Fisking Kerry from Debate. Question 8

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Question 8

DEGENHART: Senator Kerry, suppose you are speaking with a voter who believed abortion is murder and the voter asked for reassurance that his or her tax dollars would not go to support abortion, what would you say to that person?

KERRY: I would say to that person exactly what I will say to you right now. First of all, I cannot tell you how deeply I respect the belief about life and when it begins.

As we shall see, your definition of "deep respect" is a little odd.

I'm a Catholic, raised a Catholic. I was an altar boy. Religion has been a huge part of my life.

Huge?

It helped lead me through a war, leads me today. But I can't take what is an article of faith for me and legislate it for someone who doesn't share that article of faith, whether they be agnostic, atheist, Jew, Protestant, whatever.

So what, do you compartmentalize yourself? Do you check your morals and ethics at the door to the Senate; do you walk in and just do whatever is politically expedient? Because from here, that's about what it looks like. Personally however, I would not expect my elected officials to drop their strongly held personal beliefs when they take office. Hell's bells, that's why we elect them! That's why character matters, duh.

I can't do that. But I can counsel people. I can talk reasonably about life and about responsibility. I can talk to people, as my wife Teresa does, about making other choices, and about abstinence, and about all these other things that we ought to do as a responsible society.

What do you mean by, "as my wife Thereza does"? You talk to them like she does, not like anyone else talks? What does that mean?

But as a president, I have to represent all the people in the nation. And I have to make that judgment.

So what you are saying, as president, when faced with a decision, you will perform some bizarre virtual public opinion poll in your head (gedankenpoll?) and make a judgment based on that. I really hope you lose this coming November, for all our sakes!

Now, I believe that you can take that position and not be pro-abortion, but you have to afford people their constitutional rights. And that means being smart about allowing people to be fully educated, to know what their options are in life, and making certain that you don't deny a poor person the right to be able to have whatever the constitution affords them if they can't afford it otherwise. That's why I think it's important.

So you support federal dollars to subsidize abortion for the poor. What about the poor schmuck who thinks that abortion is murder? I guess you feel it is fine that his tax dollars have to go to pay for it. How do you explain that to him?

That's why I think it's important for the United States, for instance, not to have this rigid ideological restriction on helping families around the world to be able to make a smart decision about family planning. You'll help prevent AIDS.

Now I'm confused. Exactly how does abortion prevent AIDS?

You'll help prevent unwanted children, unwanted pregnancies.

What about when they want to stone women for adultery? How about not letting girls escape from burning buildings because they aren't wearing the proper garments? I guess that's ok too? It's just "preventing" unwanted adults.

You'll actually do a better job, I think, of passing on the moral responsibility that is expressed in your question. And I truly respect it.

See, now we have no idea what he means by respect. Unless in Kerry-speak, "respect" is code for, "you poor bastard, I couldn't care less, but vote me"!