Oh look, Obama changed his mind... on abortion, AGAIN

Bouncing from one side to the other faster than a tennis ball at Wimbledon... Leaping tall tales in a single bound... It's a bird! It's a plane! No - It's Barack Obama!

First he supported abortion:

Remember this is a guy who voted in the Illinois State Senate against the Induced Infant Liability Act which protected babies born alive after a "botched" abortion. A very similar law, the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate. Even NARAL didn't oppose that bill. He defends that position by saying that he didn't think such a law was necessary despite the testimony in his own committee from delivery room nurses of aborted babies being left to die. He also in the Illinois legislature opposed a bill that would have instituted penalties against someone who transported a minor across state lines for an abortion.

Then on Thursday he changed his mind and said that mental distress” should not qualify as a justification for late-term abortions.

Now it's Sunday, so he's changed his mind again

Reporter: You said that mental distress shouldn't be a reason for late-term abortion?

Obama: "My only point is this -- historically I have been a strong believer in a women's right to choose with her doctor, her pastor and her family. And it is ..I have consistently been saying that you have to have a health exception on many significant restrictions or bans on abortions including late-term abortions.

In the past there has been some fear on the part of people who, not only people who are anti-abortion, but people who may be in the middle, that that means that if a woman just doesn't feel good then that is an exception. That's never been the case.

I don't think that is how it has been interpreted. My only point is that in an area like partial-birth abortion having a mental, having a health exception can be defined rigorously. It can be defined through physical health, It can be defined by serious clinical mental-health diseases. It is not just a matter of feeling blue. I don't think that's how pro-choice folks have interpreted it. I don't think that's how the courts have interpreted it and I think that's important to emphasize and understand."

Ann Althouse looks at all this switching about and asks

Incredible. That would be incredible even without the prior inconsistent statement.

Really. Does he think we are idiots?

Frank James of The Swamp thinks that it's because

[Obama] clearly needed to add one more thought to that statement. He did it today.

I for one can't wait for Obama to add yet one more thought, so I'm starting a whole category titled "Oh look, Obama changed his mind". Can we look forward for more?

Yes we can!

Crossposted



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Oh look, Obama changed his mind... on abortion

No sooner did Obama changed his mind about Iraq, that now he's changed his mind about abortion:

The AP reports: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama says “mental distress” should not qualify as a justification for late-term abortions, a key distinction not embraced by many supporters of abortion rights. How dare he try to control a woman's womb!

Oops! Gosh, a rabid feminista took control of the keyboard for a few seconds. Seriously, tho, why does Barack Obama view as "wrong" a woman having a late-term abortion for so-called "mental distress" when he doesn't even believe that a baby that survives a late-term abortion should be legally defined as a "person" who would be "accorded immediate protection under the law," and also believes that such laws would be "one more burden on women"?

It's getting so that even the NYT's starting to notice the flip-flops. As Ed says, The New York Times editorial board went to bed with a virgin and woke up with a... well, a pro.

Charles Krauthammer refers to Obama as A Man of Seasonal Principles:

Obama's seasonally adjusted principles are beginning to pile up: NAFTA, campaign finance reform, warrantless wiretaps, flag pins, gun control. What's left?

Now that Obama's started on Iraq and abortion, and he's thrown everyone and his grandma under the bus, that's a good question.

The Obama strategy is clear: say anything that will get him elected, obliterate any difference between him and McCain, and expect to cash in on Bush Derangement Syndrome. For the Obama believers, and possibly for the electorate at large,, the flip-flops just don't matter.

Ace is right on the money:

Yes, but so what? The Obama phenomenon is a cult of personality. His fanatical supporters are not voting for any particular set of policies; they're voting for the man, plain and simple, whatever his policies may have been or might one day evolve into.

It's all towards the greater good of Obamatopia after all.

Cross-posted here.



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Harriet McBryde Johnson

Harriet McBryde Johnson died today at age 50. She was a champion defender of the disableds' right to live.

In our culture of death, where universities grant tenure to "ethicists" who advocate killing "defective" infants during the first thirty days after their delivery, it is people like Harriet that remind us that every life has value and dignity.

She wrote about meeting "the most influential philosopher of our time"

He insists he doesn't want to kill me. He simply thinks it would have been better, all things considered, to have given my parents the option of killing the baby I once was, and to let other parents kill similar babies as they come along and thereby avoid the suffering that comes with lives like mine and satisfy the reasonable preferences of parents for a different kind of child. It has nothing to do with me. I should not feel threatened.

