A last-minute Bush administration plan to grant sweeping new protections to health care providers who oppose abortion and other procedures on religious or moral grounds has provoked a torrent of objections, including a strenuous protest from the government agency that enforces job-discrimination laws.  (  Last-minute Bush abortion ruling causes furor -   )

The proposed rule would prohibit recipients of federal money from discriminating against doctors, nurses and other health care workers who refuse to perform or to assist in the performance of abortions or sterilization procedures because of their "religious beliefs or moral convictions."

 

(Good for Bush why should people be forced to forget their values when it comes to an issue like abortion. )

The nation's Roman Catholic bishops vowed Tuesday to forcefully confront the Obama administration over its support for abortion rights, saying the church and religious freedom could be under attack in the new presidential administration.  ( Catholic bishops will fight Obama on abortion )

In an impassioned discussion on Catholics in public life, several bishops said they would accept no compromise on abortion policy. Many condemned Catholics who had argued it was morally acceptable to back President-elect Obama because he pledged to reduce abortion rates.

"I cannot have a vice president-elect coming to Scranton to say he's learned his values there when those values are utterly against the teachings of the Catholic Church," Martino said. The Obama-Biden press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

(I have posted before we should pray and respect our new leader but that doesn't mean for one second we should not fight them when they push for something which goes against our values. Good for these bishops.)

A group of Catholic and evangelical leaders hailed new language for the Democratic Party’s platform that calls for reducing abortion as a way to create common ground with many traditional Republican voters.

The Rev. Joel Hunter, pastor of Longwood, Fla.-based Northland, A Church Distributed, was among those praising the new wording, to be presented for approval at the Democratic convention in Denver later this month.

"Pro-lifers of both parties can now support Sen. Obama on the basis that more lives will be saved than if they had just taken a moral stand hoping to overturn Roe versus Wade," said Hunter, a registered Republican who has not endorsed a presidential candidate. A local Republican Party spokesman found very little that was new or significant about the Democratic platform.

"I don’t think they’ve changed anything that is fundamental," said Orange County Republican Chairman Lew Oliver.

He noted the new language still asserts complete support for Roe v. Wade and proposes no new limits or restrictions on abortions, or how they are funded.

(Cal Thomas did a grea radio commentary related to  this issue yesterday. In the  commentary Cal  says all the pro. life talk  by Democrats is  a trick to get enough numbers to vote for a Democrat. Cal adds nothing will change if a Democrat is elected president such no pro life  nominee for the Supreme Court will be brought before the Senate. Amen Cal. It is sad that at least some spiritual leaders are being fooled.  If Democrats truly have had a heart change let them remove their language of  backing  Roe vs Wade. Read more of the above story   right here       or listen to the radio commentary for  August 14, 2008 that Cal Thomas did.)

"Everybody has something in the closet, and I reckon the best policy is always to be honest, then it can't come back to haunt you," she says. And she holds her hands up to her own "big mistakes". The biggest brings her to tears. "I had an abortion at 17 and it was the worst thing I ever did. It was the first time I'd had sex, and that was rotten. I'd always thought it was going to be all violins, and it was just awful.

"I was two months gone when I realised. I went to my mum and she said, without pausing for breath: 'You have to get rid of it.'

"She told me where the clinic was, then virtually pushed me off. She was so angry. She said I'd got myself in this mess, now she had to get me out.

"But she didn't come. I went alone. I was terrified. It was full of other young girls, and we were all terrified and looking at each other and nobody was saying a bloody word. I howled my way through it, and it was horrible.
(Above Sharon Osbourne  is talking about her biggest mistake.Good for her. Lets all pray for Sharon Osbourne and others like her. Read more of this story Sharon Osbourne: An Abortion Was Her Biggest Mistake.)

  State police are helping Williamsburg, Blair County, authorities find whomever spiked a pregnant teenage girl’s drink with a drug used to abort pregnancies in cows, a drug they think was stolen from a Williamsburg farm, according to a release.
(Read more of the above story Pregnant teenage girl's drink spiked with abortion pill. What is this nation coming to that we are now trying to spike drinks with abortion drugs. )

  “Look, I got two daughters — 9 years old and 6 years old,” Obama said. “I am going to teach them first about values and morals, but if they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby. I don’t want them punished with an STD at age 16, so it doesn’t make sense to not give them information.”
The basic point, i.e. “teen pregnancy is bad so let’s do what we can to avoid it,” is unobjectionable but this is at least worth a question at the next debate about whether he’d describe unwanted pregnancies among adults the same way.
A better question would be to ask him what types of inconvenience caused by pregnancy don’t justify an abortion. Are there any? Many would agree that knocking a teenager out of school for a year or more is too high a price to bring a fetus to term. How about an adult who’d be out of work for a few months, on leave, to have the baby and then give it up for adoption?
(The above is part of a column written on the   Hot Air » Blog in response to what Obama said. So having a baby is punishment. Be warned this is who might be our next President. Read the whole posting  The obligatory.)  

  Nat Hentoff discusses Barack Obama's position on the Terri Schiavo case (and more) in a powerful Jewish World Review article. Some of what he wrote is below.
"In none of the endless presidential candidates' debates has there been a meaningful discussion of the rights of disabled Americans. However, in the Feb. 26 debate in Cleveland, Barack Obama casually and ignorantly revealed his misunderstanding of the basic issue in the highly visible and still-resonating official death sentence of a disabled woman, Terri Schiavo. I have repeatedly called her death the result of "the longest public execution in American history."
"When moderator Tim Russert asked Hillary Clinton and Obama if "there are any words or votes that you'd like to take back ... in your careers in public service," Obama answered that in his first year in the Senate, he joined an agreement "that allowed Congress to interject itself (in the Schiavo case) into the decision-making process of the families."
Obama added: 'I think that was a mistake, and I think the American people understood that was a mistake. And as a constitutional law professor, I knew better."
When he was a professor of constitutional law, Obama probably instructed his students to research and know all the facts of a case. The reason Congress asked the federal courts to review the Schiavo case was that the 41-year-old woman about to be dehydrated and starved to death was breathing normally on her own, was not terminal, and there was medical evidence that she was responsive, not in a persistent vegetative state.
(Russert points out Obama should be proud of this vote. Russert is right but that Obama  is now sorry for his vote might be compared to a someone telling a child it would have been better if you had been aborted. Obama being sorry that he voted to save a life should tell us what we might get if he is put in the White House. Here's the Hentoff piece in its entirety.)