Reply #52: Reproductive Rights [View All]

[penguin7]

Following is from Kucinich's website:
April 2006


Why have a Republican House and Senate never even offered one vote proposing a Constitutional Amendment banning abortion? If the issue were truly important to them as anything but a wedge issue, they would have. The truth is that Republicans have hidden from an honest up or down vote on abortion and will never allow one to take place in the Congress. Instead, they will continue fooling well-intentioned voters who feel strongly about abortion that they "feel their pain," when clearly they do not. Even if the Supreme Court were to do the unlikely and return abortion to the states, it would merely mean that the rich could travel to blue states for abortion, while the poor would have less access to terminating their pregnancies.

The fact is that most Americans, including myself, are uncomfortable with abortions and feel there are too many of them. At the same time, the vast majority of Americans recognize that there are circumstances in which a woman and her doctor should be allowed to make this most difficult decision without government intervention. To return to the days when woman could self-abort without penalty, but to imprison doctors who would help them, seems senseless, especially recognizing that a new abortion law would likely become known as "The Abortions for the Rich-Only Bill."

I have a plan to reduce abortions by encouraging family planning, including abstinance training, combined with a full economic and health care plan that would clearly alleviate the number of abortions. Voters have a choice: Choose Republican rhetoric that will never allow the issue to come to a vote or a real plan to reduce the number of abortions with a program of economic justice. Factually, all the Republican rhetoric and phony issues surrounding abortion have never directly addressed the legality of abortion and have had no or negilible impact on the number of abortions.