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Kirsten Powers is that rare left of center journalist with intellectual honesty. Her latest topic, the ignorance of Democratic women generally in their defense of abortion laws. And in particular, Ms. Powers focuses on two of the most ignorant, Wendy Davis and Crazy Nancy. This from Ms. Powers in the Daily Beast:
The Democratic star du jour was asked this week to explain the difference between the late-term abortions she fought to keep legal in Texas and the illegal killings by Philadelphia abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell. “I don’t know what happened in the Gosnell case,” she told the Weekly Standard’s John McCormack, who cornered her after her National Press Club speech on Monday.
This is incredible. After all, Davis is the state senator who held an 11-hour filibuster to fight legislation drafted in response to the abuses at Gosnell’s clinic. A passing knowledge of the case seems like basic due diligence.
She went on: “But I do know that [Gosnell] happened in an ambulatory surgical center. And in Texas changing our clinics to that standard obviously isn’t going to make a difference.” It takes real skill to pack so many falsehoods into so few words. . . .
At one point in his interview, McCormack asked Davis what she made of the fact a majority of women support late-term abortion bans. Davis told him, “I…think that a lot of people don’t really understand the landscape of what’s happening in that arena today and what an incredibly small percentage of procedures take place there.”
Actually, the people who “don’t really understand” the issue are the Democratic ladies crusading against laws the majority of the country supports.
Despite frequently mocking anti-abortion activists as anti-science know-nothings, abortion rights absolutists are the ones who play fast and loose with the facts of abortion. Because they are so rarely asked to defend their positions, Davis and her ilk apparently don’t feel the need to be informed. Follow-up questions to their strange and often empirically false statements are almost nonexistent, while offensive or misinformed comments from GOP back benchers are greeted with full-scale media hysteria.
John McCormack has been the dogged fly in the ointment here. On a noble quest to get a response to an eminently reasonable question, he has yet to get a straight answer. In June, House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi convened a press conference to condemn a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks. McCormack asked her essentially the same question he asked Davis: “What is the moral difference between what Dr. Gosnell did to a baby born alive at 23 weeks and aborting her moments before birth? Pelosi answered, “You’re probably enjoying that question a lot, I can see you savoring it.” This insulting nonsense inexplicably elicited laughter from some of the assembled reporters.
Pelosi then told an outright lie: “[The 20-week ban] would make it a federal law that there would be no abortion in our country.” No reporter questioned this absurdity, even though they’ve heard pro-abortion rights leaders assert a thousand times that “only” 1.5 percent of abortions occur after 20 weeks. (For those who care, that’s “only” 18,000 late-term abortions each year.)
Pelosi then expressed outrage at the line of questioning, raised the fact she had five children in six years, and snapped, “As a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this.” When you are pulling the Catholic card to defend your support of unrestricted late-term abortion, you’ve officially gone off the rails. . . .
Well, in all fairness, Pelosi has been certifiably insane for years. She is, I am convinced, incapable of intellectual honesty. There are many on the far left who seem likewise, with Debbie Wasserman Schultz being the most odious.
At any rate, my hats off to Ms. Powers for her intellectual honesty and holding both Democrats and the media to account on the abortion issue.
For the record, here are my positions on abortion.
Abortion is immoral at any point. However, if asked to vote on the issue, I would vote to allow that women still have safe access to abortions during the time frame when there is no question that a fetus is not viable outside the womb.
Making abortion a Constitutional right was one of the biggest mistakes the Supreme Court has ever made. It has utterly poisoned our national politics for decades. There was no basis whatsoever in the Constitution for the decision. I fully agree with the conservatives on the Supreme Court and its most liberal justice, Justice Ginsburg, that abortion is a question outside the Constitution and, thus, should have been left to states and localities.
Lastly, there is no question that once a fetus has any chance at being viable outside the womb, killing that fetus inside the womb or out is murder. It is murder both by the mother and physician involved, and should be treated as such at law.
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