Redstate

He's made a lot out of his desire to appoint Roberts and Alito types, but I've never heard him mention that he thinks public funding of abortions should be mandatory.

Or did I just miss that speech?
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"Our job is to bash the president"
Newsweek's Evan Thomas, on the role of the MSM

I'm being a little humorous but only because as a Jersey resident I knew Rudy's position on abortion in the mid-late 80's while I was in high school. It's absolutely no surprise to me, and it shouldn't come as a suprise to anyone except the people who were living in the subway tunnels, or who didn't know anything about Rudy Giuliani before 9/11 and who might have a mythologized, romanticized view of him because of that event.

Rudy was tough on crime in NYC but he is and was a social liberal who believes in abortion rights and strict gun control laws. Period.

from when he endorsed Christine Todd Whitman's opponent in the NJ gubernatorial race but I didn't know that he ever went so far as to call for public funding of abortions. This is of course well after his legal education and experience as a prosecutor so it now makes me doubt his talk about preferring originalist judges.

lesterblog.blogspot.com

so it now makes me doubt his talk about preferring originalist judges.

Giuliani's statement of his policy opinion has no relevance to what judges he would appoint. You might agree or disagree with his abortion funding position, and you might believe or disbelieve his statement that he would appoint judges like Scalia or Roberts, but there's no logical connection between the two.

While I disagree with Giuliani about federal funding for abortion, there are other procedures not necessary for the patient's health where I do support medicaid funding, such as a prosthetic breast after a cancer mastectomy. Just because I support such funding does not imply that I think a judge should require public funding of such treatment for cancer patients. A judge should have no role in such issues beyond upholding whatever the legislature decided to fund or not fund; in other words, the judge should rule on such funding for cancer patients as we'd expect Scalia or Roberts to rule.

which I'm happy to say I am, it still seems to me that the magical, inviolable privacy rights and other bases under the 9th & 14th Amendments in the Roe v. Wade decision ought to apply at least as much to things someone might be doing in their home and/or with their person that doesn't involve another human life (e.g., recreational drug use). Being tough on crime was good, obviously, and of course you want to enforce existing law, but it seems a willful contradiction if you want to punish such things as private drug use at home but still offer free abortion giveaways, if both issues could be argued on the same grounds.

Since you touched on it, I wouldn't necessarily bar medically necessary abortion from public health care coverage, myself, but that's a long way from offering free elective abortions, with no questions asked, paid for with my money.

I mentioned Rudy's view on judges because, when Fred Thompson commented on the DC gun ruling, he summed it up very succinctly in saying "the Constitution means what it says," and I don't think Rudy could say as few words to explain himself on the matter. He can get to the point with everything else but he'd have to speak at some length to really convince us that he now shares such a view.

I still have confidence in Rudy's executive experience, leadership ability under stress and talent for resource management and I'll go all the way for him if he becomes our nominee. I'll give the guy a break; as he says himself, one learns much on the job and over time, and it may well be that he thought he had to say what he said in 1989 if NYC realpolitik was really that appalling. From what I remember, it's not hard to imagine.
lesterblog.blogspot.com

Since you touched on it, I wouldn't necessarily bar medically necessary abortion from public health care coverage, myself, but that's a long way from offering free elective abortions, with no questions asked, paid for with my money.

Actually I used a medically unnecessary example, cosmetic surgery, to make my point about supporting something as legislative policy having nothing to do with judges imposing that policy.

If your disagreement with his policy position per se is enough to make you prefer another candidate, that's fair enough. I'm just disputing the connection to judges.

You say you might support publicly paid "medically necessary abortion". That doesn't tell me anything about what kind of judges you would support. If the legislature did not enact the funding you support for medically necessary abortion, do you think a judge should overrule them and force the state to pay for those abortions?

People can logically look at Giualiani governmental decisions or his quotes (or make up their own characterizations of what he said), and make inferences on what kind of judges he's likely to appoint, but his legislative support for any policy X is irrelevant to whether a judge should impose policy X.

that Rudy will be good enough for me if he's who we have for a nominee, and he still might be my choice in the primaries if we don't get a Fred Thompson in the race.

All Rudy has to do as president is nominate good judges and justices, as far as a president's capacity to influence the judicial branch. We know there won't be judgements before there are cases to hear, with their own particulars, and I hope those are truly judgements and not impositions, one way or the other.

I hope what I called medically-necessary abortions will be as rare as possible, whatever the state of subsidized health care; I know nobody here feels otherwise about that. I'm sure Rudy will never again call for public funding of elective abortions, not just for political reasons but also because such funding would lead to many unpleasant questions, beginning with how to arbitrate it and why anyone should.

lesterblog.blogspot.com

How about this: A) Roe is an intellectual travesty and political disaster that needs to be wiped off the books; B) Abortion will nonetheless remain legal in most states, and C) While we ought not fund health care collectively, and it's questionable Congress has the Constitutional authority to do so, if we're going to there's no principled reason to distinguish abortions from appendectomies. Since Guiliani says he agrees with (A), his views on (B) & (C) are irrelevent.