Whenever I try to wrap my head around his tight string of syllogisms, my brain gets so fried it's . . . almost fun. Mercy! It's like "Alice in Wonderland."

Harriet never, under any definition of the word, lost her right to live.

May we all live by her strength.

UPDATE, Saturday 7 June
Ed Morrissey:

Johnson always recognized the power of the individual and the spark of the divine in human life. She never stopped advocating for equality and dignity for those with disabilities of any kind and especially those with severe handicaps. Johnson maintained a sense of humor and self-deprecating wit that allowed people to see her as the complete person she was. Harriet McBryde Johnson will be sorely missed in the years to come.

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Anti-abortion = Saudi terrorists, says Yale president

Yale University president Richard Levin lacks a moral compass: Yale University President Compares Pro-Lifers to Extremists After Abortion Flap

At the American kickoff of a religious foundation former British Prime Minister Tony Blair started, Yale University president Richard Levin made a comment sure to upset the majority of Americans who are pro-life.

He said that pro-life Americans who support the current Bush administration policy of prohibiting taxpayer funding of abortions overseas are like Saudi extremists.

Michael Gerson of the Washington Post reported on the statement in a Wednesday editorial column.

"At an event designed to further mutual religious sympathy, two of the panelists -- including the president of Yale University, Richard Levin -- casually asserted that religious Americans who support pro-life restrictions on international family planning aid are as doctrinaire and exclusionary as Saudi extremists," he explained.

Let's run that one again: Eleven of the September 11, 2001 hijackers were Saudis. They killed over 3,000 people in one day during the worst attack on the North American continent in history. That's who Levin is comparing to law-abiding American taxpayers who don't want to fund abortion around the world.

In Levin's mind, American taxpayers have the obligation to fund abortions everywhere in the world, regardless of their own personal, moral or religious beliefs. Whether the American is a Catholic or a Muslim (both of which oppose abortion) doesn't matter to him.

Levin also appears to ignore the fact that abortion is a political means of repression in parts of the world, most specifically in China, with its "one child" policy. Abortion as a means of population control is used as a means of coercion and oppression over both men and women, but particularly over women. For instance, Chinese women married to Taiwanese men have been ordered to have abortions on visits home to comply with the mainland's one-child policy

Abortion can also be used by totalitarian regimes as a means to generate fetal tissue for genetic research and transplants, which is a business in many countries that allow the selling of transplant organs. The woman bearing the unborn child counts for nothing in this equation.

Levin also appears to ignore the fact that abortion is now a most popular means of restricting the number of girls born in a country. While Levin may or may not have been outraged that his predecessor Larry Sommers was fired over his statement that there might be innate difference between men and women, Levin's apparently not bothered that abortion is a means of female infanticide in China and India.

The resulting shortage of girls can also bring about trafficking in women across borders, as is reportedly happening between Korea and China. Those women are doomed to a life of prostitution and misery.

Levin also appears to ignore the fact that abortion has medical risks. Is the American taxpayer then obligated to pay for that care, too, anywhere in the world? Would Levin also propose making disability payments to women disabled by abortions, and restitution to women who die from a legal abortion, too?

But all that doesn't bother Levin. He firmly believes that the American taxpayer has the obligation to fund abortion everywhere in the world. He probably lives under the illussion that abortion is a matter of "women excercising their free will over their bodies" everywhere in the world.

To him, the rest of us who oppose it are a bunch of "extremists."

LifeNews has the contac information for Levin if you would like to contact him.

(h/t Siggy)



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Front yard invasion, today's items, and the Carnival

UPDATE
Don't miss also Ellen Goodman, Helpless Little Girl

The Husband does the gardening (except for the mulching, which was done this week - and trust me, you don't want to smell the mulch much), and a couple of years ago he planted clematis. Well, the clematis love our front yard and now we have a large patch of clematis ready to take over. The ones in the picture are well over 5' tall and seem to be spreading.

Let that be a lesson to all of us.
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SC 2 Linked To Sami Al-Arian Investigation

There's been another strange development regarding the searching of a home in the investigation into Yousseff Samir Megahed and Ahmed Abda Mohamed, arrested for allegedly carrying pipe bombs in their vehicle just miles from a military facility in Goose Creek, South Carolina. According to this report, the home was also searched some years back during the investigation into Sami Al-Arian.

Go read the rest.
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For some reason the comments aren't showing under the posts. I have not a clue as to why or what to do, so my apologies for the inconvenience. Hopefully it will fix itself.
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Don't miss Francis Porretto's excellent post from 2004 following up my post from yesterday.
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Matt has an article from Nate Fick on Afghanistan. Fick's the author of One Bullet Away

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Newsweek Editor Calls Mag's Global Warming 'Deniers' Article 'Highly Contrived', debunking itself.
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The Carnival of the Insanities is on!

A killing way

Shots assist in aborting fetuses

In response to the Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, many abortion providers in Boston and around the country have adopted a defensive tactic. To avoid any chance of partially delivering a live fetus, they are injecting fetuses with lethal drugs before procedures.

Allow me to take off the gloves and spell it out for you:

This is murder, folks When you have delayed making a decision for so long that you have to induce death through lethal injection so your legal *ss is covered because otherwise the baby would have survived the abortion, you are doing an evil deed.

I agree 100% with Reliapundit:

The same LIBERALS who decry death penalty EXECUTIONS done with potassium chloride - executions done to convicted MURDERERS only after exhaustive - seemingly unlimited appeals) - these same libs think THIS PROCEDURE is just fine AGAINST A DEFENSELESS BABY.

Potassium chloride, at that.

Murder, clear and simple.

Update, Sunday 12 August
A little death

Breaking news: Supreme Court upholds ban on partial-birth abortions

Supreme Court upholds ban on partial-birth abortions

The Supreme Court upheld the nationwide ban on a controversial abortion procedure today, handing abortion opponents the long-awaited victory they expected from a more conservative bench.

The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed and President Bush signed into law in 2003 does not violate a woman's constitutional right to an abortion.

The opponents of the act "have not demonstrated that the Act would be unconstitutional in a large fraction of relevant cases," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

The decision pitted the court's conservatives against its liberals, with President Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, siding with the majority.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia also were in the majority.

More at Pajamas Media and Instapundit

Rep. Jeb Hensarling and Sen. John McCaine applaud the decision.

Update Reaction.

ShrinkWrapped posts on abortion

ShrinkWrapped continues his series on abortion, Abortion on Demand: Reverberations and Vicissitudes (Part II) I can not do justice to his post if I cut and paste a fragment, so please read the whole post.

Following that, I read Sigmund Carl and Alfred's devastating account of his experience. I did a brief post on it and later deleted it because I could not come up with any words of consolation.

Which is why I so admire The Anchoress.

Update: ShrinkWrapped has posted Abortion on Demand: Reverberations and Vicissitudes (Part III)

Le Monde loves Fidel, and today's items

Via No Pasaran,

Le Monde Diplomatique Director Ignacio Ramonet is gathering a "consencus" of French journalists to write an "authorized" retrospective of Castro's paradise on earth.

Joe is not amused
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Did you listen to my latest Blog Talk Radio?

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One of my childhood heroes, Buzz Aldrin, has an article at PJM, Let's go back to the moon
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ShrinkWrapped is discussing Abortion on Demand: Reverberations and Vicissitudes. Sigmund, Carl and Alfred has an absolutely heartbreaking post on the subject.

Do Women Have A Right To Informed Consent?
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Town Commons posts on the Muslim Council of Britain's guidelines for special treatment of Islamic children in the state school system:

• Allowance for girls beginning at the primary school level to wear the hijab
• seperation of the sexes in any sort of physical activity that would allow touching or that involves swimming
• special changing areas for muslim children to change clothes in private
• if you have a school field trip to a farm, muslims must not be allowed to touch a pig
• Parents can withdrawal their children from music classes
• Muslim children should not be asked to draw pictures of humans

Go read the rest.
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Via Larwyn, Hillary Clinton's Confederacy Hypocrisy. Hillary can't remember celebrating Confederate Flag Day back in Arkansas. How convenient.

Terrorists not allowed to use Constitution against us

War Power Game
The coming constiutional crisis

Edwards: Greatest Threat to World Peace is Israel
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Via Maria,
Russian missile "blackmail" won't work, Czechs say

The Czech Republic said on Tuesday it would not be intimidated by Russia over plans to site parts of a U.S. missile defense system on its territory and said attempts at "blackmail" by Moscow would backfire.

Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg said threats by Russian officials over the plans, which would involve placing a radar system on Czech land and a missile battery in Poland, would only make Czechs more determined to defend themselves.

Dennis Prager on Happiness Is a Moral Obligation

These PU students are making someone happy!
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Cinnammon writes about When Awards Become Politicized
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In a lighter mode,
Accessorize, accessorize I just bought myself one of these:

Handbag and lunch bag in one. And the red matches my nail polish, too.