As the Republican Party begins its campaign to hold on to the House and retake the Senate in the up-coming mid-term elections, it is getting strong advice from a number of quarters on a subject of which it has long been identified – abortion.
Some argue this is a losing issue and remind the party that it lost unmarried women by 36 points in the 2012 election. Others point to the fact that the country is fairly split on abortion now
My long opposition to abortion has been two-fold. I am pro-life and find the taking of an innocent life abhorrent, and as a taxpayer, I prefer not to pay for them.
Two commentators who I admire greatly, Brit Hume and Charles Krauthammer, recently tackled this difficult subject with logic. My hope is the party will take their advice, and that there are no more foolish statements like Mike Huckabee’s recent speech on a woman controlling her libido and the ridiculous position on rape voiced by Todd Akin in 2012.
Brit Hume, Fox News Commentator
Brit Hume (realclearpolitics.com photo)
“This is the 41st anniversary of the day the Supreme Court found that a generalized right to privacy it has basically invented meant that a woman has a constitutional right to snuff out an unborn life, a human being with a beating heart,” said Hume during his commentary on the March for Life in Washington DC.
Castigating the left for its absurd euphemisms favoring abortion, Hume accused Planned Parenthood for its rhetoric of simply being pro-choice and reproductive health, not pro-abortion and the killing of unborn babies. “In 2012, this organization says it carried out ‘abortion procedures’ 329,445 times,” Hume stated. And they call this planned parenthood.
“Some estimates are that as many as 55 million abortions have occurred since the Court acted,” according to Hume, and explained that over the years “an ever-clearer picture of just how much of a baby a fetus is. At 20 weeks, we now know these tiny creatures can hear, even recognize a mother’s voice. Their toe nails are growing and their hearts beat load enough to be heard by a stethoscope.”
Charles Krauthammer, Syndicated Columnist
Charles Krauthammer (realclearpolitics.com photo)
“There is a very simple, straightforward strategy for seizing the high ground on abortion in a way that transcends the normal divisions and commands wide popular support,” writes Krauthammer. He suggests the party “focus on the horror of late-term abortion, and get it banned.” Calling the Kermit Gosnell trial a “seminal moment,” he recalled how the national sentiment was nearly unanimous after being shown what the baby butcher had done. Krauthammer said he once described late-term abortion as close to infanticide, but since he learned how an infant’s skull is crushed mid-delivery before it leaves the birth canal “it is infanticide.” Regarding early abortions, Krauthammer recommends the objective should be persuasion rather than legislative coercion. However, when we are dealing with a child that could live on its own, “killing it for any reason other than to save the mother’s life, is an abomination.”
While Democrats continue to bring up the contraceptive issue as being of immeasurable importance to women, Krauthammer asks, “By what moral logic does the state provide one woman with co-pay-free contraceptives while denying the subvention to another woman when she urgently needs antibiotics for her sick child?”
In coming weeks and months, kramerontheright will comment on other non-issues in the liberals’ phony Republican “war on women.” NEXT: How Democrats treat women as helpless creatures.