When did Giuliani SAY THAT!?!?

Giuliani has NEVER said that Roe was "an intellectual travesty and political disaster than needs to be wiped off the books," that I am aware. In fact, I've only see him say that it was GOOD CONSTITUTONAL LAW on one of those Sunday morning talk shows. He didn't even say that the Partial Birth Abortion ban should be upheld.

I would love to hear him repudiate that, but I'm afraid he has not.

Don't fool yourself.

You're right--I put words in Giuliani's mouth, and indeed attributed to him a view that so far is merely a hint, and may never be more. My bad.

I always thought Roe was an obvious sham because it created a "right" over your own body, and disbarred interference from the government from a decision between a "woman and her doctor", yet if the same woman, has the same doctor prescribes medical marijuana, then its no longer about her own body is it? The feds have reserved the right to interfere, and the scotus has so far upheld this. Sounds like a logical fallacy to me.
Still, in regards to Giuliani, his pledge to appoint strict constructionists is enough for me. Maybe he will lie, but you got to trust someone, sometime. Facts are, he has a certain something which other candidates simply do not have. He has a CHANCE to beat the democrat, I do not believe any of the others have a ghost of a chance. Not even close.

"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle

but his statement that he thinks Roe V. Wade is good law does have something to do with Juges. Rudy's method of thinking about the constitution leads him to the conclusion that Roe V. Wade is good constitutional law. I do not see why we cannot expect Rudy to pick Judges who reason in the same way he does.

is to uphold and enforce the Constitution. That includes (1) keeping each branch of the federal government within the bounds of its enumerated powers and (2) striking down government "laws" and actions that violate individual rights (enumerated and unenumerated).

The Constitution does not authorize the federal government to intervene in, regulate, or fund healthcare. Period. So, a federal judge's job is not just to rubberstamp whatever Congress decides to fund. A federal judge who obeys the Constitution should invalidate Medicaid spending on ANYTHING, whether abortion, cancer research, prosthetic breasts, AIDS research, etc...

Much as some might like to read oblique references to “justices like Scalia, Roberts, and Alito*” as being a thinly-veiled promise that even the presidents who appointed them would never make, Rudy Giuliani has his worldview which guides his actions. As I wrote about earlier, it’s possible for someone who supports gun control and federalism to rationalize federal gun control while people who disagree with that worldview but want to support him as a candidate deliberately shut their eyes to this.

Something else to remember as well – Giuliani made his political bones as a federal prosecutor in which he staged high-profile arrests to get his name and face on the evening news. Can anyone think of a political figure in the United States with the background of a prosecutor in which every day they wanted the court to do something to someone, who turned out to be an advocate of limited government and judicial restraint?

* IMO Giuliani’s reference to those three justices and his personal knowledge of them from his days in the DOJ has nothing to do with federalism (AFAIK none of them support federalism like Thomas, Rehnquist, or even O’Connor) and everything to do with his belief that they would subscribe to the “unitary executive” theory.

I'm not a South Park Republican, I'm a King of the Hill libertarian.

He says that the American people are just now learning the truth about Giuliani.
Recent polls such as Gallup have found that 64% of Republicans do know where Giuliani stands on abortion. 20% think (accurately) that he's pro-choice, and a 16%, very close to the 20% who are right, believe he's pro-life.
The same question has not been asked to Democrats, which is obvious since it is safe to assume that Republicans know Giuliani, a GOP'er, better than Dems do.

Imputing to the man he schemed to commit genocide so the crime rate could be down 10 years after he was out of office. NYC mayors are term limited to two terms. How many 8 year olds are involved in violent crime ?

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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

I didn't impute that he schemed to "commit genocide" but his positions on publicly-funded abortion is *very* clear and he makes it *especially* clear that he wanted that funding "for poor women."

His words, not mine. And the fact is that Levitt might be right. I don't doubt that Levitt had a lot of data at his disposal to argue the case. Adam C. should know more about how the book and its ideas are viewed right now.

But I never imputed motives of "genocide" to Rudy Giuliani. As the mayor of a very large city with a substantial population of poor people, he might have taken a look at the numbers and thought that crime was dropping because more unwanted kids weren't reaching adolescence, when they become "dangerous."

Its just saying that conflating his position with that in freakanomics is like a hammer blow. Aside from the fact that freakonomics position is backwards reasoning to then apply it forwards would be colossally monstrous.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

that we're safer, more prosperous, and better off if fewer children are born to women who are poor, chronically unemployed and/or drug-addicted and, most crucially, have no father around for the children?

How exactly would we stop the vast wave of violent crime that would result if such people gave birth to the additional TENS OF MILLIONS of angry, poorly-educated, poorly-supervised youths?

How would we pay the hundreds of billions of dollars PER YEAR it would take to hire enough more police, prosecutors, judges, prison guards, and probation officers to defend ourselves against them?

