Mike Huckabee Demonstrates Why He Is Not Presidential

Natalie Portman seems like a fine young woman.  She's well-educated (dropped out of sight to finish her degree), talented (recent Oscar) and seems to live a relatively sane life.  She is also pregnant, carrying the baby of her fiance. 

Mike Huckabee is a former minister, former Governor of Arkansas, former presidential candidate and possibly a future presidential candidate.  Mr. Huckabee finds himself in a bit of a tempest for having criticized Ms. Portman's single pregnancy, claiming that she is glorifying and glamorizing single pregnancy.

Huckabee is a fool and a scold, and he will not be President.  I wish to go on the record now and throughout the coming election that this is one Republican I simply cannot support.  Putting aside for a moment the likelihood that kabillionaire Portman can probably swing the single mother thing without recourse to state aid, the fact that she is affianced should make SOME difference.  But even more to the point, Huckabee earned his chops as a social conservative sort of Republican, you know, the kind who thinks abortion should be banned.  So lets set up a little thought experiment.  What would YOU HAVE Ms. Portman do with the news of her pregnancy, Mr. Huckabee?  Would you have rather that she aborted it?

He can't have it both ways.  He can't criticize her for glamorizing single motherhood at the same time he damns the act that would have removed that which he believes she glamorizes.  While single-motherhood is associated with all sorts of societal ills, if you're gonna walk the pro-life walk, then you don't get to criticize those who choose exactly what you would have them choose.  And if you REALLY want to protect the lives of unborn fetuses, then maybe prominent women carrying theirs to term isn't such a bad thing.

Abortion, Contraception, Plan "C"?

News here of a new drug with the cutesy name "Ella", that is being hailed as a new "morning after" pill--that is, a pill that a woman can take in the days (in this case--five of them) after unprotected sex to create an "inhospitable" atmosphere for any for potentially dividing cluster of cells, otherwise known as a "zygote" or a "blastocyst" depending on how soon after fertilization one discusses it. Some refer to this mass of cells as a "human being", but we'll drive past that one for the now.

This new drug is already available in 22 countries, and there is a likelihood that it will soon be introduced here. "Plan B", which works in a similar manner, is already available here without prescription. If the FDA finds "Ella" (gag) to be safe, then I am for its introduction into the American pharmaceutical regime, and here's why.

Abortion is a terrible thing, a tragic thing. Yet we are a nation of laws, and under our laws, it is legal. Its legality however, in no way diminishes its tragedy.

Yet--here we are, nearing forty years since Roe v. Wade, and as ridiculously ruled as that case was, it remains in force. I think a rational look into the future would reveal that it is unlikely to be overturned. It does not matter that an increasing number of Americans call themselves "pro-life". What matters is the percentage who would support Roe v. Wade being overturned--and that is not anywhere near a majority.

So we are left with a dilemma--a country that increasingly finds abortion to be distasteful and horrific and a great moral tragedy--though there is little stomach to dispense with the legal framework that protects it. The great symbols of the Pro-Life movement--in utero videos, abortion clinic protests, revealing the evil of "partial birth abortion" to those who simply don't know--are meaningful and help stoke the fires of what often appears to be an insoluble debate. This is where drugs like "Ella" and "Plan B" come in.

Some Pro-Lifers would suggest that at the moment of fertilization, a being is created entitled to all the protections the law would extend to that entity outside the womb. This is--I believe--an extreme position--and I use that term only to describe its distance from a "moderate" position--it is not a value judgment. It is this group for whom even drugs like Plan B and Ella are as evil as partial birth abortion. To them, a four day old proto-human is as worthy of legal protection as a six month old fetus. Morally--I agree with this view; that is, philosophically, either a human is formed worthy of protection at fertilization, or such protection essentially means nothing. Why not three months? Why not six months? If the dividing line is the womb itself, isn't that just a little too confining? I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it isn't a big step to suggest that a partial birth abortion on an eight month old fetus is just a stone's throw from tossing a newborn in the dumpster.

But this isn't only a moral of philosophical question. It is also a legal and political one, and this is where the search for compromise takes me. Yes---in a late-night dormroom conversation or a dinner party throwdown--I could make the case I just did--that abortion is a pre-echo of infanticide--but I would invariably run up against the continuing inconvenience of Roe v. Wade. Plan B and Ella offer a useful "compromise" to those who remain open to it--the possibility of shuttered abortion clinics, the elimination of angry crowds shaming women who are already in a fragile state, the neutralization of fetal videos showing fingers and toes and lips and noses.

