Godless: The Church of Liberalism

by Ann Coulter

  A few months after Bradley assured viewers that the nonexistent partial birth abortion occurs only about 600 to 1,000 times per year, the Record (Bergen, New Jersey) reported that a single abortion clinic in Englewood, New Jersey, performs about 1,500 partial birth abortions every year on babies 20 to 24 weeks old. Contrary to the claims of the women interviewed by Bradley whose entire expertise was based on having had partial birth abortions themselves, one doctor at the clinic said, “[M]ost are for elective, not medical, reasons: people who didn’t realize, or didn’t care, how far along they were.”

  With the pro-choicers, even their talking points are lies. It is a point of honor with the abortion crowd to claim that no one is for abortion. As far back as 1978, Cory Richards of Planned Parenthood told Newsweek magazine, “Strictly speaking, no one is for abortion.” Carol Werner of NARAL expanded on the point: “The phrasèpro-abortion’ is totally inaccurate. We are prochoice. What matters is that the option is there so the woman can exercise it.” An op-ed piece in the Washington Post in 1989 titled “The Real Issue: Choice” reminded readers, “No one is for abortion.”

  And a 1991 op-ed in the Chicago Tribune argued for a federal law requiring taxpayer money to be spent on abortion counseling, saying, “No one is `for’ abortion. Nonetheless, freedom to terminate an unwanted pregnancy must remain an option precisely because society has not yet made it possible for all pregnancies to be wanted.” By 2005, the claim that “no one is for abortion” had to be stated as a cliche, as it was in an article in Conscience, a journal for prochoice Catholics, attacking the bishops for missing this important point: “As stated many times by all prochoice advocates: no one is for abortion, no matter how often and how loudly the bishops and their minions say it. Saying it doesn’t make it so, but they haven’t figured out anything else to say.”

  After all their prattle about how no one is for abortion, it took about five seconds for Mama Alito, magnificent primogenitress of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, to smoke them out. Speaking of her son, Rose Alito told reporters, “Of course he’s against abortion.” And then all hell broke lose.

  USA Today raised Mama Alito’s remark in an editorial demanding “straight answers” from Alito on his views of “the court’s established abortion-law jurisprudence” that “keeps the government out of citizens’ bedrooms and most intimate decisions.” Columnist Ellen Goodman listed as a “telltale” sign about Judge Alito “we know what Alito’s 90-year-old mother knows: Òf course he’s against abortion.’ ” Five Democratic congresswomen, along with Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, held a press conference to announce their opposition to Alito. In an adorable statement, Representative Jan Schakowsky cited Mrs. Alito’s remark and said, “We trust what our mothers say.” (It’s so cute when the pro-abortion crowd starts citing mothers as moral authority.) But wait a minute! I thought everybody was “against abortion”! What happened to the talking point about how “no one is for abortion”? Mrs. Alito put an end to that in a hurry. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “Violence does not and cannot flourish by itself; it is inevitably intertwined with lying.”

  Then there’s the canard about a united front of women supporting abortion, while misogynist men try to keep it from us. Feminists have a charming slogan memorialized on buttons sold by the National Organization for Women, and the title of a book: “If men got pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” Apparently it isn’t a sacrament now only because of the overwhelming hatred men have for women. How about this slogan: “If women had to pay for dates, rape would be a sacrament.”

  It’s rather churlish of the NARAL types to complain about men’s insufficient support for abortion. Men support abortion more than women do. On the basis of casual observation, single men between the ages of eighteen and thirty are strongly supportive of a woman’s right to have irresponsible, casual sex with them. Maybe NARAL should work on getting more women to support abortion before attacking the primary beneficiaries of it, or what we used to call “cads.”

  Indeed, it’s hard to see how abortion could be any more of a sacrament for some men. Bill Clinton sold out nearly every single Democrat special interest group (also his party, his vice president, his advisers, his wife, his daughter, and his family—but that’s another story). There was only one issue Clinton was absolutely committed to: killing the unborn. Congress passed bans on partial birth abortion twice in large bipartisan votes. Clinton vetoed the bills both times. This is a man who took polls to decide what he would do for his vacation. He even relied on a “quick show of hands” to decide which woman to hit on during stops on the campaign trail. But in the face of huge majorities opposed to partial birth abortion, Clinton’s support for the gruesome procedure was unflagging. Say what you will about the man, at least he knows his base.

