NARAL "very worried" about a Perry candidacy

LifeNews.com: NARAL Slams Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s Pro-Life Abortion Record

Titled “The Rick Perry Primer: His Record on Choice,” NARAL president Nancy Keenan opined on Perry’s treatment of abortion and said “my staff and I have been working to answer” the question of what abortion activists know about Perry, who has received A grades from the two top pro-life organizations in the state. [. . .]

[NARAL president Nancy] Keenan complains about a bill Perry signed that would allow women to receive information about abortion’s risks and alternatives 24 hours before getting an abortion. Although Gallup polling data shows such laws enjoy the support of pro-life and “pro-choice” Americans, Keenan ripped into Perry with a misleading statement about it.

“Many of the laws he signed inject political interference into women’s private decision-making. Gov. Perry signed into law a measure that would require women to receive a state-mandated lecture that includes medically inaccurate information before they can access abortion care. He then signed additional legislation amending the law to force some women to make two trips to the provider before receiving abortion care,” she said.

Keenan also blasted Perry for signing a bill that allow, not requires, women to see an ultrasound of their unborn child that abortion practitioners normally don’t allow them to see: “Just this year, Gov. Perry signed into law a bill requiring that a woman seeking abortion care undergo an ultrasound–even if she does not want one, and even if her doctor does not recommend it.”

The NARAL president has problems with Perry helping women — both before and after an abortion. [. . .]

Ultimately, the pro-abortion activists says ” the prospect of President Perry should make us very worried. He has made inflammatory statements indicating how he would govern as an anti-choice president, calling Roe v. Wade “a shameful footnote in our nation’s history books” and “a stark reminder that our culture and our country are still in peril.”

“Let’s not forget that the president has tremendous influence over reproductive-health policy in the United States,” she concludes. “It’s never too early to take a look at the record of someone who wants to live in the White House.”

It's certainly true that NARAL and their ilk knew what they were getting with Barack Obama and they liked what they saw:

"TEMPORARILY ALIVE"

SENATOR OBAMA: This bill was fairly extensively debated in the Judiciary Committee, and so I won’t belabor the issue. I do want to just make sure that everybody in the Senate knows what this bill is about, as I understand it. Senator O’Malley, the testimony during the committee indicated that one of the key concerns was — is that there was a method of abortion, an induced abortion, where the — the fetus or child, as — as some might describe it, is still temporarily alive outside the womb. And one of the concerns that came out in the testimony was the fact that they were not being properly cared for during that brief period of time that they were still living. Is that correct? Is that an accurate sort of description of one of the key concerns in the bill?

And more on p. 86 of the transcript:

Well, it turned out — that during the testimony a number of members who are typically in favor of a woman’s right to choose an abortion were actually sympathetic to some of the concerns that your — you raised and that were raised by witnesses in the testimony. And there was some suggestion that we might be able to craft something that might meet constitutional muster with respect to caring for fetuses or children who were delivered in this fashion. Unfortunately, this bill goes a little bit further, and so I just want to suggest, not that I think it’ll make too much difference with respect to how we vote, that this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny. Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a — a child, a nine-month-old — child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it — it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute. For that purpose, I think it would probably be found unconstitutional. The second reason that it would probably be found unconstitutional is that this essentially says that a doctor is required to provide treatment to a previable child, or fetus, however way you want to describe it. Viability is the line that has been drawn by the Supreme Court to determine whether or not an abortion can or cannot take place. And if we’re placing a burden on the doctor that says you have to keep alive even a previable child as long as possible and give them as much medical attention as — as is necessary to try to keep that child alive, then we’re probably crossing the line in terms of unconstitutionality. Now, as I said before, this probably won’t make any difference. I recall the last time we had a debate about abortion, we passed a bill out of here. I suggested to Members of the Judiciary Committee that it was unconstitutional and it would be struck down by the Seventh Circuit. It was. I recognize this is a passionate issue, and so I — I won’t, as I said, belabor the point. I think it’s important to recognize though that this is an area where potentially we might have compromised and — and arrived at a bill that dealt with the narrow concerns about how a — a previable fetus or child was treated by a hospital. We decided not to do that. We’re going much further than that in this bill. As a consequence, I think that we will probably end up in court once again, as we often do, on this issue. And as a consequence, I’ll be voting Present.

More from IL state senator Obama, bravely taking a stand against babies who weren't "limp and dead" enough: 

"LIMP AND DEAD":

As I understand it, this puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact, this is a nonviable fetus; that if that fetus, or child - however way you want to describe it - is now outside the mother's womb and the doctor continues to think that it's nonviable but there's, let's say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they're not just coming out limp and dead, that, in fact, they would then have to call a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved. [p. 32 of transcript]

Sorry to ruin your breakfast. Rick Perry is looking pretty good to me about now. He passes the "I am not a ghoul" test with flying colors. Read the rest of the LifeNews post.
 

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