Hoystory

For those interested in the abortion issue, here’s a couple of things worth reading.

First is this article from last week’s Los Angeles Times entitled “Democrats shift approach on abortion.” Surprisingly, the aforementioned shift is in a pro-life direction.

For years, the liberal response to abortion has been to promote more accessible and affordable birth control as well as detailed sex education in public schools.

That’s still the foundation of Democratic policies. But in a striking shift, Democrats in the House last week promoted a grab bag of programs designed not only to prevent unwanted pregnancies, but also to encourage women who do conceive to carry to term.

The new approach embraces some measures long sought by antiabortion activists. It’s designed to appeal to the broad centrist bloc of voters who don’t want to criminalize every abortion — yet are troubled by a culture that accepts 1.3 million terminations a year.

“It’s not as exciting as arguing,” said antiabortion activist Serrin Foster, president of Feminists for Life. “But it’s the best possible thing for women.”

The Reducing the Need for Abortions Initiative provides millions in new funds to:

• Counsel more young women in crisis to consider adoption, not abortion.

• Launch an ad campaign to inform needy women that they can receive healthcare and other resources if they are “preparing for birth.”

• Expand parenting education and medical services for pregnant women, in some cases by sending nurses to their homes.

• Offer day care at federal job-training centers to help new mothers become self-sufficient.

Note that the Times has apparently decided that “abortion” is a bad word, now it’s a “termination.”

Secondly, I think this is probably a good move for the Democrats, if they can pull it off without alienating their left-wing, abortion-on-demand base.

The second article is this one from Ryan T. Anderson over at “First Things.” In recent years it’s become apparent to all that a human rights organization that spends more time and effort on condemning the United States than North Korea, China, Sudan or Saudi Arabia has its priorities seriously out of whack.

Now, Amnesty International has shifted from a wise position of having no position on the issue of abortion to defending the “right” to abortion as a “human right.”

[Larry] Cox’s [executive director of Amnesty International, USA] assertion that Amnesty International has no position on whether abortion is right or wrong is ridiculous. If pre-natal homicide is wrong, then why can’t governments legislate against it? As Lincoln taught us, no one can consistently claim to have a right to do wrong. And, if abortion is wrong, it’s precisely because it’s the unjust killing of an innocent human being. If that’s the case, don’t governments have an obligation to prohibit it, and to make the prohibition meaningful by attaching sanctions against those who violate it? Does anyone doubt that Amnesty International does have a clear position on the legality of abortion? What option is left—to make laws against abortion without enforcing them?

Perhaps this is why Amnesty International explicitly opposes the United States’ ban on partial-birth abortion. Cox himself wrote that Amnesty International “opposes the specific provisions of the federal law upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Carhart that criminalize doctors who perform particular types of abortions.” In other words, according to Amnesty International, when the government of the United States attempts to protect partially born Americans from death at the hands of abortionists, it is violating human rights.

Once again, politics triumphs over pesky principles.