2001-07-16 - 1:57 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Just One Person"

This entry is in response to a discussion on my LiveJournal between me and Portia. Text in italics are hers, the rest is mine.

I found her post a very useful jumping-off point to articulate my own views. This is only one small part of what her post has led me to start writing about -- expect more over then next couple weeks as I find time. If you'd like to read the whole discussion (not technically necessary to understand what I'm talking about here), you can find it here.

You should not view this strictly as a rebuttal to Portia's post. I used her post as a way to highlight certain specific issues and address them. There are probably other issues in her post which I have not chosen to address at this time.

The laws (executive orders) I referred to had to do with Dubya immediately pushing his pro-life values on the rest of the world by preventing funding for abortions.

Putting aside Bush's motives for a moment (a separate issue), I don't see this as "pushing his pro-life values on the rest of the world." He isn't forcing other countries to outlaw or prevent abortions. He is merely refusing to fund overseas abortions or abortion counseling with U.S. tax dollars. The rest of the world is free to do as they please with their own money or money from private contributors, since other countries have their own laws on the matter.

Also, I could argue that whoever started the practice of sending the money in the first place (Clinton, I presume) was pushing his pro-abortion values on the rest of the world by sending that money out and trying to influence people to have abortions, if not paying for abortions directly. If Clinton wants to use the bully pulpit of the Presidency to promote his pro-choice viewpoint, and to prevent laws from being made to restrict abortion, I'm all for it. But taking taxpayer dollars to fund abortions overseas? No. Even though I am pro-choice politically, I am pro-life personally, and I do NOT want my tax dollars (and the tax dollars of others who share my viewpoint) being used to fund overseas abortions or even abortion counseling.

If groups of private citizens collect money specifically for the purpose of funding abortions overseas, that's their prerogative. For the government to take random tax money and do it, I don't agree with. If Bush were giving money to other countries to fund pro-life counseling, I wouldn't like that either. It's none of the U.S. government's business.

Whether or not you are pro-choice or pro-life doesn't matter to me. He is only concerned with his own personal values (such as they are) and he is NOT listening to the majority of the U.S. voters who DO think it's a woman's right to choose. If he had said he wanted to cut back on funding charitable organizations worldwide, I would have understood - but he did this because he and all the religious conservatives who are lining his pockets are anti-abortion.

Here's where we are getting into Bush's motives. Suppose I were to presume that he was only doing it to appease his contributors. If so, this kind of behavior is characteristic of politicians. If that is what Bush was doing, then to complain about it is fine with me. I've said plenty of times that I despise politics.

However, to call him "evil" because of it and imply that Democratic politicians are not equally "evil" is ridiculous. If Bush is despicable for cutting the overseas funding because there are so many pro-choicers in the U.S., then Clinton is evil for starting the overseas funding because there are so many pro-lifers in the U.S. who believe abortion is murder. You could argue that Clinton ran on a pro-choice platform and was acting in accordance with that, but, well, Bush ran on a pro-life platform.

The point is, Bush isn't more evil than the average Democratic politician for cutting the funding. Clinton wasn't more evil than the average Republican politician for enacting the funding. They were both just being politicians, and politics is slimy. I don't care if you're pro-choice or pro-life either; the issue here is tax dollars being used for a non-governmental issue over which reasonable people disagree.

Now, I'm presuming that Bush or someone else is going to take this money that was being used for overseas abortion counseling and put it to some other use not specified in the Constitution as a function of the Federal government. I don't like that either, which is one more reason why I'm a libertarian.

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