How would we pay the fortune in higher insurance premiums and replacement purchases for all the additional homes and cars broken into?

How much farther would we have to flee from our cities to escape the additional TENS OF MILLIONS of criminals and reprobates who would result from such a population?

I was raised pro-life too, but let's start honestly thinking about the consequences of another half million or more children being born poor and without fathers EVERY YEAR. There's nothing wrong with analyzing the likely effects of abortion in certain communities on rates of violent crime, property crime, unemployment, drug addiction, etc.

say that such analysis "puts money before life," here's another question:

how many more millions of people would be murdered, and women raped, by this vast new class of people? Genocide indeed.

I-- I-- sputter.

Hmmm.

So, what should we do about this "class of people" who already exist?

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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

The Left does enough of that already.

And indeed, I don't "particularly care for" people who commit murder, rape, and armed robbery, a disproportionate number of whom had no father growing up. I don't want to see their numbers multiplied exponentially.

Nor do I "particularly care for" people who deliberately have multiple children when they know (1) they have no way of supporting them and (2) they have no intention of marrying the father(s)/mother(s) of the children.

My family has been poor, and poverty is no excuse for willfully creating child after child who is condemned to very high risks of poverty, loneliness, anger, ignorance, crime, unemployment, drug addiction, incarceration, and violent death.

So, besides asking who else I don't "particularly care for," I'm still waiting to hear how we would survive another 30 million angry, fatherless, uneducated, unemployed, drug-addicted teenagers in the absence of abortion or some other very effective way of preventing the explosion of such a population.

Certainly CONTRACEPTION would be vastly preferable to abortion, as a moral matter. There's a very easy way of preventing almost all of the unwanted pregnancies that now result in abortion. But clearly there are a lot of people in America, especially our cities, who can't even take THAT much effort & responsibility.

So, absent abortion, and the contraception that people are already ignoring, what's the solution?

One good answer that comes to mind, consistent with protecting life, is VOLUNTARY sterilization. We might prevent many abortions by offering substantial financial incentives for temporary infertility (Norplant) and permanent sterilization (tubal ligation, vasectomy).

If ROE came earlier I would have found myself in a bucket. Thats what the statistics say for New York.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

your mother would have aborted you? I hope that's not true, and I mean no offense if I'm misconstruing your remark about ending up "in a bucket."

I imagine we agree that contraception and voluntary sterilization are vastly morally preferable to abortion, because they do not extinguish an innocent human life that has already come into existence.

But again, millions of people in America regularly eschew contraception, whether intentionally or recklessly, particularly in our impoverished inner cities.

We can't force people to use contraception, so how else do we prevent the million unwanted pregnancies that end in the tragedy of abortion every year? Financial incentives for voluntary sterilization.

So yes the odds are enormous, I would have been aborted.

I will ask, just how do you decide which group is to be sterilized away ?

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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

has an adopted member, too, and we are very thankful her mother made the same choice as yours :)

We wouldn't be requiring the sterilization of any group, of course. We would merely offer financial incentives large enough to make it a more attractive choice.

The question would seem to be where to focus the advertising of the voluntary incentives. As with other allocations of limited resources, the answer is "primarily where it is likely to do the most good."

The main goals are (1) to reduce the number of children born into impoverished, single-parent households in neighborhoods suffering high rates of crime, unemployment, drug addiction, and violence, but (2) to do so without abortion.

There are such households in every part of the country -- urban, suburban, and rural -- but they are still quite disproportionately concentrated in the cities.

Therefore, the cities should probably be the main focus of advertisements for Norplant and other voluntary-sterilization incentives.

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/042500/met_2894497.html

No Abortion, The babies are usually adopted quite rapidly. Best of all they get their chance at life.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

including Massachusetts, where I live. It is a very good idea, but on a mass scale there may be problems. I'm not saying that babies are likely to receive worse than death, but our DSS has a bad track record with vetting out good parents.

Here is a state-by-state breakdown.
http://www.robynsnest.com/statesafehaven.htm

Churches, Temples, Mosques have a very long and well proved track record at this sort of thing.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

our birth rate is too low to provide enough workers to fill all the jobs demanded by our economy. Compare and contrast this statement with the comment you just posted.

(My first reaction was that you were proposing genocide as a solution for primarily economic problems that have been exacerbated by our social welfare programs. But since the heart of your argument seems to be that we'd have too many people without abortion, I thought I'd bring up seemingly conflicting statements.)

Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.

in America. Just that we have too many people growing up without two parents to make sure they have the love, guidance, discipline, education and resources they need to have a real chance in the world -- and to not pose a threat to the rest of us.

By the way, I wholeheartedly agree that our welfare policies have greatly exacerbated the problem. Repealing or further reforming those policies would tend to reduce the behavior that leads to unwed motherhood and family dissolution.

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Finally, we don't "need" immigration to sustain our population. There's another simple alternative that we had no problem pulling off for hundreds of years: native-born Americans need to have more than enough children to replace themselves. A people who won't do this doesn't have the will to survive.

