Washington state isn’t considered a swing state in the upcoming election (it’s probably considered a “sure thing” for the Obama campaign), so we didn’t get to see the recent scare-tactic ads directed against Mitt Romney in a number of swing states, claiming that Romney plans to do away with a woman’s right to kill her unborn baby. Ahem, I mean her “right to choose.”
As an aside, I must point out that normally, a person’s right to choose a particular thing is not associated with the death of another person, at least when it comes to a legal act, but when it comes to this particular euphemism, exercising the “right to choose” does involve the death of another person, and the most helpless of all persons, an unborn baby. Aren’t euphemisms great?
Anyway, the text of the ad contains the following:
“Every woman who believes decisions about our bodies and our health-care should be our own is troubled Mitt Romney supports overturning Roe v. Wade… Romney backed a law that outlaws all abortions, even in cases of rape and incest.”
As Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels once said,
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
Given that the “mainstream media” are largely liberal Democrats and firmly in Obama’s camp (their public posturing as “neutral actors” – another lie – notwithstanding), NBC, ABC, CNN, and CBS together form what amounts to the virtually state-controlled media in the United States, and if any of their news programs happens to report on the Obama campaign’s ad as a misrepresentation I will be quite surprised.
Romney’s campaign has of course addressed this lying ad already, so far be it for me to try repeat their efforts, but it might be instructive to note that the church that Romney adheres to (the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to which I also adhere) happens to hold as doctrine that abortion is permissible under certain circumstances, namely the exact circumstances that the Obama ad claims Romney was opposed to allowing abortion in case of: rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. Romney has in fact indicated that those are the circumstances under which he considers that abortion may be permitted. So the ad is an out and out lie.
The precise language of the LDS church policy is as follows:
The Lord commanded, “Thou shalt not . . . kill, nor do anything like unto it” (D&C 59:6). The Church opposes elective abortion for personal or social convenience. Members must not submit to, perform, arrange for, pay for, consent to, or encourage an abortion. The only possible exceptions are when:
- Pregnancy resulted from forcible rape or incest.
- A competent physician determines that the life or health of the mother is in serious jeopardy.
- A competent physician determines that the fetus has severe defects that will not allow the baby to survive beyond birth.
Even these exceptions do not justify abortion automatically. Abortion is a most serious matter and should be considered only after the persons responsible have consulted with their bishops and received divine confirmation through prayer.
I don’t think that Mitt Romney would seek to have the law restrict abortion any further than this, short of a majority in both houses of Congress enacting a law so restricting it.
In other words, the Left is again attempting to put words in the Right’s mouth, words which the Right would not speak and by and large doesn’t believe. Although of course there are some on the right who do hold that abortion is wrong in all cases. Mitt Romney is not one of them, however.
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