Day: August 21, 2008
With New Anti-Abortion Stance, McCain Shows the Only Purpose in His “Purpose-Driven Life” is Getting Elected
Jon noted that John McCain’s new “life begins at conception” stance is a move all the way to the extreme right of his previously maverick-esque position. This puts McCain squarely among the wingnuts who declare contraception to be abortion, because many types of birth control keep a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterine wall. No doubt his Supreme Court picks will uphold the right of pharmacists to overrule a woman’s doctor and refuse to dispense the pill.
Despite his eight-year support for abortion in cases of rape, incest, and risk to the life of the mother, now that McCain is the party’s standard bearer, the brave iconoclast says he will not rock the boat.
McCain is pandering (quite successfully, according to polls) to this one-issue crowd, and he’s doing it with zeal. Now he’s flip-flopped to the side of those who say the fertilized egg has more right to life than the living, breathing woman in which it is carried.
Despite his eight-year support for adding exceptions to the official Republican party platform that would allow for abortion in cases of rape, incest, and risk to the life of the mother, now that McCain is the party’s standard bearer, the brave iconoclast says he will not rock the boat.
Back in 2000, McCain clashed with then-Gov. George W. Bush over his unwillingness to change platform language that called for a human life amendment [to the United States Constitution] banning all abortions.
McCain implored Bush to join him in wanting to add exceptions for rape, incest, and danger to the life of the mother.
As recently as April, 2007, McCain stuck by that proclaimed belief, embracing the reputation it gave him as a new kind of Republican: a moderate. No more.
McCain’s decision to leave the platform untouched follows a warning from a prominent social conservative.
“If he were to change the party platform,” to account for exceptions such as rape, incest or risk to the mother’s life, “I think that would be political suicide,” Tony Perkins, the president of the conservative Family Research Council, told ABC News in May. “I think he would be aborting his own campaign because that is such a critical issue to so many Republican voters and the Republican brand is already in trouble.”
At the Saddleback Forum, McCain said exactly what the born-again wanted to hear about the unborn. McCain has shown quite a penchant for saying what others want him to, whether he believes it or not.
With all his references to being a POW in Vietnam and seeing how easily he abandons his principles, it’s hard not to conjure an image of McCain saying whatever the Vietcong wanted to hear, singing like a bird for his captors, just as the rumors claim.
McCain Declares Zygotes Are Entitled to Full Human Rights
It has largely been glossed over in the reporting on John McCain’s alleged cheating at the Saddleback megachurch forum on Saturday, but he scored big points that night with Christian nationalists when he awarded full human rights to pre-embryonic fertilized cell masses:
WARREN: Let’s deal with abortion. I, as a pastor, have to deal with this all the time, every different angle, every different pain, all of the decisions and all of that. Forty million abortions since Roe v. Wade. Some people, people who believe that life begins at conception, believe that’s a holocaust for many people. What point is a baby entitled to human rights?
MCCAIN: At the moment of conception. (APPLAUSE). I have a 25- year pro-life record in the Congress, in the Senate. And as president of the United States, I will be a pro-life president. And this presidency will have pro-life policies. That’s my commitment. That’s my commitment to you.
What struck me when I saw McCain’s answer the first time was that his rapid blinking (at 00:27 in the video above) strongly suggests he’s lying — that he knows the science on this issue rules out any sort of human consciousness until an embryo is very well developed.
After sperm and egg combine at conception, the fertilized cells go through several stages before the embryo is formed. Among the first of these is the zygote, which is comprised of two cells bonded together. Zygotes do not have nervous systems, much less brains, and therefore, logically, they have no consciousness.
Of course, science and logic are not factors in this debate, and, predictably, McCain’s pretense that cell masses are humans completely snookered the hardcore fantasists within the GOP base:
