To summarize, I believe in voting, I believe in voting for one of the two major parties, and I believe my vote must reflect my Christian beliefs.What the gospels do not say, however, is that a Christian society should tax all its people, Christian and non-Christian alike, in order to finance mandatory corporate charity, rather than appealing to individual well-formed Christian consciences to perform personal works of charity. People of goodwill can disagree, and a free society should debate the extent to which public charity should be carried out and by what level of government, but scripture clearly fails to assert that it is for the state to perform acts of charity. My reading is that it is individuals who are called upon to perform the corporal works of mercy Mrs. Rice lists above. I really can't see the virtue inherent in compelling others to be charitable.
Bearing all this in mind, I want to say quietly that as of this date, I am a Democrat, and that I support Hillary Clinton for President of the United States.
Though I deeply respect those who disagree with me, I believe, for a variety of reasons, that the Democratic Party best reflects the values I hold based on the Gospels. Those values are most intensely expressed for me in the Gospel of Matthew, but they are expressed in all the gospels. Those values involve feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison, and above all, loving one’s neighbors and loving one’s enemies...
I want to add here that I am Pro-Life. I believe in the sanctity of the life of the unborn. Deeply respecting those who disagree with me, I feel that if we are to find a solution to the horror of abortion, it will be through the Democratic Party.Much as it pains me to say so, Mrs. Rice, I don't personally find your remarks here to be either constructive or convincing, if your goal is to convince me that the end of abortion is a political priority of yours.
I have heard many anti-abortion statements made by people who are not Democrats, but many of these statements do not strike me as constructive or convincing.
I feel we can stop the horror of abortion. But I do not feel it can be done by rolling back Roe vs. Wade, or packing the Supreme Court with judges committed to doing this. As a student of history, I do not think that Americans will give up the legal right to abortion.No one thought we'd so quickly give up the legal right to own slaves that was established in Dred Scott, either, but it happened.
Should Roe vs Wade be rolled back, Americans will pass other laws to support abortion, or they will find ways to have abortions using new legal and medical terms.Perhaps so, but even democratically-adopted laws authorizing abortion would doubtless regulate abortion more closely and effectively than is currently permitted under Roe v. Wade. Without Roe, it would have been so much easier to ban partial birth abortion. We could prevent particularly cruel methods of abortion without difficulty. Localities, or even states, where the people wanted to ban abortion wouldn't be prevented from doing so.
No one imagines that the overturn of Roe would mean the end of abortion, but circumstances demand it as a first step.
...It honestly pains me to say that I am not convinced, Mrs. Rice, that your anti-abortion position as you've described it is "necessarily practical or sincere". In endorsing one of the world's foremost pro-abortion politicians as your candidate for President, and declaring your support of the most pro-abortion political party since the Incas fell, you show your contentment to postpone any effort to either confront the culture of death in this country, or even attempt to persuade a single person against the wisdom of increasing federal funding of abortion in America and worldwide.
I am also not convinced that all of those advocating anti-abortion positions in the public sphere are necessarily practical or sincere.
I have not heard convincing arguments put forth by anti-abortion politicians as to how Americans could be forced to give birth to children that Americans do not want to bear. And more to the point, I have not heard convincing arguments from these anti-abortion politicians as to how we can prevent the horror of abortion right now, given the social situations we have.And you hear these "convincing arguments" from Democrats? Senator Clinton has a plan, as President, to reduce the number of abortions in America?
The solution to the horror of abortion can and must be found.The Democratic Party, and especially all of its Presidential candidates, don't even admit that abortion is a horror. It's not a problem to be solved by Democrats because Democrats don't see nearly 2 million human lives lost to abortion every year in America alone as a problem at all.
Do I myself have a solution to the abortion problem? The answer is no. What I have are hopes and dreams and prayers --- that better education will help men and women make responsible reproductive choices, and that abortion will become a morally abhorrent option from which informed Americans will turn away."Hopes and dreams and prayers"? You call this "practical"? I call it rationalizing your desire to tax everybody to salve your own conscience about voting for pro-abortion politicians and a pro-abortion political party to achieve it.
The people who brag most about their "better educations" are the ones who are proudest of their support of abortion rights. Who is it in our institutions of education, our universities, our schools, our teachers' unions, or in the Democratic Party, who are making the arguments that abortion is morally abhorrent horror from which we should turn away?
Support for any Democrat candidate for president, like support for Mayor Giuliani, betrays utterly the supporter's willingness -- desire even -- to postpone the fight against abortion until some distant and unlikely-to-ever-arrive future.
Mrs. Rice has spun us another story. She tells it well, but on closer look, it just doesn't hold up.
But I am still looking forward to her next novel.
7 comments:
Well as another Anne Rice fan, I don't find her arguments convincing.
The problems with so many that see the Democrats as the party for helping the poor is that they shift a personal Gospel response to the government. They forget that Jesus when he said "whatever you do to the least, you do to me" that he was speaking to each and everyone one of us for a response. And not that we transfer our Gospel response to some group. Is is any surprise that in the recent book by non-conservative Arthur Brook's "Who really cares" that conservatives are far more likely to give time and money in charitable work?"
Plus it can certainly by argued that liberalism in reality does not help the poor. They talk a good game, but it was conservatives who instituted welfare reform that ended up helping many escape from a cycle of poverty. They never asked for a pullout on the war on poverty despite the fact that the majority of government programs to this end simply did not work. The largest indicator of poverty is single motherhood, yet Democrats never talk about this and the destruction of the family. If they really cared about poverty this would be the overriding issue, thought how government can help in this direction is another matter all together.
Not that I think conservative politicians really are concerned about this either. I just think real conservative ideas in social and economic issues are ordered to this.
Just as a quick answer to one aspect of the post:
Though those of us who can see past the rhetoric recognize that the Democratic party is in the back pocket of the abortion lobby, they do talk a good talk about "eliminating the need for abortion" by various means.
They are wolves in sheep's clothing. And if Ms. Rice has trusted them all her life, it woulnd't be surprising that she continues to believe that the Party, like herself personally, really means what it says.
I remember during the original Clinton campaign, my then-boyfriend was planning to vote for Clinton because he was offering a health care plan that supposedly would make sure everybody would get care. I pointed out to him the code words that the Democrats use, and what they really mean. Like "focus on prevention" means "spend all our money on the healthy and leave the sickest people to die because they're too expensive to care for." He didn't believe me.
Then Hillary Care was unveiled and Arlen Spector's staff deciphered it and found out things like how people with severe disabilities wouldn't be eligible for the same kinds of care the "normal" would be entitled to, because it wouldn't be buying as high a "quality of life" as providing care to the non-disabled.
My boyfriend kept saying, "But that's not what I voted for!" I said, "Yes it was. I told you and you didn't believe me."
I think Ms. Rice is very much the same. She doesn't understand that "preventing abortion" is Democratic codespeak for "give Planned Parenthood a buttload of money to continue doing things that their own research proves only drive up the rates of abortions and STDs."
Jeff, I have to agree that a conservative politicians are as good as liberals at talking a good talk and doing the complete opposite. And I do think that a lot of things conservatives do end up perpetuating unfettered abortion.
But the track record does show that the Democrats' pet projects for "reducing the need for abortion" all backfire. The states that get the highest scores on "prevention" from PP all also have the highest rates of STDs, unwed motherhood, and abortion. The states that get the worst scores have the lowest rates of STDs, unwed motherhood, and abortion.
Granted, some of this is sociological. Correlation isn't causation, after all. People in the Dakotas are not as keen on casual sex as Califoreigners. But PP just exacerbates the problem.
Back home in Pennsylvania, we have two counties right next door to each other. Somerset County and Bedford County. Both have about the same population. Both have the same type of mostly agricultural economy. Both are a demographic match. Both are equidistant from more urban population centers. And the social norms are the same for both counties.
Somerset County has double the abortion rate of Bedford County.
Why?
Well, I doubt that the fact that Somerset County has a Planned Parenthood, and Bedford County doesn't. A pregnnat woman in Bedford County will go to the local CPC for her free pregnancy test and will get an immediate referral to a local obstetrician. A pregnant woman in Somerset County will go to Planned Parenthood and get a referral to an abortion practice in Pittsburgh, Cumberland, or Harrisburg.
Only an idiot would pretend that this isn't going to drive up the abortion rate.
Very interesting post and comments!
One small thing...
Grannygrump, don't you mean "Californicators" rather than "Califoreigners"? ;-)
kasia, the married ones are every bit as flaky as the unmarried, from what I've seen.
I would like to add another very belated comment here...
I believe Rice is off the mark in all her arguments except for one: I think it IS possible -- not in the near future, but eventually -- that the overturn of Roe will indeed occur under a Democratic president and/or Congress.
It took Nixon, a Republican, to open up China, start detente with Russia, and end the Vietnam War. It took Reagan, also a Republican, to end the Cold War. Bill Clinton, a Democrat, enacted NAFTA and welfare reform. LBJ, a dyed-in-the-wool Southern Democrat, got the Civil Rights Act passed.
My point is that it is often not the "usual suspects" who achieve significant breakthroughs in domestic or foreign policy. Nixon's going to China was significant precisely because it was not what people expected of him. Likewise with Reagan's breakthroughs in arms limitation -- he had been elected with the image of an unrepentant Cold Warrior, so people figured, if HE started talking to the Russians there must be something to it.
So I think it is entirely possible that someday (not sure when, but someday) a Democratic president MAY be the one who finally leads the nation in a pro-life direction... precisely because he or she can't be dismissed as a "usual suspect" conservative Republican. If this does occur it will get a lot of people to think "Hey, maybe there is something to this pro-life argument after all."
While I don't hold out much hope for Obama or any of the current crop of Democrats fulfilling this role, a lot could happen in the next 10 to 20 years, and I wouldn't rule out this possibility.
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