  Moreover, if women are so pro-abortion, why are virtually all abortionists men? If ever there was a need for a Take Our Daughters to Work Day, it’s at the abortion mills. As the male director of a Cleveland abortion clinic explained, women tend not to enjoy doing “abortions over and over for moral reasons.” Also, problems arise when the women doctors become pregnant. Not only does a pregnant abortionist tend to “upset the patients,” but, he said, “if a woman is carrying a baby, she doesn’t like to abort someone else’s.”

  But according to Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Roe v. Wade is critically important because “women all over America have come to depend on it.” Leave aside any moral questions about baby-killing—a term I have come to understand baby-killing supporters dislike. At its most majestic, this precious right that women “have come to depend on” is the right to have sex with men they don’t want to have children with.

  There’s a stirring principle! Leave aside the part of this precious constitutional right that involves (1) not allowing Americans to vote on the matter and (2) suctioning brains out of half-born babies. The right to have sex with men you don’t want to have children with is not exactly “Give me liberty, or give me death.” In the history of the nation, there has never been a political party so ridiculous as today’s Democrats. It’s as if all the brain-damaged people in America got together and formed a voting bloc.

  The Federalists drafted the greatest political philosophy ever written by man and created the first constitutional republic. The anti-Federalists—or “pre-Democrats,” as I call them—were formed to oppose the Constitution, which, to a great extent, remains their position today. Andrew Jackson, the father of the Democratic Party, may have had some unpalatable goals, but at least they were big ideas: wipe out the Indians, kill off the national bank, and institute a spoils system. Love him or hate him, he never said, “I’ll be announcing my platform sometime early next year.” The Whigs were formed in opposition to everything Jackson stood for. The Republican Party emerged from the Whigs when the Whigs waffled on slavery. (They were “prochoice” on slavery.) The Republican Party was founded expressly as the antislavery party, which to a great extent remains their position today. Having won that one, with 600,000 white men having to die to redeem the principle that all men are created equal, today’s Republican Party stands for life, limited government, and national defense. And today’s Democratic Party stands for . . . the right of women to have unprotected sex with men they don’t especially like. We’re the Blacks-Aren’t-Property/Don’t-Kill-Babies Party. They’re the Hookup party. (For people who claim to be so concerned with “privacy,” they certainly don’t hesitate to make the sweaty details of their private lives central to the national debate.)

  No Republican is so crazily obsessed with any issue as the Democrats are with abortion. During the debate on the bankruptcy bill in 2003 and then again in 2005, Senator Chuck Schumer (NY) introduced an amendment to the bill that would exclude protesters at abortion clinics from bankruptcy protection. That was the Democrats’ main objective in a major restructuring of the bankruptcy laws in America: ensure that fines levied against abortion-clinic protesters would not be dischargeab
le in bankruptcy.

  It wasn’t even a law vaguely related to children or reproduction, like a health care bill—it was a bankruptcy bill. How maniacally in-sane do you have to be to bring up abortion in a debate on a bankruptcy bill? How about the Defense appropriation bill? There must be one abortionist for every thirty men in the field. This would be like Republicans demanding an amendment to the bankruptcy bill saying you can’t discharge money you owe to a gun manufacturer in bankruptcy. The amazing thing is, the abortion amendment to the bankruptcy bill actually was approved by the Senate in 2003 and was only narrowly defeated in the Senate in 2005, by a 53-46 vote.

  At the 1992 Democratic National Convention, which nominated Bill Clinton, the Democrats wouldn’t even allow a prolife Democrat governor of a large swing state to speak. Governor Robert Casey was the enormously popular governor of Pennsylvania. But the Democrats wouldn’t let him speak because of his prolife views. You might say the Democrats were running that convention like a plantation—and I think you know what I’m talking about, girlfriend. (Copyright: Hillary Clinton.)

