Warning!: Pro-lifers cannibalizing each other ahead.
Is Sarah Palin pro-life? Not if you ask the American Right to Life which is promoting their site with pro-life profiles of some heavy hitting pro-life leaders. These guys don’t cut anyone much slack. Even Fr. Frank Pavone doesn’t get their highest rating. Sarah Palin and George W. Bush fare terribly and I’m not sure that’s completely fair.
But I thought I’d throw it out there even if some of their standards seem a little wacky to me including an endorsement of creationism as a benchmark of pro-life-ness. There are some, to me, legitimate criticisms of Palin in there as well.
Here’s some of it:
•As a Candidate Whom Many Pro-lifers Would Like to Support: her actual abortion record and rhetoric is shocking to the conscience in that Sarah Palin:
– appointed in 2009 a Planned Parenthood board member to the Alaska Supreme Court
– argues that chemical abortifacients that kill the youngest children should be legal
– distinguishes between her “personal” and public pro-life views (personally pro-life means officially pro-choice)
– indicates support for public funding to kill some unborn children
– whitewashes other candidates misleading millions to believe that pro-choice politicians are pro-life
– allows her name to be used in ads promoting grisly government-funded embryonic stem cell “research”
– undermines the God-given right to life by promoting evolution while officially opposing creation
– harms personhood by claiming that “equal protection” should not apply to unborn children
– has never announced support for any state’s personhood amendment nor the Federal Human Personhood Amendment
– opposes personhood by claiming that the majority can decide to legalize the killing of children.
In her vice-presidential acceptance speech Sarah said, “there is a time for politics and a time for leadership.” During the above, which time was it for her? Sources below document Sarah Palin’s record and political rhetoric.
•Thinks the Morning After Pill should be Legal: Palin says that personally she would not take the Morning After Pill (an abortifacient chemical that kills the tiniest children) but that it should not be illegal. “I don’t think that it should necessarily be illegal.” This demonstrates the ARTL adage that “To be personally pro-life means to be officially pro-choice.”
As far as nominating a pro-choicer to Alaska’s highest court, Palin kind of had her hands tied on that one. And while I do believe she probably could’ve made a bigger stink over it, the Democratic legislature only offered her a couple of bad choices.
As for the personhood amendment I know many pro-lifers who don’t agree that now is the time to push that agenda. That doesn’t make them less pro-life.
So even though I’ll admit that what was written about Palin’s stance on the morning after pill is troubling and I’ll look into it more, this seems like a pretty rough and at times unfair evaluation of Palin’s pro-life credibility.
In the end, this kind of thing isn’t really all that helpful in my opinion other than to gain awareness for your organization. All in all, I came out of this wondering more about the American Right to Life than I did about Sarah Palin.
November 20, 2009 at 1:56 pm
Oy vey.
A woman with a Down's Syndrome child and an illegitimate grandchild who loves her family. Shoot her.
November 20, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Recovering Fem- I'm with Michael on this one…
And as for your pious, ugly, holier than though idea that you know me.. get bent. I'm tired of people telling me I'm not pro-life enough according to their standards. I've walked through hell and have lived and that's more than enough reason for me to be pro-life. I know why I'm pro-life and I am smart enough to know that God gave me very, VERY specific gifts to fight this pro-abortion ideology and I have the confidence that God has my back. *My* battle is against abortion, not contraception and I will follow where God is leading me to fight.
So don't sit up on your high horse telling us pro-lifers what battle we have to fight. You have NO idea what gifts God has given each of us and how He wants us to use them. I'm so sorry that you feel as if you have a right to condemn us.
November 22, 2009 at 11:16 pm
No end to abortion unless there is an end to contraception
November 23, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Wow. Nothing like the internet to foster misunderstanding. I didn't read Recovering Feminist's comment as nearly as condemnatory as DirtDartwife did — especially since it included the comment 'as a priest had to sit me down and tell me.'
I'm not sure I buy the priest's comment. If God wants somebody to exist, is He going to be stymied by some couple's contraceptives?
Is the priest's argument also meant to be used against NFP? (It might not be, but it seems that such arguments exist.) Is it meant to be used against anyone who is not married, but not in religious life, either? I mean, by being basically celibate, albeit not formally vowed as such, am I, er, a murderer?
I'd say fight the contraceptive mentality at the personal and parish level (and the blog level) rather than the political level.
and certainly one pro-lifer can be called to a different area of the battle than another – but the main effort has to be against abortion itself.
I don't think people necesarily know that some contraceptives (besides morning-after pill adn RU-486) can be abortifacients, preventing implantation instead of conception. That's something to fight with information.
The mentality that everybody should be able to have sex all the time, as a civil right and as necessary for health and wellbeing and eternal youth as calcium and vitamin C, has to be combatted by somehow making self-control cool. abstinence programs, we're always beign told, don't work as well as, or at least any better than contraceptive programs, for preventing teen pregnancy. Well, it's not all about teen pregnancy. Abstinence is a good in itself. (Not all the time, in a marriage, obviously!) Self-control is a good in itself.
But maybe, when we persuade our fellow Americans that the fetus is a person, and that abortion is the vile murder of a completely innocent person, they'll be less eager to take the risk of abortifacient contraception.
S. Murphy
December 8, 2009 at 12:12 am
Having been married for over 20 years, my husband and I have always been pro-life and raised our children in the same faith. We have a strong position against contraception and have always practiced altertnative lovemaking (rectal intercourse) in order not to violate God's design.