I Can't Stand It

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Because in theory I like to know what my ideological opponents are thinking, I'm on the MoveOn.Org and Catholics United (against anything in the Catechism) mailing lists. Catholics United is definitely worse in terms of causing me ulcers. See for example this mailing they're giving me an "exclusive preview" of.

It's an evil pdf file, so let me summarize. In a guide for forming pro-life consciences they argue:
  • The BEST way to combat abortion is to give women and families the tools they need to choose life.
Which would be why Sen. Obama voted against extending S-Chip to expectant mothers (McCain is against S-Chip altogether, as am I, but following the logic being offered....), I suppose. One tool women need to choose life is the law on their side against pushy boyfriends and parents! And why is Obama's party pushing a law to shut down clinics that offer women who choose to keep their babies practical help?
  • Being pro-life is 1% talk, 99% action....The Bush Administration has done very little to protect the unborn.
Yeah, and the #1 pro-life action is voting for persons and policies that are pro-life!

But here's a little Bush action for yuz:
  1. saved us from federally-funded embryonic stem-cell research by executive order and two vetoes;
  2. stopped federally-funded cloning by vetoing two cunningly-worded "stem cell" bills
  3. restored the Mexico City Policy
  4. suspended US funding of China's coercive abortion program through UNFPA after sending a fact-finding mission to investigate the program
  5. transformed the US delegation to the UN from an abortion-promoting force to a pro-life force, putting us on the side of the angels against the UN's coercive efforts to promote abortion in third-world countries.
  6. although he lost in the Supreme Court, Bush had his attorney general oppose Oregon's Assisted Suicide law
  7. in an imaginative move, the administration moved to cover unborn children under S-Chip (which move was vehemently denounced by Democrats, including Obama as noted above)
  8. appointed pro-life Dr. David Hager to the FDA, who provided heroic resistance to the RU-486 & Plan B juggernaut
  9. created the Presidential Commission on Bioethics and named as the original chairman the splendid and wise Leon Kass;
  10. implemented the Infant Adoption Awareness Act, engaging crisis pregnancy centers and the National Council on Adoption to create conferences and a website that as of 2005 had succesfully matched 3000 children with adoptive parents
  11. aggressively defended the Partial Birth Abortion Ban and signed it into law in 2003
  12. signed the bill to save Terri Schiavo
  13. signed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act
  14. opened Justice Dept. investigations of attacks on churches and pregnancy centers
  15. resolved nuisance complaints against pro-lifers it inherited from AG Janet Reno
  16. signed bills maintaining the Hyde Amendment,
  17. has promoted the snowflake adoption program
  18. invited Nellie Grey and the March for Life to a White House reception
  19. Has his HHS secretary aggressively defending the conscience rights of pro-life doctors and pharmacists
  20. appointed hundreds of solid judges to lower courts
  21. plus given us Roberts & Alito
  22. Has been the unabashed abstinence president
I'm sure I've left some things off the list, but I just.go.crazy when I hear pro-life people ask, "what has Bush ever done for us?" What the heck hasn't he done that was humanly and constitutionally possible to do? We could not have had a more pro-life President with this Congress.
  • Then there's the usual stuff about pro-life meaning all human life and what about torture and cutting school lunch programs.
  1. Bush has done more to combat global AIDS than any person on the planet,
  2. ditto his economic aid to Africa
  3. ditto his war on malaria
  4. his wars in Iraq & Afghanistan liberated 50 million people from the nastiest regimes on the planet --including liberating women.
But leave that be. People can disagree on the prudence and justice of the wars.

McCain opposes torture and wants to close Gitmo. Whatever may be said in defense of Bush, McCain ain't Bush! The two presidential candidates in this race agree on torture policy.
  • Roe v. Wade won't end abortion in America.
No, but it will end the judge-imposed most liberal abortion regime in the West and let the citizens of this country hash out a more human policy --that would probably eliminate 90% of the actual abortions in the country, allowing them only in the hard cases of life of the mother, rape and incest.

And it will go a long way towars ending a federal regime that opposes the foundational insight of our nation: that all men are created equal.

And in any case, by that logic, we shouldn't have any laws, because no laws ever end sin and law-breaking altogether.

This Catholics United stuff is pernicious, errant nonsense.