The Democrat candidates are criticizing each other's campaign tactics, when they should be focusing on the Democrat Party's embrace of elective abortion.
Every time her campaign hits a rough spot, Hillary Clinton has artfully played the role of defender of the downtrodden or misty-eyed damsel-in-distress. But the sympathy vote began to tire of that routine. So now Mrs. Clinton has taken on a new role: Mother Superior.
First the Clinton campaign accused opponent Barack Obama of “plagiarism” for borrowing a couple lines written by Massachusetts governor Patrick Duvall. A close friend of Obama, Duvall was flattered by the move, but Hillary was ready to haul out the rope noose.
Then Obama tagged Clinton an ardent supporter of the North American Free Trade Agreement, a label that could doom Hillary’s chances with the blue-collar vote in Ohio.
“Shame on you, Barack Obama,” Clinton charged, denouncing her opponent by name this past Saturday. “Time and time again you hear one thing in speeches and then you see a campaign that has the worst kind of tactics.”
Recalling Hillary’s make-nice remarks in their debate just two days before, Obama seemed surprised by the attack: “I’m puzzled by her change in tone.”
Now that Mrs. Clinton has injected morality into the campaign, maybe it’s time we turn the tables. Let’s probe Hillary’s stand on the issue that defines one of the greatest moral debates of our era: abortion.
Husband Bill Clinton was not an abortion hard-liner. In his memoirs he wrote, “Everyone knows life begins biologically at conception.”
Yet on January 23, 1993, newly-elected President Clinton issued a stunning rebuke to his centrist coalition. Marking the 20th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, he signed five executive orders that dramatically increased federal funding for elective abortions.
So why did Bill Clinton plunge his fledgling presidency into the seething abyss of the abortion controversy? Because Hillary told him to.
Based on memos obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, it is now known that Mrs. Clinton was a central player in the Clinton administration’s abortion working group. According to Judicial Watch, she was the “driving force behind the White House’s abortion policy.” And tapped for the Task Force on National Health Care Reform, Hillary vowed that under her plan, abortion services “would be widely available.”
Needless to say, Hillary’s self-appointed role as abortion flag-waver troubled many.
On February 3, 1994 Mother Teresa was invited to speak at the National Prayer Breakfast. With Hillary seated just a few feet away, the Lady from Calcutta was unerringly direct: “I feel that the greater destroyer of peace today is abortion.” Mother Teresa then drove home her point: “By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems.”
As the ballroom was swept up in rousing cheers and thunderous applause, Hillary sat silent and expressionless.
In 1999, exactly six years after her husband signed the five pro-abortion orders, first lady Hillary Clinton delivered the keynote address to the National Abortion Rights Action League. There she uttered her famous aspiration of “keeping abortion safe, legal, and rare into the next century.”
She then dutifully laid out the difference between being pro-abortion and pro-choice: “I have never met anyone who is pro-abortion. Being pro-choice is not being pro-abortion. Being pro-abortion is trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself and her family, and not entrusting that decision to anyone wearing the authority of government in any regard.”
In his book God and Hillary Clinton, Paul Kengor points out the sexist double-standard of Hillary’s statement. “The father cannot be the moral arbiter in this decision because he is not endowed with the right of ‘choice,’” he explains.
As the 2000 Democratic candidate to the Senate, Hillary embarked on a listening tour of New York. Visiting every county in the state she professed a willingness to consider all perspectives on all issues — except for one: abortion.
Once elected to the Senate, Clinton would vote “nay” against every bill that might infringe on a woman’s right to abort. She opposed the Child Custody Protection Act that would have required parental notification. And she wouldn’t stand for the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act.
Then there was the Informed Choice Act, a bill that would have provided money for the purchase of ultrasound machines. That would have allowed pregnant women to view the unborn child in their womb. What better way of “trusting the individual to make the right decision for herself?”
But Hillary couldn’t stomach that idea, either.
Every year one-quarter of all pregnancies in the United States end in abortion. That represents a colossal breach of human rights and a moral travesty that Hillary Clinton zealously seeks to preserve.
Yet Mrs. Clinton, incorrigible defender of a woman’s dubious right to abort, wants to cast shameful aspersions on the candidacy of Mr. Barack Obama.
careyroberts@comcast.net
Read more articles by Carey Roberts
Good points Mr. Roberts, but having already eliminated HRC from my list, I’m considering the Obama positions as follows:
With all this talk coming from B. H. Obama, I decided that I wanted to understand the key word of his movement a little better and this is what I found.
My MSWord thesaurus shows that the synonyms for Change are alter, modify, vary, transform, revolutionize, adjust, and amend; with one listing of an antonym which is maintain.
This confirmed my brainstorm that change means revolution, so I went back to the thesaurus.
It also shows the synonyms for Revolution to be rebellion, revolt, uprising, upheaval, insurgency, insurrection, mutiny, and riot.
Considering the great improvements in the standard of living since my grandparents came to the USA in 1903, and even the conditions since my youth, I selected one word that I find the most desirable and that is “maintain”. I was attracted to the words “alter, modify, vary, transform, adjust, and amend” but only in the sense that any change be implemented very cautiously, tested, and only after the “law of unintended consequences” is satisfied may we adopt any “Change”.
My question to Senator Obama is “The Change you speak of, would this be “Permanent Change” or “Change in One Country”?
If the Senator is as learned as his supporters proclaim he will understand the question. If not, a follow up could refer him to the concept of Permanent Revolution developed and followed by Marx/Lenin/Trotsky and the Socialism in One Country concept of Bukharin/Stalin.
Comment by Ivan Ivanovich | February 27, 2008
In your zeal to disparage Hillary Clinton, do not praise Barack Obama. Repeating an entire speech with a handful of words changed *is* in fact plagiarism, whether the other party condones it or not. Especially when you do not acknowlege the original source. I'd get my papers handed back to me at college for doing that.
And let's also not pretend like Obama is an innocent victim of the Hillary Clinton war machine. Obama has his own minions who make a simple historical observation (that LBJ actually signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law) into a race scandal. It's not as though Mr. Obama shares a different view of the abortion issue than Hillary Clinton does either. Rather than defending Obama against Hillary Clinton, we should be saying, "Shame on you, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and your entire Democratic party"
Comment by Patrick Mulligan | February 27, 2008
"The Democrat candidates are criticizing each other's campaign tactics, when they should be focusing on the Democrat Party's embrace of elective abortion."
You're right. We should look to the Republicans' wise choice to focus on their own stellar performance with the budget, and on the military front in lieu of trashing the opposition as an example to follow.
Comment by felix | February 27, 2008
One's views on abortion are a product of one's beliefs; it is just as wrong to prohibit abortion as it is to force it on people, as they are now doing in China. It is not a decision to be made by others for the woman. It is moral to be pro-choice, even if you are vehemently opposed to the concept of abortion.
Comment by AMAI | March 23, 2008