He called her charismatic.

(Though charismatic in front of an audience of foreign-policy wonks may be a different matter than on the campaign trail.)

This magazine is sent free to AARP’s enormous membership of people who consistently vote, and even just having a good-looking picture of her sitting on their coffee table has to be good for her chances in ’08. (As the VP candidate who brings a nominee Bush’s full and enthusiastic endorsement, if that’s a good thing to have in summer ’08.)

I respect your view, and I have no doubt there are many, like you, who would refuse to vote for Condi or Rudy G. on these grounds. That is regrettable; since, however, the Democratic opponent would most assuredly be pro-choice as well, I think it would be a shame not to acknowledge the other issues at stake.

The discussion above fascinates me on a number of levels. I, for one, would not vote for Condi if nominated because I would regard it as morally wrong to support a presidential candidate who would not actively seek to overturn Roe. I say this in spite of my personal admiration for Dr. Rice, my belief that her tenure as National Security Advisor in wartime provided her with exactly the Ike-like daily experience with life and death issues which one commenter claimed she lacked. She has little political experience, but she has considerably more experience which in my view would qualify her for the presidency than did the incumbent prior to his election- or Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, Jack Kennedy, Ike, Harry Truman, FDR, Herbert Hoover, Cal Coolidge… well, you get the idea.

I do not fear, BTW, that a President Rice would not nominate Supreme Court justices who would, in practice, vote to overturn Roe. Her views on judicial philosophy, insofar as she has expressed them, seem to portray her as very much a strict constructionist, and however she might feel about policy on a specific issue, the judicial philosophy of her appointees rather than her own view of specific issues would determine the impact of a Rice presidency on the issue.

But the real philosophical and moral issue where abortion is concerned is the boundaries of the human community. It’s personhood. That an embryo at the moment of conception is alive cannot be doubted. Neither can it be questioned that it is human. I do not believe that once one admits of a distinction between a being which is both human and alive and a live human being, any line one subsequently draws to protect the human dignity of any member of the human community is more than arbitrary.

In response to the distinction made b one commenter between supporting the protection of a right and approving of its exercise, I can only respond that neither morally nor constitutionally is there, in fact, a legitimate right to abortion at all. Rather,
Roe v. Wade was a badly reasoned piece of judicial legislation based on legal thinking so bad that the overwhelmingly pro-choice Supreme Court clerks at the time snickered at it as “Harry’s abortion.” The right to life, on the other hand, has a strong
legal basis at every historical stratum going all the way back to English common law. Nor should it be forgotten that the “constitutional right to privacy” upon which Roe was based is in fact found nowhere in the Constitution.

For the record, it should be noted that cases of bringing a child to term killing or crippling a woman are, in the current state of medical science, rarethat the objections to dismissing the issue as a red herring would be difficult to sustain. Dishonest attempts by pro-abortion forces (and though there are thankfully not many people who are pro-abortion rather than pro-choice, it is disingenuous to suggest that there are none) to effectively gut legislation against partial -birth abortion
by inserting language broad enough to be understood as permitting it to protect a woman’s mental health (an exemption which would be invoked literally any time a woman wanted a partial-birth abortion) illustrates the difficulty in exempting this extremely rare situation. I agree in principle that in such cases, as in cases of rape and incest, exceptions ought to be possible.

Yet I cannot justify that preference logically. Children conceived as the result of rape or incest, or whose birth might (theoretically) endanger their mother’s health, are not therefore less human, or less deserving of protection. But since fewer than two percent of abortions fall into this category, and since exceptions could be made by state law (or even by better-reasoned court decisions), they in no way justify Roe.

My objection to a pro-choice candidate would be intensified if that candidate believed in the humanity of the fetus, by the way; that’s the reason why the Cuomo/
Kerry/Giuliani position is so reprehensible. I can at least respect a person who does not acknowledge the humanity of a fetus, and favors the legality of abortion on that basis.
But to believe that abortion is the wrongful taking of a human life, but to favor its legality anyway, is beneath contempt.

I will never again vote for a person who favors the legality of what he or she acknowledges to be murder.

Just for the record, I don’t support a complete ban on abortions. For example, asking a woman to carry a baby to term when it might cripple her or result in her death is something I can not do. As for rape or a forced incestuous affair, I just don’t know. After all, it isn’t the baby’s fault how it was conceived. But if Condi is squishy on abortion then anyone she appoints to SCOTUS is likely to be equally squishy. And that’s a risk I’m not willing to take.

This may be moot, anyway. I have only rumors to work with, but they all say the same thing: she’s not interested. And probably just as well. The last dream ticket I saw was Kerry-Edwards. And we ALL know how well that one went over.

I’m positive that if you asked Secretary Rice (the “reluctantly pro-choice”) what she thought about how she feels about abortion as birth control, she’d be against it.

Sort of like if you asked a pro-2nd-amendment person what they thought about people who shoot their families and commit suicide.

You can support someone’s rights without being happy or supportive when people abuse those rights.

(For the record, I’m pro-(first-trimester)-choice.) and pro-(third-trimester)-life, with some uncertainty about how to handle the transition, or where to draw a sharp line.)