Desperate to secure GOP primary votes next summer, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham is spearheading an effort to ban abortion after twenty weeks of pregnancy.
“My record on being a pro-life senator, member of Congress is clear,” Graham said promoting his bill on ‘Fox News Sunday.’
“I am proud to lead this charge,” he added. “This is a debate worthy of a great democracy. When do you become you: At twenty weeks of a pregnancy? What is the proper role of the government in protecting that child?”
Actually “you become you” the moment your dad’s sperm fertilizes your mother’s egg … a.k.a. the moment of conception.
That’s also when you become endowed by your creator with “certain inalienable rights,” chief among them the right not to have your life terminated.
At least that’s the way we see it …
The U.S. House also sees it that way … well, after twenty weeks (according to legislation it passed back in June).
Graham? All he sees is legions of gullible, single-issue social conservative voters …
UPDATE: Oh, and for all of you single-issue abortion voters, each of Graham’s announced 2014 primary opponents – Upstate businessman Richard Cash, Lowcountry businesswoman Nancy Mace and S.C. Sen. Lee Bright – are all pro-life.
40 comments
There are three distinct milestones in the life of a human being:
1. Conception
2. Birth
3. Death
Everything else that happens in between those three milestones are phases human development and growth. Gestation, the nine month period of time when the fetus grows in the mother’s womb, is a phase of human development.
Several years ago a reporter asked then Florida State head coach Bobby Bowden when he planned on retiring. Ol’ Bobby drawled something along the lines of, “There are several big events in one’s life…..being born, getting married, having children, retirement….. ain’t usually but one big event that happens after retirement…”
A man was asked by a minister why he never went to church while his wife never missed a service. The man answered, ” Bad things happened to me both times I went to a church.”
“How’s that?” asked the minister.
“The first time was when I was christened – they threw water in my face. The second time was when I got married and ended up with a millstone around my neck.”
The minister replied, ” Well, I understand that, and I guess the next time we see you we’ll be throwing dirt on you.”
Spurrier believes in life after death. How many times has he seen his Gamecocks go into the second half carrying a goose egg on the scoreboard — and then coming back to life to win?
“This is a debate worthy of a great democracy.”
Did you mean REPUBLIC you gay fuck stick?
“This is a debate worthy of a great democracy.”
From a “Republican”, no less.
Piffle.
It is none of the government’s bidness what a woman does with her body.
What do you consider the status of the fetus? You cannot have a pregnancy without them?
What I think of it isn’t the issue. It isn’t my body.
It isn’t my decision.
If dang sure isn’t the gov’s.
Some people argue that “viability” should be the criteria for whether a fetus can be aborted or not. Just as a fetus is not “viable” if not within the womb and attached via the umbilical cord, neither is your Grandmother “viable” when she is hooked to a life support system in the hospital intensive care unit.
If you support abortion and killing the fetus because it is not “viable”, do you also support unhooking Grandma from life support and killing her off because she is not “viable” without an external life support system?
Sometimes Grandma doesn’t want to spend the rest of her days being kept alive in a hospital bed by machines, racking up huge bills for her loved ones to pay. Sometimes Grandma is in excruciating pain and would rather not extend that pain when there is zero hope for recovery. Sometimes Grandma just has a Do Not Resuscitate order. Sometimes Grandma is just gone, and all you’re keeping alive is the shell that her consciousness used to inhabit. Sometimes Grandma gets to decide when it is time to go. Sometimes a loved one is forced to make a pretty unfortunate choice in her place. (Sometimes a commenter thinks you’re a real dick for not considering that. Sometimes.)
Sometimes a woman is raped. Sometimes a woman gets pregnant through incest. Sometimes a woman just wants to be sure they don’t get pregnant through their husband or lover until they can actually afford it. Sometimes a woman finds out her unborn child has a severe deformity. Sometimes a pregnancy carries a high risk of miscarriage, which could risk the mother’s ability to bear future children, or even risk her life. Sometimes there is literally zero chance a fetus will ever be able to survive. Sometimes a pregnancy went unknown for a very long period of time where some substance was ingested that would very negatively affect the health of the child, sometimes even legal and necessary substances. Sometimes the fetus itself is healthy, but the mother is not healthy enough to sustain a pregnancy. Sometimes an accident jeopardizes the life of both and the unfortunate call is made to terminate the fetus. Sometimes the mother makes the decision, sometimes a loved one has to do it for her. Sometimes those pregnancies are very much wanted, but had to be terminated. Sometimes laws that try to prevent some terminations of pregnancies negatively affect those who surely wish they didn’t have to terminate theirs, but need to.
Sometimes an issue isn’t strictly black and white. Sometimes people think they are and refuse to accept otherwise. Sometimes I wish I didn’t live on this planet anymore.
Sounds like you are quick to pull the plug. If your statements were a software program, it would suffer from “featuritise” going well outside the context of my statement.
To clarify, I believe the healing and growth process should continue when there is a positive expected outcome. I consider many things but did not state them in my original comment, and have had to personally address some of those examples you state.
You might need to be in the room with a hospitalized relative as the nurse is going over the Do Not Resuscitate protocol and you might learn something.
I have some cousins. Their granny told everyone in the family that she did not want un-natural “life” support, as opposed to palliative care. When she was no longer able to decide, some of them insisted and they subjected her to what she did not want. The ones who did not stand up for her wishes regret it to this day.
There have been studies done that show doctors do a very poor job of explaining to families the likely negative outcomes of their dying patients. Of course, they and the hospital are making money every day that patient stays hooked up and alive…
It should be grandma’s decision, or the family’s acting on her wishes.