"native born Americans". Sorry, you can't have it both ways. Either you want abortions to reduce the "poor" population or you want us to have more than enough children. The 2 concepts are mutually exclusive.

Socialism doesn't work. It looks nice on paper, but it's been tried and it's failed miserably every time (usually accompanied by widespread death and suffering).
Proud member of the V.R.W.C.

I'm very much NOT advocating that people have more children who lack the means to support them financially and emotionally. Specifically:

-- People who are chronically unemployed, completely uneducated, or very poor should not have more children.

This doesn't mean people who've ever lost their job (lots of us have), but people who are unemployed for very long or repeated stretches or effectively unemployable due to drug addiction, sloth, persistent criminal conduct, lack of basic education and skills, etc.

-- People who are not married, and do not intend to marry the mother/father of the child, should not have children.

Voluntary sterilization, or consistent use of contraception, are better options for people in such situations.

-----------------------

Conversely, who SHOULD and MUST have more children? Native-born Americans who are (1) MARRIED and (2) steadily EMPLOYED and therefore (3) have a decent chance at raising and providing for reasonably happy, productive, non-violent children together.

If they do so, we will not "need" massive immigration.

Not everyone should be having more babies. People who can't afford to care for children, or don't want to put the effort into it shouldn't be having a lot of babies.

It is possible to simultaneously say that stable, two-parent homes that are willing to take responsibility for the behavior of their children and are capable of providing for them should be having more kids, while single women, or women in unstable relationships, who are already dependent on the state for their own survival should be having fewer.

It is not even a race issue or an issue of the supremacy of one culture or a poverty issue, it is just that some people would make good parents and some would not. It is in the national interest to encourage good parents to have babies and to make sure that inadequate parents are not compelled to. I would include social welfare programs that restrict health care, food stamps, and housing assistance to single mothers in the category of "things that induce inadequate parents to have children"

thank you, Benthamite, for the level-headed analysis instead of hysteria about "genocide", racism, etc.

but you should get used to the "genocide" talk. That is exactly what you would be hearing from the left, especially if this program were targeted toward cities.

and apparently we'd hear accusations of "genocide" and "racism" from some conservatives too...

And while were at it lets kill of the next M. Faraday before he is born. Great idea!

A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. -John Adams

your point. But I'm not proposing a decrease in our population, such as would cause a smaller pool of potental Faradays.

As was clear from the post, I'm proposing that native-born Americans actually do what is natural and normal and HAVE MORE CHILDREN. Specifically, enough children to more-than-replace themselves and obviate any putative "need" for massive Third World immigration.

Suppose the next 50 million new people in America were the children of native-born Americans instead of immigrants and their children. How would our 50 million kids be less likely to yield a Faraday than 50 million immigrants?

Can anyone seriously doubt that we're safer, more prosperous, and better off if fewer children are born to women who are poor…

I specifically choose Faraday as my example because he was born in poverty. I don’t think it is likely that all the well off married couples will choose to double their portion of children so that we can sterilize the unworthy masses.

As was clear from the post, I'm proposing that native-born Americans actually do what is natural and normal and HAVE MORE CHILDREN.

This was not clear from your post since you never said anything about immergrents in that post. That said I would agree with you having more children to boost the american econmony if you’d like.

A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. -John Adams

I'll give you a difficult example from our current welfare/abortionist system.

I worked with a woman at a coffee shop who was the last person that should be having a child. She had problems with drugs, problems with men, and a past that included prostitution. Then she got pregnant and couldn't name the father. Several of her friends advised her to have an abortion, since she obviously couldn't care for the child, and others, myself included, advised her to put her up for adoption. She did find a very good adoptive family, but as she came closer to giving birth she began to realize how many programs she qualified for as a single mother that were not available to her while she was working 60 hours a week to support only herself. At the last minute, she changed her mind and kept the baby, essentially so that she could get free health care and subsidized housing.

Now I am not saying that the government should have coerced her into getting sterilized or giving her child away. For all that I know, this is part of some higher plan. But it does not make sense to me that we give unstable and destitute young women financial incentives to have children that they do not have the money, the family support, or frankly the character, to take care of. If she had been given an incentive to get sterilized instead, she probably would have done it. If she had been given an incentive to give her child up for adoption she probably would have done it. As it is, her baby is at severe risk and is likely to be taken away by the state at some point anyway.

I agree that the government should not be in the business of deciding who can have children. However, I think that a compassionate and practical approach would encourage women to make good choices without feeling forced to have babies that they won't even care for. If a woman decided to get sterilized, and later, at a better point in her life, decided that she wanted to have kids after all, it would be a wonderful thing for her to adopt.

But it does not make sense to me that we give unstable and destitute young women financial incentives to have children that they do not have the money, the family support, or frankly the character, to take care of.

I agree. What do you propose short of punishing an innocent child for being born to the wrong parent?

If I understand you correctly you are proposing government sponsored sterilization?

