[extropy-chat] Bush and Kerry on abortion funding

Mon Oct 11 18:26:00 UTC 2004

>First of all, I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life
>and when it begins. I'm a Catholic, raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy.

I hope the priest taught him a lesson in the backroom....lol

Squeal Kerry, Squeal.....

Dustin Wish
System Engineer & Programmer
INDCO Networks
Pres. OSSRI
Pres. WTA Arkansas
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-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
[mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Damien
Broderick
Sent: Monday, October 11, 2004 12:31 PM
To: 'ExI chat list'
Subject: [extropy-chat] Bush and Kerry on abortion funding

At 01:11 PM 10/11/2004 +0000, Rob Masters wrote:

><<On TV in the USA, Kerry gave what Barbara and I regarded as a deftly 
>supple, concise and principled extempore reply about abortion and govt 
>funding. To our astonishment, Bush rose and candidly admitted he couldn't 
>understand it.
>
>
>It would be helpful if you would explain your assertions here.
>
>"Bush rose and candidly admitted he couldn't understand it": couldn't 
>understand what?  What did he say?

See transcript below.

>"Bush's stupidity": Why do you think he was stupid?

See transcript below.

>As to Kerry's statement "that he was a Roman Catholic but... could not let 
>his faith influence his decision," I'd be really interested in knowing how 
>he reconciled that contradiction.  As a Roman Catholic, he has signed on 
>to the belief that abortion is homicide.  How could he possibly ignore 
>that in his practical decisions on abortion?

You're asking about a man's private conscience. What I don't understand is 
how people who truly believe abortion is homicide can refrain from 
demanding that everyone knowingly involved, always and without exception, 
be charged with murder. Actually it seems to be only a small contingent of 
crazies who think so. Pragmatically, most people really don't equate 
abortion with murder.

>If he gave a "supple, concise and principled" explanation of how to 
>resolve this profound problem, I'd like to know what the explanation was.
>
>More details, please.

There's a full transcript at http://www.debates.org/pages/trans2004c.html

Here's the relevant section, with my summaries and comments:

==================

DEGENHART: 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?

KERRY: I would say to that person exactly what I will say to you right now.

First of all, I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life 
and when it begins. I'm a Catholic, raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. 
Religion has been a huge part of my life. It helped lead me through a war, 
leads me today.

But I can't take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for 
someone who doesn't share that article of faith, whether they be agnostic, 
atheist, Jew, Protestant, whatever. I can't do that.

=============================

[This is the key move. Kerry reminds us that moral objections to funding 
abortion are a matter of faith and not fact. He might have said the same to 
a Jew or Muslim outraged that tax money is spent subsidizing pig farming, 
or to Adventists aghast that hospitals are funded *with their money* to 
transfuse blood, or to Flat Earthers shocked, shocked I say, to learn that 
the schools *they are forced to fund* teach that planets are spherical.]

==============================

But I can counsel people. I can talk reasonably about life and about 
responsibility. I can talk to people, as my wife Teresa does, about making 
other choices, and about abstinence, and about all these other things that 
we ought to do as a responsible society.

But as a president, I have to represent all the people in the nation. And I 
have to make that judgment.

==============================

[He'll do what he can to make sure unwanted pregnancies don't occur, but he 
knows that a large proportion of those who get pregnant unwillingly do wish 
to seek abortion, and they have no ethical objection to doing so, and that 
his own prejudice against abortion (or pork-eating, or blood-transfusions, 
etc) must remain his private opinion, *because he represents everyone, not 
just those who share his untestable opinions*.]

=============================

Now, I believe that you can take that position and not be pro- abortion, 
but you have to afford people their constitutional rights. And that means 
being smart about allowing people to be fully educated, to know what their 
options are in life, and making certain that you don't deny a poor person 
the right to be able to have whatever the constitution affords them if they 
can't afford it otherwise.

=============================

[Funding of abortion has to be made available since abortion is not 
illegal, but without tax funding the poor will be unable to take advantage 
of this extremely consequential option *should they choose to do so*, and 
this is inequitable.]

=============================

That's why I think it's important. That's why I think it's important for 
the United States, for instance, not to have this rigid ideological 
restriction on helping families around the world to be able to make a smart 
decision about family planning.

You'll help prevent AIDS.

You'll help prevent unwanted children, unwanted pregnancies.

You'll actually do a better job, I think, of passing on the moral 
responsibility that is expressed in your question. And I truly respect it.

=============================

[Here Kerry drifts into circumlocution, but that's almost imposed on him by 
the nature of the debate. He's saying: `Altough I'm a Catholic, I do 
recognize that many abortions might be avoided if only people used 
contraception, but the US imposes a sectarian and partisan ideological ban 
here and indeed on the rest of the world by blocking education and funding 
for contraception, especially condoms.']