It is beyond obvious that he is attempting to make up ground in polling numbers. Last week it was support for marriage between a man and a woman, and this week it is abortion. Does not take a lot to manipulate SC voters.
Next, Lindsay will be going to Klan meetings to get some of that bigot vote.
You mean the gay bigot vote? Like Zed from Pulp Fiction?
In South Carolina, that’d get him about 130 votes state wide – the Klan is not and has never been an important organization here. If he wants the bigot vote I’d suggest he start with “Pooty Poot Hartpootlian” and company.
Nolff probably met civil war reenactment, same thing
If you really believe that you’ve obviously never met any (un)Civil War re-enactors. While I am not one, I know quite a few through my teaching history – not many racist in that crowd and quite a few African Americans participate on both sides.
Yeh,riiiight!!!!
You do realize that old Nathan Bedford repudiated the Klan and everything it stood for right?
“…After only a year as Grand Wizard, in January 1869, faced with an ungovernable membership employing methods that seemed increasingly counterproductive, Forrest issued KKK General Order Number One: “It is therefore ordered and decreed, that the masks and costumes of this Order be entirely abolished and destroyed.” By the end of his life, Forrest’s racial attitudes would evolve — in 1875, he advocated for the admission of blacks into law school — and he lived to fully renounce his involvement with the all-but-vanished Klan. A new, different, and much worse Klan would emerge, 35 years after Forrest’s death, in the wake of D.W. Griffith’s revolutionary 1915 film, Birth of a Nation, a reactionary screed with a racialist brief that had been expanded to include Catholics and immigrants of all kinds. The second Klan was never restricted to the South; its goals had nothing to do with Forrest’s vision of a restored Dixie.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/fts/palmsprings_200801A41.html
Thank you, Colonel.
Colonel – I do not know if the Klan has ever been an “important organization here” or not but when I was pre-school age and grammar school age and travelling with family on Friday nights to watch out of town high school football games in Upstate SC we came across Klan rallies with fires blazing and folks all dressed in sheets – my parents would make us shield our eyes or duck down in the car. . . may not have been “important” but it sure made an impression on me at that young age . . . and I still remember to this day.
I’m a victim! I’m a victim!
I like voting for winners . . . which loser did you vote for?
You’re probably pretty close to my age then – in the pre civil rights era (late 50’s early 60’s it wasn’t un-common for Kluxers to have a “Beer and an Burnin” recruiting drive. Bubba, Lester and Leroy would show up just for the fun of it – not because they were true believers. By 1965, the Voting Rights act had passed and the movement fell apart (again). The Klan has had revivals throughout its history but I will state again, they have never been a powerful organization in South Carolina – we didn’t need the Klan, we had Ben “Pitchfork” Tillman – racism in South Carolina was generally pretty open.
Part of the reason the Klan never caught on was that we were under Federal control for so long after the (un)Civil War – Klansmen were pursued by the military governors. We had “Red Shirts”, a similar organization but it had died out by 1900 (Tillman was a Red Shirter).
When the Klan revived again in the 19teens, South Carolinians had lost interest, partly because of the excesses of Tillman and partly because we’re lazy and the “status quo was good to go”.
The next revival from about 1950-1960, was brought about because of the Civil Rights Movement but again, South Carolinians sat it out – aside from the occasional “cross burning” there was very little Klan activity in South Carolina. Most of it was centered in the “Deep South”, Alabama and Mississippi.
Today, the Klan has gone North and West and morphed into white supremacy groups and other “odd ball organizations”. There might be 8-10,000 Kluxers in the whole of the United States.
Well, we already knew he doesn’t give a shit about the Constitution.
What politician does?
Every fertilized egg is a precious gift from Me and the full force of the state should be brought to bear on protecting its inalienable right to be born, even if that means trampling upon the rights of the incubator and micromanaging the doctor-patient relationship.
Once the precious snowflake is born, if its mother doesn’t have a good-paying job, fuck the both of them.
“the full force of the state should be brought to bear on protecting its inalienable right to be born, even if that means trampling upon the rights of the incubator”
LMAO! Dude, +1 for some funny shit on a difficult topic. “Incubator” is especially funny.
You’ve clarified the essence of the debate. While I find abortion personally abhorrent, I don’t know if the misery caused by subjecting everyone to the “full force of the state” is worth it….when you give the state an inch it gets a mile and then some. I remain torn.
Democide has probably caused more death and misery than abortion…but they are both big time evils in my book.
Just like “a government that can give you everything can take everything away”, if government has absolute say on no abortion how can it not some day have say on forced abortions? It is a double edged sword the anti-abortionists swing. You can’t give the government power one day and take said power away the next, once they get it they keep it, hence the precariousness of the 0bamaCare situation today.
Yeppers.
Pandering 101.
Most Tea Party conservatives are really not pro-life. They are only pro-fetus.
He’s an idiot to get involved in abortion. Even if he loses this election, there was a chance that he could land a cabinet position in the future. This could be a real problem for him. Wait until Rachel Maddow of MSNBC get through with him.
Murder isn’t mentioned at all in the Constitution. States handle that issue, so there’s no reason they can’t or shouldn’t handle abortion. But as long as it’s a wedge issue, political opportunists will milk it for all it’s worth.
It’s guess Lindsey knows more about viability than the doctors.
Lindsey seems to know that he has permanently lost the Democrats who have voted for him before and is doubling down to get the TEAvangelicals back on his side.
I think EVERYBODY is sick of Lindsey, except Brad Warthen.
I just hope they realize simply not voting won’t get rid of him. They have to vote for someone else.
He voted for Kagan and Sotomayor. End of the line for me.
Graham needs to untie those tea bags from around his balls and shut up……I’m thinking he needs to step away from the vaginal area….he’s not a fit.