The problem with your scenario is that the parent is acting selfishly and instead of being concerned about her child’s future she chooses to use it as a means to get a government dole. The government unfortunately cannot force people to act in a moral way in every instance. Would the parent opted for voluntary sterilization verses receiving benefits? From your description I doubt it.

A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. -John Adams

by your logic, condoms and birth control pills could be killing off future Faradays as well. Or abstaining from sex, for that matter.

If voluntary sterilization kills off potential life, then so does anything short of having sex as often as possible from the moment you are fertile, just in case one of those sperm might be a genius.

I know that some people do object to sterilization or to birth control for moral and religious reasons, and I respect that. However, I don't think that preventing a pregnancy is the equivalent of killing a child that has already begun to form.

by your logic, condoms and birth control pills could be killing off future Faradays as well.

Perhaps it was a Freudian slip? No it wouldn’t be *killing*. Just preventing their birth.

I don't think that preventing a pregnancy is the equivalent of killing a child that has already begun to form.

I agree.

You asked my opinion so I give it. However the idea of population control as a means of improving the life style of the rest of us is reprehensible. The more we limit our population growth the more we indeed lower the possible pool of Faraday’s. If only foreigners reproduce soon we will all be speaking Indian and the American culture will be forfeit.

A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. -John Adams

You have come up with the Final Solution to the Poverty Question. How progressive of you.

Run like Reagan!

that you use the term "final Solution" to evoke the phrase used by the Nazis for their program.

That is another technique more reminiscent of the Left: using cutesy, not-quite-direct references like that to associate one's opponent with monsters, without actually coming out and saying honestly and directly how they are the same.

If you did intend to evoke Nazism, here is a response: there is a huge, glaring moral difference between my proposal (offering incentives for VOLUNTARY sterilization) and FORCED, INVOLUNTARY sterilization, torture, and simple murder (what the Nazis did). It is illogical, unfair, and insulting to imply any equivalence or similarity between the two -- and a great display of bad faith.

If you can figure out how to determine whether an unborn baby consents to being exterminated for the greater good, I'll buy that argument.

Run like Reagan!

nt

That doesn't even make sense! Abortion is the destruction of a unique human life with its own DNA code. Voluntary sterilization is the same as using a condom, or a birth control pill, or abstinance, or "pulling out early" - they are meant to keep that life from ever forming in the first place.

Do you really think that refusing to have as many children as the human body is capable of producing in a lifetime is morally equivalent to the Holocaust? If you need the consent of potential unborn children to get a voluntary sterilization procedure, then what about all of the babies that a 14 year old girl is choosing not to have by selfishly waiting until she is older? Are women ever allowed to say that they have had enough children, or do we need to find a way to ask their unborn babies first?

Your reduction of everything to the moral equivalent of the Holocaust is either disingenuous or insane.

does not end a human life. It prevents one from being created. The biological and moral distinctions between contraception / sterilization and abortion are clear and easily grasped.

If this was true then it wouldn't be such a big issue.

A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever. -John Adams

between contraception/sterilization and abortion are conceptually clear. The moral distinction between them is clear as well.

I'm not saying that noone sensible can have a moral objection to contraception - I don't have such an objection to contraception, but some very bright, sensible, thoughtful people do (perhaps you).

Just saying that we can and should debate the morality and practical consequences of both abortion and contraception -- but not conflate or equate the two.

Let's try to talk about this issue without the invocation of Nazi stereotypes and talk about Genocide. I realize that it's difficult.

But let's imagine that you're the mayor (or U.S. Attorney running for Mayor) of a large city like New York. You have a history of being one tough cookie who faces very dangerous problems such as prosecuting members of the Mafia without flinching or running scared. You have access to a lot of demographic data, and you talk with a lot of people from Universities and various other organizations in the social circles you travel in, which trend heavily liberal on social issues, but among which people would like to see crime go down and money-making go up, up, and away.

In one of your dinnertable conversations at the Economic Club of New York, you're sitting across from an insurance company executive, and he begins a fascinating dinner discussion about crime rates, abortion and insurance costs. He tells you that one way of interpreting the data he's seeing is that less crime is being committed because there are fewer people around who are "at risk" for committing that crime, and he posits that it access to low-cost and safe abortion services might have something to do with it. You debate that for a while over dinner and the evening winds down with some Creme Brulee and espresso.

A few days later, while you're preparing to talk with a group of prosecuting attorneys from around the country, you're talking with the Chief of Police on the telephone and you ask him: "Do you think crime is getting better because there are fewer 16-24 year old criminals on the street than there were 20 years ago?" And a long conversation ensues...

A couple of weeks after that you're talking with your political consultants about your run for Mayor of one of the most Liberal cities in the nation. A Republican President that they generally don't like is in office and he's just vetoed legislation that would provide public funding for abortion. The New York Times is running op-eds chastising the President for being a Christian and for letting his belief system interefere with settled law and good public policy. All of the people your wife knows from Vanity Fair are making fart noises about the President and his Neandarthal values system.

Nobody has written Freakonomics yet, but let's face it: you want to be tough on crime as Mayor and clean up New York City. You realize that you've got, say, a half a million poor women in the City, and that each year 30% of them get pregnant, all on the public dole. You look at that human tragedy and you then think about who is running the drugs and breaking the windows and torching the buildings in the city you want to clean up and the enormous societal costs of all those things and you come to the firm conclusion:

"There Must Be Public Funding For Abortion, For Poor Women"

Now I'm not saying this is a recapitualtion of actual events. I'm not saying any of these things actually informed Giuliani's views. But until he talks more about why he had (and has) those views, we'll never know. In the meantime, I think that if we're going to have any kind of productive discussion, we should treat each other with a little bit of deference and respect when we explore some of the factors that might have gone into that line of thinking.

Comparing people to the Nazis because they point out that the numbers suggest an alternative (even if morally repugnant) interpretation for the reduction in crime in urban areas post-Roe v. Wade, doesn't help the debate. Americaforever is making some good points in this thread. The "easy answers" to these difficult problems almost never work. There are no "easy answers" when you have millions of people living in poverty but having babies on the taxpayer dime, who then need to be subsidized and educated and cared for on the taxpayer dime, and among whom something like 40% will eventually wind up in prison.

Sorry, I think the endorsement of mass, state-funded infanticide is perfectly comparable to the Nazis.

How many dinnertable conversations among businessmen in Berlin and Munich came to the conclusion that a strong Germany without Jews would be better off?

Run like Reagan!

I used to be pro-choice for some of the "reasons" I outline above. They're not reasons -- they're really rationalizations. But we need to know a couple of things from Mr. Giuliani himself:

1) Why did he decide to take those positions in the first place? Why does he still apparently adhere to them today?

2) Why did he think Rov v. Wade was "good constitutional law?"

3) Does he think the alternative explanations invoked (as hypothesis, I should say) in Freakonomics are compelling reasons to support taxpayer-funded abortion?

There are a few others...

Ultimately the answers are going to have to come from Rudy Giuliani himself. They're short questions. He wants to be the President, and he should answer them.

Which raises what I think is an interesting argument – to what extent is the decrease in crime and welfare rolls in NYC (which are touted as two of Rudy Giuliani’s chief successes) attributable to providing abortions to poor women whose children would be more at risk of (a) continuing the cycle of dependency and/or (b) becoming criminals themselves?

One might (and IMO should) object to such a policy on moral grounds but it won’t persuade people who don’t already share your belief on the morality of abortion and if the facts do show that access to abortions leads to less crime and poverty, you’re going to have to raise an argument that challenges those facts.

And throwing around phrases like “Nazi” and “genocide” is probably more likely to marginalize than advance whatever argument you wish to make.

I'm not a South Park Republican, I'm a King of the Hill libertarian.

William Lloyd Garrison was marginalized too, and he's one of my most favorite historical heroes.

Run like Reagan!

Now I know better. Thank you for the clarification.

I'm not a South Park Republican, I'm a King of the Hill libertarian.

I love libertarians; I think they're a great counterpoint to conservatives. But that doesn't mean we're great judges of each others' views, heh.

Run like Reagan!

So not much would be a good guess.

Then there is the question of does having children cause people to act more responsibly ?
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

Contraception is not abortion or infanticide.
Sterilization is not abortion or infanticide.

Contraception and sterilization prevent the creation of a new human being. Abortion kills one.

When we actually find someone on this blog endorsing "mass, state-financed infanticide," I'll help you compare them to the Nazis.

Emphasis added:

I was raised pro-life too, but let's start honestly thinking about the consequences of another half million or more children being born poor and without fathers EVERY YEAR. There's nothing wrong with analyzing the likely effects of abortion in certain communities on rates of violent crime, property crime, unemployment, drug addiction, etc.

Who's talking sterilization? I thought we were talking about state-funded 'abortion'.

Run like Reagan!

______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

We know Reagan changed (or at least the "Democrat Party left him"), has Rudy?

Two thirds of the world is covered by water, the other third is covered by Champ Bailey

But, all we get from Rudy now is dodging and vague platitudes about Roberts and Alito. So, what's your basis for believing that he no longer sticks by these statements?? He has steadfastly refused to state whether he still beleives that Roe was good law.

I've got to beleive that the GOP is not stupid enough to fall for Rudy's tricks in the end. Please, God, please.

It's as if he thinks there's a year left to actually campaign and discuss policy.

"Republicans have not just lose our majority, we lost our way." - Mike Pence

it's as if he thinks he has all year to campaign and discuss policy.

"Republicans have not just lose our majority, we lost our way." - Mike Pence

would think Roe to be "good law." Prosecutors need consistency and predictability in judges, and Roe is based on the "penumbras and emanations" of Grisold, a flight of Douglas' fancy probably oweing most to the fact that he had just married a very young, and presumably quite fertile, new wife. Since he is a lawyer turned politician, it would be well to carefully parse what he said. Saying it is "good law" could simply mean that it is the state of the law one can rely on - true, and is not the same as saying it was well reasoned. And in NY, saying anything else would have doomed him to the political outer darkness.

