Uh-oh. Your organization’s got trouble when an anti-choice senator says this about you:
“I wouldn’t spit on Missouri Right to Life if they were on fire,” the usually affable Griesheimer said. “They are a bunch of liars who don’t care about anything but themselves.”
Hello. What’s going on? I mean, aside from the fact that abortion isn’t the obsession it used to be with some voters before the economy tanked.
What’s going on is that Missouri Right to Life overplayed its hand. E-v-e-r-y y-e-a-r, Pam Fichter’s bunch tells the legislature what new restrictions to pass, and e-v-e-r-y y-e-a-r, the Missouri Supreme Court throws out a good deal of it as unconstitutional. Even if you’re anti-abortion, it gets to be embarrassing to keep voting for this crap.
Sen. Jolie Justus, a Kansas City Democrat who led efforts to tone down the abortion restrictions proposed this year, said she detected an emerging attitude that lawmakers have restricted abortion about as much as they can.
“There is a feeling that now it’s becoming a political game,” Justus said. “Several pro-life senators told me, ‘What’s the next thing? Are they going to want us to restrict three-legged blue people from having abortions on Tuesdays?'”
The small rift between the Senate “Griesheimers” and Missouri Right to Life suffered a seismic shift about 7.0 on the Richter Scale last year. Fichter’s group opposed funding for new science buildings in KC and Columbia because–who knows?–somebody might someday do some stem cell research in one of them.
Some anti-choice senators voted for the funding anyway–and saw their ratings from the group tank. Meanwhile, some pro-choice senators voted against the funding because it was taking money from MOHELA. Those senators got higher scores than the “Griesheimers.”
Color the anti-choice senators irate.
And then this year, the give-the-finger-to-the-constitution anti-choicers saddled their side with a proposal that banned “coerced abortions.” It would have made it illegal for a husband or boyfriend to try to persuade his significant other to have an abortion.
Umm, the first amendment lets people talk to each other, particularly about maybe doing something that’s … legal.
Another of the “Griesheimers”, Mike Gibbons, pointed out that the law would let a woman decide, years after the fact, that she regretted having an abortion and let her then allege that a crime had occurred. How could such an allegation be proven?
So legislation that passed resoundingly (113-33) in the House died in the Senate–where cooler heads sometimes manage to prevail in regards to rotten bills.
All that was left of this year’s debacle was for Sarah Steelman to try making some political hay by calling for a Special Session to pass the bill. Oh, and while they’re at it, she wanted the legislators to make sex-selective abortions illegal. That Steelman, she loves playing to the balconies. She took her 13 year old son to buy a gun and talked about how much she loves the second amendment. (Not the first amendment, mind you, only the second. I call that amendment-selective aborting of the Constitution.)
Update: While I’m on the subject of abortion, let’s just make sure everybody knows that McCain wants Roe v. Wade overturned.
SPARTANBURG, South Carolina (AP) – Republican presidential candidate John McCain, looking to improve his standing with the party’s conservative voters, said the law that legalized abortion should be overturned.
“I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned,” the Arizona senator on Sunday told about 800 people in South Carolina, one of the early voting states.
More than half of women voters think McCain is pro-choice. Wrong.