Johnny On The Spot...but Off the Mark (part 1)
A doe-eyed and woefully countenanced Sarah Degenhart posed the following question to Senator Kerry during Presidential Debate #2:
"Senator Kerry, suppose you are speaking with a voter who believed abortion is murder and the voter asked for reassurance that his or her tax dollars would not go to support abortion, what would you say to that person?"
Gulp!
Having been put on the proverbial "spot", the Senator did his politically-correct best to respond honestly without upsetting the pro-life/pro-choice applecart. But in doing so, he may have inadvertently advanced the President's argument that Kerry is a career "waffler".
It shouldn't be that hard to come up with an answer to such questions after all these years. Government should do an excellent job of protecting you from others but it should be up to you to protect you from yourself.
The government was forced into the abortion debate for one simple reason: people are irresponsible. If the only unwanted babies were the result of rapes, I suspect we wouldn't have such divisiveness. We might actually have the resources to deal with all rape pregnancies in a way that we all could agree upon.
But the reality is that rape pregnancies account for such a small portion of the incidences of unwanted pregnancies. Rape victims are the minority in this debate. As a democratic society, we must consider and address any and all unwanted pregnancies, and we must do it in the worst possible way: by addressing the lowest common denominator, which happens to be whether or not the fetus has rights.
So guess who suffers? The woman carrying the fetus.
Unfortunately, no Presidential candidate will stand up in front of his or her potential voters and tell them that they need to be more responsible and stop expecting the government to fix their problems for them.
"Senator Kerry, suppose you are speaking with a voter who believed abortion is murder and the voter asked for reassurance that his or her tax dollars would not go to support abortion, what would you say to that person?"
Gulp!
Having been put on the proverbial "spot", the Senator did his politically-correct best to respond honestly without upsetting the pro-life/pro-choice applecart. But in doing so, he may have inadvertently advanced the President's argument that Kerry is a career "waffler".
It shouldn't be that hard to come up with an answer to such questions after all these years. Government should do an excellent job of protecting you from others but it should be up to you to protect you from yourself.
The government was forced into the abortion debate for one simple reason: people are irresponsible. If the only unwanted babies were the result of rapes, I suspect we wouldn't have such divisiveness. We might actually have the resources to deal with all rape pregnancies in a way that we all could agree upon.
But the reality is that rape pregnancies account for such a small portion of the incidences of unwanted pregnancies. Rape victims are the minority in this debate. As a democratic society, we must consider and address any and all unwanted pregnancies, and we must do it in the worst possible way: by addressing the lowest common denominator, which happens to be whether or not the fetus has rights.
So guess who suffers? The woman carrying the fetus.
Unfortunately, no Presidential candidate will stand up in front of his or her potential voters and tell them that they need to be more responsible and stop expecting the government to fix their problems for them.
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