In Vino Veritas

Romney changes his position on abortion so he’s called a “flip-flopper” even though he’s been consistent on probably 95% of the issues.

McCain votes with Republicans over 80% of the time and when he disagrees he’s more likely to be to the right (spending, the War) of the GOP caucus then he is on the left but he gets called a “moderate” and “untrustworthy.”

Giuliani runs NYC like a law-and-order liberal while being staunchly pro-abortion and anti-gun but so long as he makes some ambiguous references to judges, he gets a pass so long as the social cons can convince themselves he’s promised them something that no president can guarantee.

I'm not a South Park Republican, I'm a King of the Hill libertarian.

And a sad commentary, alas. What a world we live in!

Exactly, and a lot of these same people who support Rudy throw a fit when Congress holds the same views he does.

There is officially absolutely NO ROOM on Giuliani's left on the issue of abortion, but this also begs the question about how fiscally conservative he is. I mean, the government paying for abortions? CRAZY!

In a Hillary v. Giuliani matchup, Hillary might be the one who is the most conservative on abortion, unless she starts to advocate outright state-funded infanticide.

Well he did cut taxes while he was Mayor of NYC (and for many “fiscal conservatives” that’s the be-all, end-all) but he also supported Mario Cuomo in the hopes that the State would “bail out” NYC and made piece with Al D’Amato because of his skill in bringing back pork. IMO that suggests that he’s like a lot of big city mayors and too many “big government” Republicans in that he wants money for popular programs (or rather doesn’t want to make the politically difficult choices of cutting spending for them) and he wants the money to come from someone else.

Also Giuliani while Mayor of NYC filed suit along with Senator Robert Byrd to challenge the constitutionally of the Line Item Veto. Unfortunately they won and the president no longer has that power.

I'm not a South Park Republican, I'm a King of the Hill libertarian.

I didn't know Rudy sued to have the presidential line-item veto invalidated. That's unacceptable. I believe even Bill Clinton favored some form of the line-item veto...

We would not have the out of control spending of today if we had the line-item.

http://michigandersforromney.com/

. . . Bush could have at anytime vetoed the various spending items that came across his desk and told Congress to “cut the fat.” The fact is that he chose not to do so and one of the most onerous spending items (Medicare Part D) is allegedly more expensive because someone from his administration in HHS pressured the actuary who scored the cost of it into underestimating the cost so that it was under the $400 Billion mark.

One of the things I like about McCain and Romney is that McCain voted against most of the garbage (even while standing up to his own party and president) and Romney has a good track record of being willing to veto spending.

I'm not a South Park Republican, I'm a King of the Hill libertarian.

And challenging your own assumptions about whether life is worthwhile to propogate to your children, you might come to the conclusion that it wasn't worth it for yourself, either!

Because if Benatar is correct, then the entire history of human optimism about going on with life and "being fruitful and multiplying" is an aberration of psychology, that has now been explained as an illusion, right up until this moment.

And therefore, the only rational option is to kill yourself before you inadvertently allow the insanity to continue!

Actually, this kind of argument wasn't very far away from the justifications I used to believe in for abortion: it's a version of the "fates worse than death" argument, except that basically it posits that the only fate worse than death is being alive in the first place, or causing someone else to be alive.

Leftist philosophy professors are really deep.

view expressed by the lefty in that piece is indeed warped.

I, for one, have never contended that people are better off never existing rather than being born into single-parent households in impoverished, violent neighborhoods.

What I contend is that THE REST OF US, and our country, are on balance worse off when many more people are born into such circumstances rather than their parents exercising some restraint & responsibility (abstinence or contraception).

But as Ben has noted here in a recent front page story, "abstinence and responsibility" are things that in the MSM at least, and in our culture at large, are not encouraged.

So we have the human tragedy.

Unborn children pay with their lives for their parents' utter lack of restraint, responsibility, and compassion.

And, indirectly, aborted babies pay for the soul-less, hedonist culture propagated by our media, which tells people to do whatever feels good and forget about those intolerant, outdated notions like (1) inconveniencing and depriving oneself in order to fulfill obligations to others; (2) thinking past the moment and planning for the long term; and (3) thinking with a part of the anatomy that is above the waist.

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Ideally, we would have a society that values, touts, teaches, and strongly encourages self-restraint, personal responsibility, and observation of duties to others (especially when your own actions created those "others"!). And a society that refuses to pay for the consequences of repeatedly and willfully rejecting those values & duties.

Until then, I don't see a realistic large-scale alternative to abortion except paying people to be sterilized or wear Norplant.

