Bill Clinton just can't stop lying
The thing is, nobody- nobody- suggests sending women who get abortions or doctors who perform them to prison. Moreover, Clinton knows that; he admits as much in so many words! Why, then, does he insist that that's what pro-lifers secretly want?
Interesting, too, that he admits that whatever policies he implemented which cut the number of abortions performed saved lives in doing so. But for the moment, let's focus on the fact that in this video, the most famous of all presidential liars in effect admits to lying about what pro-lifers want while in the very act of telling the lie!
I have a theory. Clinton, after all, was impeached for lying under oath- and then acquitted and had his perjury excused by his supporters because the subject matter of his lie was sex. Well, in order to have an abortion, a woman has to have sex first. Perhaps the message Clinton got from that previous adventure in deceit is that because of that, it's OK for him to lie about abortion, too.
Or at least about pro-lifers.
Comments
Do you envision the punishment for a crime akin to murder being a $100 fine... or a trip to prison? It's not dishonest or misleading to suspect that the punishment for the crime of abortion in the anti-choice person's ideal reality would involve imprisonment.
Clinton is not lying, it is you who is lying about what the anti-choice crowd really wants.
And yes, ascribing a position one's opponents do not take to them-, especially in the full knowledge that that is what you are doing- most certainly is indeed both dishonest and misleading!
The remedy for ignorance of one's opponent's position is inquiry and research, not jumping to conclusions and ascribing horrific desires to them. That's called "malice," and it's just not helpful in rational dialog. But then, rational dialog about our differences on abortion is the last thing either you or Bill Clinton are interested in, isn't it? You'd rather simply slander those on the other side of the argument!
And when finds that one has jumped to conclusions about one's opponents which turn out to be factually incorrect, the morally responsible course is to apologize and to change one's rhetoric- not to admit, Clinton-like, that one is fully conscious of misrepresenting that position and then going ahead and doing it anyway, all in a single statement!
The fact is- as Clinton himself admits in so many words- that no pro-life politician or political figure of any following has ever advocated the jailing of either women who get abortions or the doctors who perform them. I'll say that once again, and make it a little stronger, just to avoid misunderstanding: the pro-life movement does not, and never has, advocated the criminalization of abortion, or the imposition of criminal penalties on either women who have abortions or doctors who perform them. To assert otherwise- as you do, and as Clinton does- is simply a malicious lie.
Yes, it is certainly true that to wrongfully take the life of another member of our species (and the fetus, as of the moment of conception, is unchallengably that)is, by any reasonable ethical definition, murder. But the law recognizes various degrees of culpability even in murder. And it doesn't follow at all that the moral quality of an act in the abstract should logically dictate society's penal reaction to it in the absence of a compassionate and thoughtful response to the circumstances. Or is the concept of legally mitigating circumstances one you've conveniently forgotten for the sake of your incredibly lame argument?
Ethics and legality are two different things. Women- who frequently suffer severe psychological trauma from abortion, and are often pressured and even coerced into it- are the second victims of abortion, as the pro-life movement quite clearly has argued for years. Only in the
malicious imaginations of the pro-abortion crowd has the pro-life movement ever argued that they should be punished at all.
It might be well to pause here and to make a parenthetical observation. While one not only may, but should, mitigate what one believes the legal consequences should be even for murder, one certainly cannot argue with an ounce of moral credibility that murder should simply be legal. The position invented by Mario Cuomo and embraced by prominent Roman Catholic politians on the Left- the acceptance of the premise that abortion is murder, combined with a willingness that murder be absolutely legal- is about as morally depraved a position as it is possible for a human being to take. I can respect a pro-abortion individual who does not believe that the taking of a fetus's life is murder, even while disagreeing with that person; I have no moral respect at all for a person who takes the morally craven Cuomo position that has become pretty much standard among Roman Catholic Democrats.
I personally believe that physicians who perform abortions, except in the extreme and veryrare circumstances your side of the debate dishonestly presents as typical (fewer than two percent of abortions are performed because of rape, incest, a threat to the life of the mother, or gross fetal abnormality incompatible with life)
should in general lose their medical licences. Should there be fines? Perhaps. Precise penalties, again, should depend on circumstances. Certainly doctors who perform abortions for the relatively few reasons that the overwhelming majority of the American people believe that abortions should be legal should be treated differently from those who knowingly do so, for example, as a matter of birth control, or who commit outright infanticide by partially delivering viable fetuses and then killing them. Whatever might or might not be ethically desirable, it might well be that abortion might be treated as a form of justifiable homicide in some fewcircumstances, and remain completely legal. Again, this is the position advocated by the overwhelming majority of the American people.
In any case, Frances, neither you nor Bill Clinton get to tell your opponents what their position is, or what they "really want." This is especially true when the facts are readily accessible, and when you have not only made no effort to ascertain them, but rather maliciously ascribe positions to your opponents they do not hold on the basis of arguments as logically flawed as yours.
Yes, Frances. Clinton is lying- something he is rather a pro at, after all.
And you are lying, too.
It just goes to prove that Slick Willy is still Slick Willy. In my less than Christian moments Ive been known to call him a less than kind title involving a sack and excrement.
BTW...I voted for McCain. Ive come full circle and feel hes pro-life, for low taxes and will fight to win the war. I truly hope he has a good plan to deal with the illegals in a responsible way that doesnt mean deportation. Maybe deport the worst of them? Hmm...maybe thats te plan now that I think of it. I may be losing it after all!
God's blessings on this Wednesday afternoon before a Lenten service!