A Little Hard To Believe

CRISIS Magazine - e-Letter

July 6, 2004

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Dear Friend,

I know, I know... The big story today is Senator John Edwards. But I
want to call your attention to something else. It passed quickly
through the news cycle, so you may have missed it.

On Sunday, John Kerry told Iowa's Telegraph Herald that he
personally opposes abortion and believes that life begins at
conception. The exact quote is as follows:

"I oppose abortion, personally. I don't like abortion. I believe
life does begin at conception."

Amazing.

You may recall the e-letter I sent you in February that covered this
very issue. In it, I had assembled several past Kerry comments that
seemed to show that Senator Kerry does NOT really oppose abortion --
publicly or personally.

For example, compare his recent statement with the remarks he made
at last year's NARAL Pro-Choice America Dinner:

"I think that tonight we have to make it clear that we are not going
to turn back the clock. There is no overturning of Roe v. Wade... 
There is no outlawing of a procedure necessary to save a woman's life
or health and there are no more cutbacks on population control
efforts around the world. We need to take on this President and all
of the forces of intolerance on this issue. We need to honestly and
confidently and candidly take this issue out to the country and we
need to speak up and be proud of what we stand for."

Did you catch that? Not only should abortion be available to all
American women, all the time, but it should be used as a population
control valve around the world. And this is something we should "be
proud of." Not what you'd expect from someone who claims he doesn't
like abortion.

And this isn't an isolated comment...

From the Boston Herald on January 23, 2001: "I will not back away
from my conviction that international family planning programs are in
America's best interests. We should resist pressures in this country
for heavy-handed Washington mandates that ignore basic choices that
should belong to free people around the globe."

Kerry's support for "international family planning programs" -- a
standard euphemism for "abortion" -- is an issue he's advocated for
some time. If Kerry is telling the truth about being "personally
opposed" to abortion, why is he trying to spread it worldwide?

But perhaps the most outrageous quote comes from the 1994
Congressional record: "The right thing to do is to treat abortions as
exactly what they are -- a medical procedure that any doctor is free
to provide and any pregnant woman free to obtain. Consequently,
abortions should not have to be performed in tightly guarded clinics
on the edge of town; they should be performed and obtained in the
same locations as any other medical procedure... [A]bortions need to
be moved out of the fringes of medicine and into the mainstream of
medical practice. And by the same token, if our children are to be
safe from the danger of fanaticism, tolerance needs to spread out of
the mainstream churches, mosques, and synagogues, and into the
religious fringes." 

Abortion is simply "a medical procedure"? If that were true, then on
what grounds could he possibly be personally opposed to it? He
certainly doesn't seem to be struggling with the issue here. And how
exactly does he propose to "spread tolerance" to the "religious
fringes"? Presumably, he's referring to the people who, as an article
of faith, believe abortion to be immoral. But didn't he just claim to
be one of those very people?

John Kerry says he believes that abortion is wrong and that life
begins at conception. And yet he vows to do everything he can to make
sure that women have the freedom and right to end that life.

You can say a lot of things about a position like that. But you
certainly can't say it's Catholic.

I'll talk to you soon,

Deal


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