Nature is hard on all of us when we make mistakes. The reason human beings developed the ability to think in advance, to plan, to envision the future, and to think carefully about alternatives in a putative future, while remembering the past, is so that they can be a little less susceptible to the whims of raw nature. It's an evolutionarily good strategy, and it's also good from the point of view of people who believe strongly that human life is valuable in and of itself.

The main problem is that you have to prod people a little to do it. You have to show them how to think.

but it's really hard when you're stupid! Lots of stupid out there.

In Vino Veritas

Ask the insects.
______________________________
"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777

I can tell you from having spent a considerable amount of time around Conservatives in my own family, the main thing they object to financially is having to pay for other people's mistakes when all of the knowledge necessary to prevent them is already out there.

It makes them very upset, and I agree with them. On a completely different level, I also disagree with the public having to fund abortions, but that's a different discussion.

Really a lot of the problem is that we have to walk this fine line between teaching people not to make mistakes and caring for them in a humanistic way after they do. The balance of our efforts should be focused on the former, not the latter.

It's the difference between viewing life as a blessing or a curse. The hardcore environmentalists and Malthusians have always believed that human life is basically a curse on the larger organism of "Gaia". People like Benatar take that a step further and posit that life is a curse to the living themselves.

These are always the least reliable and trustworthy people in the world. They're the incarnate examples of the self-hating rationalists who cannot figure out how to solve problems, and who don't want to. They look at the condition of the world and they basically find reasons to give up. And I think we should let them give up, but we also shouldn't listen to them.

Of course, his logic is smashed against the anvil of evolution, because if beliving you're alive is a good thing to propagate to your children rather than choosing not to, why would have human beings survived all this time?

For that matter, all of the creatures that walk and crawl and swim and fly and slither and jump and bud and flower and spore and buzz across the face of the Earth are all suffering from this sad delusion also, even though it's very difficult to know whether or not a flower can suffer from a "delusion" -- much less a dog or a monkey.

But all of them have hard lives, and existence is tough for each of them. Wild animals and plants suffer a lot worse fates than domestic animals do, all things considered. Until relatively recently, human beings weren't doing very well, either, especially in the former Soviet Republics.

Well...I'm not going to say that abortion has no effect on crime. The Freakonomics guy is rather brilliant, and I found his argument to be convincing. There were 5 states who loosened abortion restrictions before Roe, and those 5 states started to see crime declines before the rest of the country did, almost like clockwork, according to him and his research.

That doesn't make abortion right, moral, or ethical.

Interesting. I suppose that could indicate that the sheer number of abortions overwhelms the factors I described.

--
We would also like to know your advice for somebody like my daughter, who's going to graduate in two years, advice that you would give a young person.

SEC. RUMSFELD: Advice for a young person. Study history.

...if Democrats extend their slim lead in the senate in '08.
With many Republican senators running as an incumbents in '08, the chance of Democrats picking up seats increases. It all depends on how well things go in Iraq, and other factors, such as how many more scandals arise within Bush's second term. Bush's performance determines the fate of many Senators who strongly support him. The congressional elections are as important as the presidential ones in '08.

e.g. are Roberts & Alito included in your characterization as "far right" judges?

42 of the 44 Democrats voted to no to confirm him. It will be harder if the Democrats have say, 53% senators in '08, to confirm a judge with similar views, specially Roe v. Wade. Alito refused to say if he thinks Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land or not. Edwards said it is.

... includes any Supreme Court nominee that won't promise to uphold Roe v. Wade?

Roberts for example, did not say how he would vote, just that is the settle law of the land.

So the answer is no.

So what distinguishes a Supreme Court nominee (as opposed to a Circuit Court nominee, who would be bound by Supreme Court precedent) from a "far right judge" is mouthing Roberts' words that Roe v. Wade is "settled as a precedent of the Court, entitled to respect under principles of stare decisis," while reserving his right as a Supreme Court justice to overturn Roe v. Wade, which is allowed under the principles of stare decisis.

It is refreshing to have people who are willing to admit, in such an honest fashion, that their ability to feel compassion for human beings is entirely dependent on whether said human beings are of sufficient size. Usually people dance around it a lot more finely than what you've done here.

Presumably, you'll be incredibly sad when Shaquille O'Neal dies.

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[F]or by the fundamental law of Nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred...

-John Locke

If his wife voluntarily aborted a half a centimeter embryo, than if Shaq died.

I consider it very likely that the family wouldn't cry at all in the case of the embryo.

say, three years for the family to become familiar with it they would then shed tears for said embryo?

If i don't misunderstand your question, you are asking me what if the embryo one days becomes a three year old baby. The definition of embryo goes only into the first few weeks of pregnancy.

"It is refreshing to have people who are willing to admit, in such an honest fashion, that their ability to feel compassion for human beings is entirely dependent on whether said human beings are of sufficient size. Usually people dance around it a lot more finely than what you've done here."

I'm guessing it is obvious to you that this statement assumes domminickfranco is in agreement with you that an embryo actually is a human being.

also calls the embryo a three year old baby meaning he started counting one month from conception. How about that dom.