I get that people are so passionate about their pro-life stance that they can actually exclude candidates as viable leaders solely for believing in a woman’s right to choose. I get it. I don’t agree with it, but I get it. They see fetuses as fully living, soul-filled beings who are helpless and are, sometimes, dealt a hasty and premature end with the aid of medical intervention.
What I don’t get is how many people in that camp can lose complete touch with reality in the process.
Mrs. Blue hangs out on some parenting boards online. Recently, she came across a doozy of a post in a thread that was celebrating Obama’s historic presidential win. A devout Catholic woman comes in, pretty much out of the blue, and pissed on everyone’s joy with a comment that went something like “I am sooooo glad that now I can kill a baby in my womb whenever I want to.”
In case you missed the sarcasm, she wasn’t really glad. (I wish I had the original text, because what Mrs. Blue read to me was amazingly dumbfounding, but the whole thread got pulled before she could do a copy-paste for me.)
I’m sorry, did abortions stop happening during eight years of Dubya? He’s pro-life. Do abortions go through the roof when a pro-choice leader is in power? I mean, it’s not like Obama is coming in to say, “Hey, one free abortion for every woman now!” It’s not as if he’s going to have a platform saying “abortion is good.” It’s not like he’s going to be requiring women to get them. And, again, what were the Republicans doing to stem the tide? Oh, yeah, promoting abstinence-only sex education in schools so that fewer teens will learn about birth control options and end up pregnant and maybe wanting abortions.
But I digress.
Because you see, the angry Catholic woman didn’t stop there. When a moderator called her out and mentioned how she was fanning the flames of misinformation like FOX News does so well, and noted that this is the kind of lying, inflammatory talk that can get a black president-elect assassinated before he even takes the oath of office, the woman came back with something like this:
“I can’t believe anyone could support a candidate who is in favor of letting women kill their babies at 40 weeks.”
If you’re paying attention and know anything about pregnancy and math, you can pick your jaws up off the floor now. Yes, she actually said that. She was, clearly, referring to Obama’s opposition to a bill in the Illinois legislature that would have required medical care for babies born alive after a form of late-term abortion called “induced labor abortions” or “partial birth abortions.” (for more on the hubbub, and why it really is just a smear against Obama, go here. The man isn’t for infanticide or suffering babies…Illinois law already requires medical care for those babies.)
But back to crazy woman. You cannot abort a child at 40 weeks. Normally, a woman delivers somewhere between 37 weeks and 40 weeks. If you induce labor at 40 weeks, or anything close to it, you are not carrying out an abortion. You are inducing labor. And as long as there are no complications, a completely live and viable baby will be the result.
But hey, why bother with facts when you can do fearmongering instead, and suggest that our next president wants to slay babies as soon as they come of the womb?
(With luck, assuming that no more idiots come to my attention with reckless Obama-hating, I will now stop yammering about political crap related to the presidential election for at least a week or two.)
Update
Of course, it should be noted that the breakdown in the Fight the Smears link above is biased, as the site is actually a Web site of the Obama campaign. It’s still giving some pretty credible arguments, but in all fairness, here are some other sites that have some things to say about Obama’s stand on that legislation, both pro and con:
Moving at the Speed of Creativity
Deacon Blue
Inda Pink
Holy Sh!+ from Deacon Blue 
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