I’ve read an argument from a Democrat-voting Mormon ;) defending Barack Obama’s stance on abortion (I won’t link to it). This argument seems to present Barack Obama’s reasoning on the issue as similar or identical to the LDS (Mormon) church’s reasoning. I don’t think that is so, and I’m posting my arguments against it. I want to seriously qualify that if Obama’s reasoning doesn’t harmonize with church policy (in my opinion) on this point, there are many other questions surrounding the political position about which the church is neutral (otherwise the church would instruct its members to oppose the Democratic party, which it most certainly does not - the Church is party neutral). But this is what I respond to:

Frequently we generalize and think the church is completely against abortion with no exceptions, but that is not the case. There needs to be an allowance for these times and conditions and Obama’s platform makes concession for these times too. In fact he says, “I think that most Americans recognize that this is a profoundly difficult issue for the women and families who make these decisions. They don’t make them casually. And I trust women to make these decisions in conjunction with their doctors and their families and their clergy.” Which is what the church encourages. If abortions were made completely illegal there would be no allowance for these rare but serious circumstances.

I checked for a reliable attribution of that statement to Obama, and I believe I found at least one (here). (And as for the banner in that web site - just erase the baby brother from the picture. Oh wait, he’s not there. They aborted him.)

Now, here’s my argument. This paragraph pulls Obama’s statement out of context. I do not personally know any “pro-life” person who has said they would oppose abortion in such extreme situations where the life of the mother is endangered or the pregnancy is the result of rape (or incest, or similar extreme situations). So to present this argument as opposing a reasonable “pro-life” position is at best uninformed. On that point, a reasonable (in my opinion) “pro-lifer” of course agrees. It is misrepresentative to argue this as opposing a “pro-life” position. Unfortunately, building up that argument and throwing it down - it is an obvious candidate for a weak argument and can easily be thrown down - leads to the idea that a pro-lifer opposes abortion in extreme cases such as a mother’s life endangered, or pregnancy by rape.  As I said I’ve never known a pro-lifer who makes such extreme arguments (and if I did, I’d disagree with them). So I would ask the person making this argument which of their far too liberal friends they have not adequately challenged, to not only swallow but regurgitate such a distortion. Professors at a University? Yo. A University often an unhinged liberal maketh. Watch out.

What’s really baffling - and had me confused for a while - is that Obama’s language does not address those situations at all. Reading this link I found where the quote is cited, the only thing Obama says that could unreasonably be construed as touching on maternal life endangerment or rape is the phrase “..a woman’s medical concerns..” - in this wider context:

“..As Justice Ginsburg emphasized in her dissenting opinion, this ruling signals an alarming willingness on the part of the conservative majority to disregard its prior rulings respecting a woman’s medical concerns and the very personal decisions between a doctor and patient.”

May I point out that he does not mention endangerment of a mother’s life and does not either mention rape etc., but that he does say “a woman’s medical concerns and the very personal decisions between a doctor and patient.” I place emphasis on the word “and” because it clearly links “medical concerns” to “personal decisions between a doctor and patient.”

The hysterical brouhaha around reproductive activities and the virtual right to pursue them at all expenses - including the new lives they often create (and then summarily destroy by “abortion”) has often, in what I have read of our nation’s history of any legislation even peripherally having to do with sex - has often linked sex with “privacy” or a “right” of privacy which no court or legislation should invade. Never mind how much the Playboy channel proves that sex can often be regarded as anything but a private affair, and the obvious counterpoint that the children produced by sex don’t only belong to a parent - they have a life ahead of them where they will leave their parents and contribute to society and, hopefully, produce more children of their own - a child is not a woman’s only: a child is a gift to a nation and to the world. To characterize birthing concerns as concerns only belonging to the woman herself is utterly mislead and selfish. Getting back to my point now.. this is clearly rhetoric falling in the line of reasoning where a mother’s right to have a baby or not is her own personal “choice” - for which she also apparently has doctor-patient privileges to discuss whether or how do “abort” her own child. Reagan comes back to mind. Where is the child’s right? As he said, the only folks arguing for a “right” to abort were not themselves aborted.

Obama’s statements clearly play into reasoning that a woman has a “choice” to abort a child for any reason - which does not address the true moral question Obama’s (or Clinton’s or any other “pro-choice” person’s) position raises. Obama is clearly not speaking of extreme cases where abortion may be necessary. He’s simply saying it’s a difficult decision for many women.