  When Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts was the Abortion Party’s candidate in the 2004 presidential election, he expressly endorsed taxpayer-funded abortions—amid a stream of reminders that he had been an altar boy and that religion helped lead him “through a war.” In the sort of convoluted nonsense Democrats spout whenever the topic is abortion, Kerry said during the second presidential debate, “[Y]ou don’t deny a poor person the right to be able to have whatever the Constitution affords them if they can’t afford it otherwise.” Unless, of course, it’s a quality education at a nonpublic school. I have a right to free speech; how about the government buy me a newspaper? Hey! Doesn’t the Constitution protect my right to travel in a brand-new Cadillac Escalade? I’ll take a red one, please.

  After Kerry lost an election in which voters said the most important issue to them was “moral values,” suddenly Democratic double-speak on abortion reached epic proportions. Senator Dianne Feinstein began complaining that Republicans were “painting the view of the prochoice movement as abortion on demand—and nothing can be farther from the truth.” One thing that could be farther from the truth is something that’s untrue. She seemed to have forgotten that the Democrats’ presidential candidate stated loud and clear—in a widely viewed presidential debate, no less—that he was for abortions at any time for any reason, paid for by the taxpayer if necessary. This is also known as “abortion on demand.” Former NATO general Wesley Clark was only slightly more explicit than all the other Democratic candidates for president, saying a woman should be free to abort her baby right up until the moment of birth. And consider: Clark might have been the Democrats’ presidential candidate if he hadn’t been endorsed by Michael Moore.

  Another Abortion Party candidate for president in 2004 was Howard Dean, a former medical resident with Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the United States. During a January 15, 2004, conference call with reporters, Dean, being a raving lunatic, said, “No doctor is going to do an abortion on a live fetus. That doesn’t happen. Doctors don’t do that. If they do, they’ll get their license pulled, as well they should.” (Yes, you’re reading that correctly.) At the risk of belaboring the obvious, abortions, by definition, are performed on live fetuses; otherwise it’s called a “miscarriage.” After the election, when Dean was campaigning to be chairman of the Democratic National Committee, he said the Democrats should stop turning their backs on prolifers. Doctor Demento said, “I don’t have any objection to someone who is prolife, if they are really dedicated to the welfare of children.” Conversely, I suppose, if you are pro-abortion and you hate kids, Dr. Dean would be cool with that, too.

  Things were so bad, NARAL ProChoice America even decided not to oppose a bill that would require doctors to anesthetize babies being aborted after the twentieth week of pregnancy, called the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act. Planned Parenthood, however, seems to oppose it still. How deranged would you have to be to oppose such a bill? Evidently the wording of the act contained several unacceptable terms, including unborn, child, pain, and awareness. The word act they were okay with. The pro-abortion zealots demand that the Democrats swear absolute fealty to their craziest positions, and generally the Democrats are happy to comply. They need the money. In 2004, pro-abortion groups gave over $1.4 million in hard money to candidates for national office—more than twice as much as did prolife groups. Emily’s List is a political fundraising group that gives money only to female candidates who support abortion. In 2004, Emily’s List raised $34 million. By comparison, the National Right to Life Committee raised only about $1.7 million.

  Showing the raw principle of the modern Democratic Party, among the Democrats who have abandoned prolife positions to become prochoice are former president Jimmy Carter, Senator Dick Durbin, former representative Richard Gephardt, Representative Dennis Kucinich, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and chubby nutcase Al Gore. All but Durbin have run for president. It’s easy to imagine a person going from being pro-abortion to anti-abortion based on new information—ultrasounds, medical advances, pictures of babies smiling in the womb. But it’s hard to see how new information could produce the reverse conversion. Everyone knows it’s a terrible thing for a woman who doesn’t want to be pregnant to be pregnant. But Al Gore explained his conversion experience, saying he had “talked to a lot of women who taught me about the kinds of circumstances that can come and the kinds of dilemmas that women can face.” Only for a Democrat could that constitute new information. How about I talked to a lot of plantation owners and I found out they really do need slaves to pick the cotton.

