the conclusion that we should have no money invested in any corporation that is not 100% Christian, hires only Christian employees, associates only with other Christian companies, sells only to Christian people, buys only from Christian vendors - all bound by our same Christian isolationist view. SILLY!

Your own pastor has profited in some way at some time by some amount from an abortion. He may or may not even no about it - but either way, it in itself does not throw his words into doubt.

When you show me that Frist has encouraged abortions, performed an abortion, paid for an abortion, or makes significant amounts of money directly from abortions - I join you in opposing him. But you have only shown an unrealistic demand that every person be ideologically "pure" according to your standard - nothing more, nothing less.

[auboy]

>>When a man speaks and his personal actions follow his speech - that carries far more weight with me than some distant, tenuous connection he might have with someone who does something he has spoken against.<<

Ditto

[Gophack]

You make several good points regarding being "100% pure". None of us know for sure if the companies we do business with donate to pro-abortion organizations or not. We are unwittingly contributing to the murder of innocent humans.

The Confiteur Catholics recite at Mass asks that we be forgiven for "What we have done and what we have failed to do", with the unspoken caveat that when we have sinned by action or inaction, that we knew we were committing a sin.

If we don't know that an action we take indirectly is sinful (for example, buying a burger at a fast food joint if we don't know they are giving part of our money to baby killers) isn't a personal sin, but contributing to Planned Parenthood if we KNOW the money will be used for abortions, or have a good idea it will be, IS a personal sin.

My point is, IF you claim to be pro-life and you KNOW that your money is in part procuring abortions, then you must to everything to stop this sin. If Frist really doesn't know that HCA takes part in abortions ... and even performs late-term abortions as I sited above ... then when he is made know of this, he should divest from the company all his holdings. If he knows and DOESN'T do it, then I don't think any pro-life Senator should support him.

I hope that makes sense. Sometimes I get caught up in these issues and don't explain myself clearly. God bless.