Like George H.W. Bush (41), John McCain is distrusted by the religious right. What does that mean? Not what a gay friend just told me--that a President McCain will not advance the agenda of so-called "Christians" who are obsessed with homosexuals and abortion.
In the past, Senator McCain had been open-minded about gay rights and even abortion. (Somewhere out there, McCain is on video about how if his daughter got pregnant, it would be a "family decision" about what to do. And he praised one of the heroes of 9-11-01, a gay man who helped on Filght 93.)
That was McCain eight years ago, when he should have switched parties after being trashed by Bush in South Carolina.
Now, like Bush 41, a President McCain, even if he is not planning on running for re-election, will be under immense pressure to appoint judges like Alito, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas. Activist judges with agendas.
These include overruling Roe v. Wade and implicitly, Lawrence v. Texas, both decisions based on a right to privacy that so-called "conservatives" claim is not in the Constitution--so it does not exist. So abortion rights and gay rights are on the ballot this year because it's likely that at least three Supreme Court justices will retire in the next four years.
If you’re a restaurant worker opposed to meat-eating, you soon likely will be able to refuse diners who ask for such food.
The Bush administration announced a controversial proposed regulation designed to protect wait staff, cooks and others who work at places receiving government money from being forced to deliver services that violate their personal beliefs. It’s an effort to protect vegetarians from workplace discrimination.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said the proposed regulation would boost compliance of three separate laws protecting federally funded food-service providers’ "right of conscience."
This story from the front page of Yahoo News by an AP reporter made me want to scream at the computer at 7:00 am this morning.
He reports that faith leaders at the Democratic convention are pressing the party on their positions on restricting abortion, school choice, and other such issues.
Not ONE pro-choice faith leader in Denver was interviewed for the article.
I grew up in the middle of Kansas and spent 7 long years in Wichita. You remember ground zero where Operation Rescue was forcing themselves onto Wichita. They were awful people trying to force their views on the people of Wichita and you had to see them when ever you drove along one of the main streets.
Well, I guess they had to go on a larger scale... See below of pics
I just read a bizarro-world sentence in an AP story on the GOP's official party platform:
Conservatives succeeded in removing a line from a platform draft urging a reduction in abortions — underscoring their point that abortion should be eliminated.
Can someone explain this to me? How does fighting NOT to endorse a reduction in abortions SUPPORT the elimination of abortion?
Walking around the vicinity of DNC-related events, there’s one thing I have been unable to escape: Free condoms.
Planned Parenthood is distributing pink-wrapped "Protect yourself from John McCain" condoms with a series of 10 fun facts about McCain’s positions on women's health. Collect all 10!
Inside the initial convention perimeter you can go to the Trojan display, where you can go into an inflatable dome and watch a brief movie in which pigs on a roller coaster crash into facts on safe sex such as (yeah, it’s a little weird), participate in a condom race, read educational materials, and, of course, be handed a wide assortment of condoms by everyone you run into.
Meanwhile, for all the talk of PUMAs, the most visible protesters are opposing abortion, with the mixture of fury-inducing lies and pity-inducing unhingedness that you often find in aggressive anti-abortion forces. It was pity-inducing to the point that I’m not posting video I shot, because it feels exploitive of a very sad woman – but then you hear the ridiculous claim that Barack Obama is the most pro-abortion person on, like, the entire earth, and the pity is mostly replaced by anger.
Who do you think is doing more to reduce abortion (never mind sexually transmitted diseases and general angst), the people handing out condoms or the ones screaming into bullhorns?
Okay, that's fine. The church takes moral stands on some issues, but why is that the only issue which seems to yield a denial of communion? Is the Catholic church supporting the Iraq War? Lots of people died. There is no church-type of moral justification for the US invasion of Iraq as far as I can see.
How many bishops have said "we will not give communion to any Catholic politicians who support the Iraq War?"
Is the Catholic church hierarchy again just a tool for the conservative political lobby?
On this day in 1920, U.S. Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby ratified the 19th Amendment, finally giving American women the right to vote. After years of organizing, women achieved the right to cast their ballots in full participation in our democracy. On this momentous anniversary, it’s important to recognize the power of women voters, and to make clear the stakes in this year’s Presidential election. If John McCain is elected, he will restrict and roll back women’s rights, and work to prevent our achieving full equality in society.
