Life Links 8/28/12

Jeff Jacoby notes something that anyone with any political sense knows but is often hidden by the media: Both major parties have positions on abortion which aren't middle of the road.

The 2012 platform, in language recycled from 2008, vows to "oppose any and all efforts to weaken or undermine" the availability of abortion. While solid majorities of Democrats back some limitations on abortion -- 59 percent would ban partial-birth abortions, for example, and 60 percent endorse a mandatory waiting period -- the official position of their party is that even common-sense restrictions are unthinkable.

In 2000, the Democratic platform said the party's goal was "to make abortion less necessary and more rare." The 2004 platform declared, "Abortion should be safe, legal, and rare." But even calling for abortion to be "rare" is now too much for the Democrats' platform committee, which deleted the word in 2008. Perhaps it's no coincidence that Nancy Keenan, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, is a committee member.

The Telegraph has a piece on international couples coming to the U.S. and paying big bucks for sex-selection IVF. Notice the dehumanization in the article where the author claims "eggs" go through pre-implantation genetic diagnosis.

He said women first attended London clinics which were affiliated with Fertility Institutes, where they were given drugs to stimulate egg production, before flying to the US for the rest of the treatment.

Eggs are then collected, fertilised in the test tube, and then screened for genetic abnormalities and gender using a now well established technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). ......

He admitted clients from some countries were almost exclusively interested in boys. Demand from China - currently under pressure to revoke its controversial one child policy - was 98 per cent for boys, he said, while from India it was 97 per cent.

There really must be something in the records of Planned Parenthood in Kansas as they've asked for the records back. We know it's not patient privacy Planned Parenthood is concerned with, it's covering up their willingness to not report statutory rape.


In the New Yorker, Jeffrey Toobin is disappointed that the President and the Democratic party have focused so much on the hard cases of abortion and failed to make an argument for why abortion should be generally available.

But as framed by Democrats and the President, the current debate about abortion—centered as it is around rape victims and the health exception—put women in the position of supplicants, seeking permission to end their pregnancies. Most people, fortunately, think there are circumstances where that permission should be granted. But true freedom is not freedom to ask permission—it's freedom to make a decision. That's what pro-choice really means, and it would be healthy for abortion-rights supporters to say so clearly and often.