Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey spoke out against the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act — I understand the trogs have backtracked somewhat on the “forcible rape only” provision, but it’s still a nasty piece of work — by saying, “I won’t attempt to voice my views on your family and let my family alone. Don’t go near my daughters.” He continued,
If they had their way, the reproductive rights of American women would be tossed away and it sounds to me like a Third World country that’s requiring women to wear head shawls to cover their faces even if they don’t want to do it. This is America. It’s not one of the third world countries that we see these tragic decisions hoisted upon the women.
Yeah, pretty much.
This is only being reported in rightie media, so all the reactions are from rightie bloggers. A post on the ironically named “Liberty Pundits” site is classic — it’s titled “Sen. Lautenberg (Senile-NJ): Restricting abortion is like making women wear the hijab. Hunh?”
It’s actually a pretty good analogy. Criminalizing abortion and mandated wearing of a hijab are both restrictions on liberty; they both limit a woman’s life choices; they both relegate women to less-than-personhood status. The only difference is that wearing a hijab has less of an impact on one’s body than enforced pregnancy and childbirth.
“Liberty” pundits? So much for liberty.
I also liked this part;
BTW, nimrod, abortion is murder. But you can explain yourself to Christ as you stand before the White Throne. Best of luck with that.
Um, explain himself to Christ? Does the name “Lautenberg” suggest anything to you, booby?
FYI, abortion isn’t “murder” in Jewish law.
Here’s Senator Lautenberg, showing no signs of senility that I can detect —
Okay, forgive me but that comment, “White Throne” ha ha, there’s only one “white throne” I know about and Jesus ain’t on it.
Yes, I’m eight years old…
I’m still waiting for someone to explain what this bill has to do with jobs, jobs, jobs.
I mean, I guess there’ll be a slight uptick in obstetrical care work, and nanny jobs, plus the jobs they won’t admit that they are creating in shady back-alley facilities, which only count if you’re including the illegal economy, which statistics usually don’t.
Long-term, of course, it’ll only make unemployment worse, once the forced births turn into workers looking for jobs, though I guess it might not be as bad as it could be, because all the mothers who are forced to die in childbirth or who bleed out in back alleys can be subtracted from the workforce.
Still, it seems this is a very inefficient way to address our economic problems.
I know, let’s brand all women who have abortions with an “A!”
“The Scarlet Letter?”
OK, ooops, that’s been done before for something else…
I know!
We can make sure that all pregnant women carry their children to term by putting them in “Forced Labor Camps!”
What?
No!
Really?
People like Lautenberg?
How come all of my good conservative idea’s have all been done before, but badly?
They’re good ideas!
They must just have been imprlemented badly, since there are NO bad conservative ideas, just ones that have been failed.
Damn Liberals!!!
One of my nieces carrying her fourth child, whom she and her husband really wanted, would have found it near impossible to abort the fetus should she have been passed her fifth month. Mid her fifth month, fortunately, it was discovered that the fetus was severely deformed and if not dying in the womb would have died at birth.
Better she suffer for four months longer than be allowed to abort the poor creature.
Felicity,
I’m so sorry about your neice.
I’m convinced that it’s got nothing to do with the ‘life of the child,’ or the ‘life of the mother.’ It’s all about the ‘life of the politicians.’
They’ve drummed this issue into people heads, and have invested a lot in this slow drip, drip, drip of a woman’s right to choose. They don’t dare stop it completely, as they’ve had Republicans in both houses, and the executive branch, all at the same time, because they know they’ll lose the vote of every non troglodyte, non hyper-religious woman in the country. But there’s votes in every drip…
What find ironic is that a lot of the same people who scream “Get government off our backs,” want to force women onto their backs for mandatory forced labor.
The Righties are headed in a pretty scary direction on the abortion issue. For now, they are only dipping a toe in the water: redefining rape, no government funding for abortion, attempting to legislate when life begins. I strongly suspect, however, that their ultimate goal is to simply outlaw all abortions.