  Still, despite the massive infusions of money, the NARAL ladies keep failing to produce the votes needed to win an election. The problem for the Democrats is that “Give me liberty or give me the right to have unprotected sex” just isn’t that inspiring a rallying cry.

  Republican presidential candidates win historic landslides when they make abortion a central part of their campaign, as Ronald Reagan did. Democratic candidates have to weasel out of defending abortion by claiming they want to make abortion “safe, legal, and rare” merely to win a plurality. What other basic, constitutional rights do its staunchest advocates urge us to exercise as little as possible? Speech? Free assembly? Not quartering soldiers in our homes?

  Not surprisingly, polls have shown that being prolife was more helpful to politicians than being prochoice. In a 1996 Los Angeles Times poll, 27 percent of respondents said they were more likely to vote for Bush because he was prolife, but only 18 percent said they were more likely to vote for Al Gore because he was prochoice.

  The Democrats need prolife votes, but there’s the small problem that they won’t budge an inch on abortion. So they make crazy arguments for abortion, allowing not the tiniest restriction, while periodically pretending to have qualms about abortion. It’s the most amazing spectacle, as if Ronald Reagan were slashing our taxes while talking about what a “sad, tragic choice” it is to cut taxes or giving speeches about how tax cuts should be “safe, legal, and rare.” Except that even Reagan didn’t have the gusto for cutting taxes that the Democrats have for ending human life. It would be so easy for the Democrats to say, “Okay, we’re against partial birth abortion,” or “We’ve changed our mind on parental notification of a minor’s abortion.” But they can’t even say that.

  The Democrats’ only hope is to lie and pretend they stand for something other than the right of women to have unprotected sex with men they don’t like. For example: the right of women not to commit suicide. During the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for John Roberts, Senator Feinstein said, Às a college student at Stanford, I watched the passing of the plate to collect money so a young woman could go to Tijuana for a back-alley abortion. I knew a young woman who killed herself because she was pregnant.” I know a man who killed himself because of high taxes.

  To find out what Democrats really think about abortion, you have to read The Ame
rican Prospect or listen to liberal hate radio talking about Republican judicial nominees like Priscilla Owen: This country cannot have a woman on any federal court if she interpreted a law that says a parent has to be notified of a minor child’s abortion to mean that a parent has to be notified of a minor child’s abortion. That’s like the Nazis! Lock your doors tonight, America!

  One begins to appreciate why Democrats aren’t wild about any political system that permits people to vote. Liberals would have no chance of advancing their bizarre policy agenda if Americans were allowed to have a say in the matter. So they manufacture phony “constitutional rights” in which the Constitution always sounds suspiciously similar to the ideological agenda of the ACLU. We know what Democrats want to do, but it’s suicide for candidates to run on ensuring the right of minor girls to have partial birth abortions paid for by the government without parental notification. This has to be done through the courts.

  Abortion is the sacrament and Roe v. Wade is Holy Writ. This is why we have to have World War III every time there’s an opening on the Supreme Court. As long as Roe is the law of the land, elected Democrats can hide behind the Supreme Court’s ruling. They rarely have to cast votes on abortion bills, because the High Court has removed abortion from the democratic process. All the Democrats have to do is smear any Supreme Court nominee who might possibly vote to overturn Roe and finally allow Americans to vote on abortion.

  Consequently, the single most important job in the universe for the Democrats is a seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee—to protect made-up “constitutional rights” to things like abortion and the right never to have to see Christians praying. No Democrat from a swing state is allowed to sit on that committee. Democrats on the Judiciary Committee from the most liberal states in the nation are in utterly safe seats—Senator Chuck Schumer from New York, Senator Teddy Kennedy from Massachusetts, Senator Richard Durbin from Illinois, Senator Dianne Feinstein from California, Senator Herb Cole from Wisconsin, and Senator Russ Feingold from Wisconsin.