John McCain Is No Choice for Women.
John McCain’s attitude towards women’s rights demonstrates that if elected, he will actively promote an anti-women agenda from the White House. Luckily, women have a great advocate in Barack Obama, whose history of support for women’s issues should reassure female voters that the Democratic Party will protect and expand women’s rights.
Please read the following information about John McCain and share it with other women you know. It’s imperative that we use our right to vote in order to protect our rights this election year.
The so-called Justice Foundation, based in San Antonio, Texas, has mounted an anti-choice and anti-women initiative against women in its campaign to falsely claim that abortion causes depression and low esteem.
http://www.txjf.org/
By Louise Melling, Director, ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project
Last Thursday the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released proposed regulations (PDF) that could seriously undermine women's access to reproductive health services, including birth control and abortion. Now the public has 30 days to let the Bush administration know precisely what we think of these regulations. Click here for our Action Alert, which will allow you to send comments to HHS.
The Bush administration is trying to spin the proposed regulations as a necessary means of protecting health care workers who refuse to participate in abortions. But federal law has long carefully balanced protections for individual religious liberty and patients' access to reproductive health care. It's disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
The Democratic Party’s buzz word for the 2008 convention is "unity." But when it comes to the important policy decisions a President must make, how united are Barack Obama and Joe Biden?
A brief overview of eight domestic and foreign policy positions shows that they are indeed united on those issues that will be on Americans minds when they pull the lever in November.
This morning I was reading Crashing Vor's very incisive diary, on reproductive rights, and began thinking about the harsh reality that, given the opportunity, many Republicans, including John McCain, would impose an anti-women, anti-health, and anti-family agenda upon America.
In the late 1980's, I was wandering through a used bookstore with my Buddha-jowled, gurgling, infant daughter when I came across "The Abortion Handbook," by Patricia Maginnis and Lana Clark Phelan. I bought it as a curio; a relic of our dark past; something to pass along to my daughter; a reminder of the lengths women were pushed to as a consequence of archaic, disenlightened attitudes toward abortion.
This is my first diary here, mercy please. I decided I had to weigh in on the next non-"issue" that we'll be hearing about in the traditional media's effort to tear down Barack Obama. They're going to try and paint him as a baby-killer-and I'm not referring to the traditional Evangelical epithet when talking about those who are pro-choice.
In the late 1920s some 15,000 women a year died from abortions.In the decade before Roe v Wade, 5000 women a year died, mostly Black and Hispanic women.
Well-connected white women with private health insurance were sometimes able to obtain "therapeutic" abortions, a never-defined category that remained legal throughout the epoch of illegal abortion.Even for the privileged, though, access to safe abortion narrowed throughout the fifties.
Under a President McCain (God forbid) Roe v Wade would fade into history upon the next death of a Supreme Court Justice.This would not stop abortions;nothing will ever stop abortions.They have been a part of human history since the beginning and always will be.Under capitalism, women cannot be equal to men without having control over reproduction.But,if Roe v Wade is overturned will abortions be safe?
Has John McCain been baptized into his current church yet? Can't tell from his website. He has been baptized at all. The difference is, has he been baptized into the membership of his current church. According to this interview with his pastor (linked by CNN and CBN) the answer is...
Katie Couric interviewed John McCain at his Sedona house. Number one, it seems. He didn't say how many houses he owns, but he attempted to respond to her question. Within his answer were two odd points:
1 - McCain said he is 'blessed' to have all this success and wealth.
2 - Some of those houses are investment properties.
Suggesting of course, that if you don't have success and wealth, you just ain't been blessed.
And no one even lives in some of those houses. They're just there to make money off of. They own all that property. And he has no time for church membership. Curious, no?
At the request of some Daily KOs bloggers, I'm reposting this entry for other bloggers to see. The reason is due to the fact that yesterday was 'announce V.P.' day for Obama, to which some believed the value of this diary was neglected.
In summary, the Bush Administration plans to pass a regulation allowing HCPs not only the right to refuse service over a medical procedure they find morally objectionable, but to also withhold information from the patient of other locations that would provide the service. This would include things such as abortion, Plan B contraception, etc.
The wording within the regulation is incredibly loose and requires a substantial amount of money to be passed. It could also lead to other potential patient rights violations.