==============================

GIBSON: Mr. President, minute and a half.

BUSH: I'm trying to decipher that.

======================================

[Here we have Bush proudly claiming not to be able to understand Kerry's 
quite clear statements above. Is the man a moron, or is he pretending to be 
a moron in order to appeal to the stupid and attention-span-impaired in the 
audience?]

======================================

My answer is, we're not going to spend taxpayers' money on abortion.

This is an issue that divides America, but certainly reasonable people can 
agree on how to reduce abortions in America.

I signed the partial-birth -- the ban on partial-birth abortion. It's a 
brutal practice. It's one way to help reduce abortions. My opponent voted 
against the ban.

=======================

[Bush jumps to the most disturbing form of pre-birth termination as if this 
characterizes Kerry's central position.]
=======================

I think there ought to be parental notification laws. He's against them.

I signed a bill called the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.

In other words, if you're a mom and you're pregnant and you get killed, the 
murderer gets tried for two cases, not just one. My opponent was against
that.

These are reasonable ways to help promote a culture of life in America. I 
think it is a worthy goal in America to have every child protected by law 
and welcomed in life.

I also think we ought to continue to have good adoption law as an 
alternative to abortion.

And we need to promote maternity group homes, which my administration has
done.

Culture of life is really important for a country to have if it's going to 
be a hospitable society.

Thank you.

GIBSON: Senator, do you want to follow up? Thirty seconds.

KERRY: Well, again, the president just said, categorically, my opponent is 
against this, my opponent is against that. You know, it's just not that 
simple. No, I'm not.

==========================

[Kerry goes wrong again in populist terms; the silly fellow tries to show 
the complexity of the issue.]

==========================

I'm against the partial-birth abortion, but you've got to have an exception 
for the life of the mother and the health of the mother under the strictest 
test of bodily injury to the mother.

Secondly, with respect to parental notification, I'm not going to require a 
16-or 17-year-old kid who's been raped by her father and who's pregnant to 
have to notify her father. So you got to have a judicial intervention. And 
because they didn't have a judicial intervention where she could go 
somewhere and get help, I voted against it. It's never quite as simple as 
the president wants you to believe.

GIBSON: And 30 seconds, Mr. President.

BUSH: Well, it's pretty simple when they say: Are you for a ban on partial 
birth abortion? Yes or no?

==================================

[Bush *doesn't want to know*. Or he's too stupid to grasp the idea that 
this disturbing procedure is conducted (according to Kerry) *only to save 
the mother's life or health*. `It's pretty simple', indeed. It's pretty 
simplistic. It's the stupidity, stupid.]

================================
================================

Now it's true that the exchange drifted away from the original question 
about federal funding, and into contraception and the very legitimacy of 
abortion. It's easy to get confused on these topics. Olga referenced 
Richard Dawkins' page, where I found an astonishing lapse of logic in 
Dawkins' recent essay on state funding of religious schools. He was as 
incensed by that as Ms. Degenhart was by state funding of abortion. He
wrote:

`How, then, can it be sane to advocate the existence of sectarian religious 
schools? And who can justify the spending of taxpayers' money on them?'

The obvious answer to the final supposedly killer question is: `Those 
sectarian taxpayers who pay that quantum of the education budget justify 
it!' It's as if Dawkins, in his fury (which I share) against indoctrinating 
schools, fails to notice that the parents and relatives who want to send 
their kids to sectarian schools *are also taxpayers*.

The answer to Ms. Degenhart might have been: `Think of your tax 
contribution as going to support all those causes you favor, causes that 
people not of your faith dislike or couldn't care less about. The money 
supporting abortion doesn't come from you, but from the 52% (roughly##) of 
the taxpayers who do support abortion; by the way, they also have to 
shoulder the burden of all those Catholics and others who actually do have 
abortions but feel guilty about doing so. But your conscience is clear; 
your tax dollars are being spent on faith-based health initiatives, immense 
tax-free status for religions, and other partisan expenditures.'

I'm not suggesting that Kerry should have replied like that. Such honesty 
would have created outrage, and Bush would have shaken his head in 
bafflement and muttered, `I'm trying to decipher that.' Oh, wait, he *did* 
say that.

## < A USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll of 1,006 adults last weekend found that 
68% support the ban on the so-called partial-birth abortions. But the poll 
found Americans much more closely divided on the question of a more 
complete ban: 48% identified themselves as "pro-choice" and 45% as 
"pro-life." >

Damien Broderick

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