{"id":529,"date":"2004-01-12T12:58:31","date_gmt":"2004-01-12T20:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2004\/01\/12\/wesley-clark-on-abortion-let-women-decide\/"},"modified":"2004-01-12T12:58:31","modified_gmt":"2004-01-12T20:58:31","slug":"wesley-clark-on-abortion-let-women-decide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=529","title":{"rendered":"Wesley Clark on Abortion: Let Women Decide"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amy at The Fifty Minute Hour has written a very sensible post about Clark’s abortion position<\/a>. Clark has been criticized for an “embarrassing lack of nuance” in his position.<\/p>\n

McQuaid: Let\u2019s take an issue. Abortion. Are there any limits on it in your mind?<\/p>\n

Clark<\/b>: I don\u2019t think you should get the law involved in abortion\u2014<\/p>\n

McQuaid<\/b>: At all?<\/p>\n

Clark<\/b>: Nope.<\/p>\n

McQuaid<\/b>: At all?<\/p>\n

Clark<\/b>: It\u2019s between a woman, her doctor, her friends and her family.<\/p>\n

McQuaid<\/b>: Late term abortion? No limits?<\/p>\n

Clark<\/b>: Nope.<\/p>\n

McQuaid<\/b>: Anything up to delivery?<\/p>\n

Clark<\/b>: Nope, nope.<\/p>\n

McQuaid<\/b>: Anything up to the head coming out of the womb?<\/p>\n

Clark<\/b>: I say that it\u2019s up to the woman and her doctor, her conscience, and law \u2014 not the law. You don\u2019t put the law in there.<\/div>\n

Amy argues:<\/p>\n

…pretty much all we get are accusations that Clark wants to “murder a healthy baby a few moments before it’s born.” The entire point of Clark’s argument, however, is that he believes the government ought to trust women and their doctors to make good, responsible decisions without the intrusion of government into their care. He believes that we don’t need a law to prevent the overwhelming majority of mothers from aborting for no reason late in the pregnancy, and that if some woman is able to find a doctor who will abort her male fetus at 35 weeks so she can have a girl–a situation he doubts will occur–the harm is less than the harm of having the government impinge on the rights of millions of women to freely make one of the hardest decisions of their lives. Frankly, I think Clark’s statements on the subject are among the most sensible I’ve heard in a very, very long time.<\/div>\n

Amy goes on to criticize “the pro-choice crowd” for not standing as firm as Clark does. She has a point, although I think that for many pro-choicers opposing late-term abortions may be more strategic than emotional<\/a>. If so, then Clark, if elected president, may wind up changing his position in deference to that strategy. We’ll see.<\/p>\n

By the way, I’m finding myself warming a bit to Clark as time goes on. His abortion position, like his position on tax policy<\/a>, is attractive. Of course, I’d still prefer Kucinich, but of the folks who might actually win Clark’s looking good..<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Amy at The Fifty Minute Hour has written a very sensible post about Clark’s abortion position. Clark has been criticized for an “embarrassing lack of nuance” in his position. McQuaid: Let\u2019s take an issue. Abortion. Are there any limits on … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-site-and-admin-stuff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=529"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}