Understatement of the year: the decision to end a life is a difficult one. Well, unless you are an islamofascist or a soldier in Iraq trying to stop islomofascists from campaigning anymore to send airplanes turned into bombs through American skies. What does Iraq have to do with Al-Qaeda? May I draw your attention to the fact that an organization calling themselves Al-Qaeda in Iraq is still alive and kicking in Iraq, although thankfully our brave soldiers are frustrating them. How does the name this organization gives itself not have to do with Al-Qaeda? (Anyone who buys this “we toppled the towers” hysteria, I will point blank tell them they are not thinking rationally.) The Al-Qaeda trainees who made the decision to crash the planes - they were indoctrinated with an entrenched hatred of Americans, brainwashed into thinking of Americans as amoral, unworthy creatures who have no right to live. Throw in the promise of an unending sex romp with a few dozen hot soon-to-be former virgins in the afterlife, and it’s an easy sell. Also relating to a decision to kill: what do the American soldiers who are out to prevent Al-Qaeda and other islamofascists from destroying American lives and freedom go through? Easy. Pull the trigger on all of them - fight them, or in ten years 9/11 will look like child’s play. Every faithful soldier knows this. Is it traumatic to kill any human, even when they clearly are part of an army out to destroy America - and the democracy America is slowly encouraging in Iraq? Absolutely. A great many soldiers suffer post-tramatic stress disorder (and, gratefully, I’ve heard, our nation is waking up more to that fact and getting returned soldiers the help they need to cope with it).

Barack Obama is okay with aborting a child for any reason any woman would do so. That includes reasons as stupid as the mother being impoverished and living in a cardboard box. I’m serious. That’s not a reason to end a human life, but it is a scenario that modern reasoning often finds justifiable to terminate a human life. Okay, and.. what about adoption? What about the many thousands (millions?) of children born throughout the world in any given year in equally desperate situations but who live good lives? (It comes as a revelation to so much of modernity that a life can be worthwile even without wealth or even basic shelter.) I love the reply Ann Coulter witnesses her father gave her when, as a kid, she related that scenario in asking her father if that would justify an abortion. His reply: “I don’t care. A life’s a life.” Amen. There is no more concise and accurate rebuttal than that.

Look wider at the “pro-choice” cause. More than 34,000,000 million Americans have been reported as “aborted” since 1972 (add up the numbers on that page) - which is far more than the number of Americans lost in all previous American wars combined, while pro-lifers endlessly puppet these illogical lines about “choice”. The “pro-choice” movement is not properly identified as toleration of silent infanticide - standing by while the class of “babies” is unendingly slaughtered. Nobody should be at war over it - killing abortion clinic doctors is a seriously bad and misled thing to do - but the legislative war against the “pro-choice” movement should be far, far more intense and broad than it is. Abortion is doing a far better job destroying American life than Al-Qaeda has reasonable hope to - but Al-qaeda surely would destroy all American lives, given the chance. I realize this comparison may distort pro-lifers as just out to kill babies. That’s stupid. They mean none of that. But unfortunately, their collective means of misled tolerance have in very fact meant more cost of American life than all other American battles combined. Heaven shudders at the bloodbath, my friends.

But the question of abortion is more complicated than that. There are arguments it should be decided per State by State constitutions. I know Democrats who happen also to be Mormons who think it is and should be so. I disagree with them. The first lines of the Constitution of the United States declare “..Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” as inalienable rights. Arguably, the right of life is not universally protected under the United States federal government.

There are arguments that would seem to refute this - or maybe they actually do - but as far as proposing legislation I don’t care. If those arguments hold up, we need to change the legislation that allows them to hold up, in my opinion. Whatever litigious mess got it through our heads that it’s okay for a State to approve killing a fetus in any circumstance - we need to reverse that mess. Because it is not okay, morally, in most of the situations where States in our nation allow it. And in my own opinion, any candidate with a “pro-choice” position offers no hope of overturning that litigious mess.

Because I believe extremist Islam poses a far greater danger, I could vote for a strong pro-war candidate who was also “pro-choice”. I’m fortunate in that regard that McCain is both pro-life and pro-war. And as I’ve said before, Obama and Clinton both speak of “withdrawal” - but that is a euphamism for surrender to an enemy who, if not stopped, would do everything within their then expanding means to literally destroy the United States of America.

And Obama and Clinton both know that, whatever else they say. They can promise immediate withdrawal, but they know they can’t really offer that. One meeting with a war cabinet would scare them silly out of the decision. McCain not only knows that, but he says it, too.