Rick Perry tried the old tu quoque with the Texas state Senator and abortion rights defender Wendy Davis the other day. (Reported here at SALON.) Davis, as it turns out, hasn’t had an abortion. Even when she, like, could have.
… she was a teenage mother herself. She managed to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School and serve in the Texas senate. It is just unfortunate that she hasn’t learned from her own example ….
First, one can support abortion rights and still not have one. Second, if Perry is trying to make the point that having children isn’t all that disruptive of a life by pointing to one woman who made it through law school with a child… The answer is that at least she chose that option. That makes a big difference.
Sixth Commandment – Thous Shalt Not Kill
Who’s the hypocrite, Rick.
Anyone who cuts funding for programs that help keep people alive – after the become *people* at birth. IE, most CONservatives.
I despise Perry’s record on executions as much as anyone, but that commandment isn’t actually evidence of hypocrisy. It doesn’t mean that one should never take a life – it means one shouldn’t commit civil murder. Society, both when the commandments were devised and today, distinguishes between improper killing (murder) and lawful killings (in self defense, in warfare, and especially for criminal executions. However much we disagree with capital punishment, it is a legal penalty, and Perry does not violate that commandment by implementing it. There’s so many valid reasons to criticize these asshats, we shouldn’t reach for specious ones.
Typecaster makes two excellent points. First, a distinction can be drawn between the intentional murder they think abortion is (on their strongest views) and the lack of concern they have for living people. However deplorable the latter, it’s not intentional killing–i.e., murder. Having said that, those who characterize the Perry (style) position as “pro birth” have it right (I think).
If, however, they view their position as a seamless, care for life, kind of position, then the inconsistency Biglt points out stands: they’re not for life so much as for birth (well, at least some of them). This kind of position is staked out by a number of Perry’s ideological supporters (Catholics, for instance).
Typecaster’s second good point suggests that critics of Perry ought to go for the real crappy arguments. Agreed absolutely. Now the question here, of course, is this:
if there’s at least a not (logically) horrible version of Perry’s view somewhere (as Typecaster points out): does Perry hold it?