I realize there are some in the US for whom contraception of any kind is anathema--these people will not be part of reaching compromises on this issue that ultimately remove it from the political stage. The overwhelming majority of Americans support a woman's right to pre-emptively prevent pregnancy through the use of hormones ingested as oral contraceptives or through the skin. It seems to me that the use of similar chemicals to prevent a zygote from attaching to the uterine wall--is not demonstrably different from the pre-emptive use of such chemicals. Yes--to those who see conception beginning at fertilization EVEN AS A LEGAL AND POLITICAL ISSUE, this is unacceptable. But for the rest of us who are able to make this distinction, the act of a woman ingesting a pill to prevent a pregnancy (not fertilization--they appear to me to be different--the distinction being the attachment of the zygote to the uterine wall) OF WHICH SHE IS ALMOST CERTAINLY NOT AWARE is not fundamentally different from the act of preventing that pregnancy through oral contraceptives. In this similarity lies a path to compromise, a path in which a woman's "choice" really is a choice between her and her conscience, one that does not involve the rest of us (through the need for abortion clinics and the concomitant desire to protest them). Of course, the wide availability of such drugs would not eliminate the "need" for abortion clinics, but it seems quite clear that "abortion" as we know it today would dramatically decrease.

There are no easy or perfect answers here--there are just less bad answers. It seems to me that Plan B and Ella are less bad answers, and the sooner we are able to accommodate them into this debate, the sooner we'll be able to remove abortion as a divisive and insoluble issue from the political discourse.

Abortion and Sarah Palin

My love/hate relationship with Sarah Palin continues. I love her energy, I love her star power, I love her ability to motivate and move people, and I just plain love the way she looks. I really, really, really don't like her unabashed anti-intellectualism, and I don't cotton to her blatant populism. And frankly, her stance on abortion really confuses me.

Yesterday, at a breakfast meeting of the Susan B. Anthony List (a group dedicated to electing anti-abortion candidates to public office), Palin ONCE AGAIN described what must have been the agonizing process she faced several years ago when she learned that the baby she was carrying had Down Syndrome--and the decision she ultimately made to continue the pregnancy to full term.

I am delighted that Palin made the decision that she did, and I am so grateful that her son has a mother like Palin to love him and raise him.

But isn't it just a little bit ironic that this icon of modern politics--this standard bearer of the pro-life movement--can stand there and talk to a group of women about the CHOICE she made to continue the pregnancy? Again--I support the choice she made and admire her for it. But without Roe v. Wade--there IS NO CHOICE. At least no legal one. The process of reflection, love and sacrifice she and her husband went through in order to reach the decision they did was exactly the kind of process I hope couples facing this decision go through. But prior to Roe v. Wade--the choice came down to carrying the pregnancy to term or breaking the law.

Look--I remain deeply troubled by the concept of abortion. The Pro-Choice movement does the very best job they can dehumanizing human life in order to justify their position. At the same time, the Pro-Life movement minimizes the reality of what carrying an unwanted baby to full term can mean to a woman. There are no easy answers here on either side of this issue. But if we're going to have a meaningful dialogue on this issue, the irony of Sarah Palin's "choice" cannot be dismissed lightly.

Abortion and the Healthcare Bill

I normally do not cite the work of Kathleen Parker positively (she's sorta the Conservative Maureen Dowd, far as I can tell), but this editorial is worth reading. I--along with some of you--was really pretty confused by all the abortion talk surrounding the healthcare bill--and I honestly couldn't figure out all the ins and outs of the different bills, why some saw the Senate version as more favorable to federally funded abortions, why the President's Executive Order was so criticized by some, and why the Pro-Choice movement so vehemently opposed the House Bill, the Stupak Amendment and the President's Executive Order. Read Parker's column--it is a fairly straightforward explanation of a complex set of facts.

As you know, I'm not much of a social conservative. I have some views on abortion that are pretty mainstream, but mostly, I'm tired of it coloring so many different policy questions. That said, the more I learn about THIS BILL, the more I realize that social conservatives who fought the bill as hard as they did--did so from a position of strength. They are on the right side of this one--not from a policy perspective so much, but from the perspective of stating positively and plainly that this bill does in fact create the conditions for federal funding of abortions. President Obama signed and Executive Order that HE AS A CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLAR knows is meaningless.