Does life begin at conception? When a heartbeat can be detected? When a baby takes its first breath? Who decides? The Old Testament makes it fairly clear that a fetus becomes a person when it takes its first breath; the New Testament (insofar as I know) does not address the issue. To arbitrarily pick a point between conception and birth is a difficult to defend slippery slope–why heartbeats and not brain activity? Why brain activity and not response to stimuli? But to take an absolutist position that an egg has person hood the moment it is fertilized, yes, that’s a solid position with no weasel room. Horrifically, it is also a position which dooms women to ambulatory incubator-hood. If a fertilized egg is a “person”, then any attempt to terminate a pregnancy is a murderous act. Doesn’t matter how that egg came to be fertilized. Doesn’t matter if the woman’s life is in danger. The pregnancy must be carried to term.
When a woman and a fertilized egg the size of the period at the end of this sentence are granted equal rights under the law, then the Righties will have achieved their objective.
cundgulag – thank you. Your last paragraph is so well put. Years ago on the radio I heard a male reporter tell how he had been against abortion until one late night he found himself in a hospital corridor being approached by a young woman with blood streaming down her legs. She reached him and collapsed at his feet. Later he learned that she had tried to abort herself. He was no longer against legal abortion.
So many Americans (mostly Republicans but some Democrats also) seem to have lost any sense of humanity, any empathy for their fellow human beings, any sympathy…it’s really terrifying that so many have found their way into our government.
I agree with you, biggerbox. What are these clowns pandering to Jesus for when they should be working on getting America back to work. Jobs! We need jobs, and we are hurting..
Felicity, I too offer my sympathies. These are terrible situations and impossible choices, but people of goodwill do the best they can… and don’t judge. Peace to your niece and her family.
Swami,
Well, they got to keep their tax cuts, so we should be swimming in jobs right about now, no?
Soon?
The fact of the matter is that they have no earthly clue how to create jobs. The only they’re good at creating are ignorance and fear, and that’s how they keep getting elected.
Swami sums it up quite handily and this applies not just to abortion but to a wider swath of social ills. Some things like ignorance are just part of the human condition but a great deal of other exacerbating factors can be ameliorated.
Some might like this recent LATimes op-ed piece that likens social conservatives presscriptions for social ills to a man who looked for his keys on the thoroughfare, even though he lost them in the alley, because the light was better.
Once again, in GOP candidate Huckabee’s take on the matter it’s hard not to notice how “blame others” takes precedence over looking inward and helping one another. Apparently equality of opportunity has nothing to do with it and Jesus was not an activist.
At the root of the kind of conventional thinking that needs all others to agree, comply or be forced to comply with something over which there’s so much disagreement belies insecurity and the inconsistency with which concern for others is applied.
I know it’s been said a million time, but that doesn’t make it any less true – that if men had to carry the child, abortions would not only be easily accessable everywhere, they’d also probably be free.
Ooops, should be “a million times…”
Abortion is also not “murder” under American law. At least, not yet.
My Senators Lautenberg and Menendez don’t always make me proud, but they sometimes rise to the task. You go, Senator L!
Sadly, my Representative here in New Jersey doesn’t fare quite so well, hence my now-established pattern of voting Green for the last couple of elections.
And please, don’t get me started on Our Governor Bluto, for everyone’s sake.
Oh, don’t hold back. 🙂 I keep wondering if New Jerseyites are feeling buyer’s remorse yet.
Maybe Cory Booker would someday depose Bluto.
apologies for bungling my comment…hope meaning was clear anyway.
“this applies not just to abortion but to a wider swath of social ills” should have been something like “…wider swath of prescriptions for social ills”. I wasn’t calling abortion a social ill though the right perceives is as such while doing little to help prevent what leads many to that regrettable alternative.
So, I don’t get the Tea logic. How does banning abortions fit in the whole “Government BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!” frame? Help me out here.
I’m from NJ and I voted for Daggett for Governor. It was more of an “F both of you guys!” vote than anything else, but I’m happy not having held my nose.
Kang (or maybe it was Kodos) said it best, and I think we need to adopt more policies set by cartoon characters: Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!