Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Bethany Mandel in the Washington Post
One of our editors, Bethany Mandel, has a piece in the opinion pages of the Washington Post about how Democrats’ extremism could hand President Trump his reelection.
Read it at the link here and comment below and definitely not there, because they don’t have the same sense of decorum and decency that Ricochet does.
Published in General
From a comment in the W-Post:
The census of doctors willing to do infanticide? Or the census of murderous leftist progressives who will MAKE doctors commit infanticide?
Extending the time frame for abortions past the third trimester at the same time as the cutting the number of physicians needing to sign off on it from three to one is an obvious attempt to simply allow a single physician with a Gosnell mindset to sign off and perform abortions with no checks or balances from other doctors to determine if any of the health issues of the mother or physical deformities of the child are present.
The bills themselves seemed designed as much to try and move the Overton Window towards the left before Ruth Bader Ginsburg leaves the court, in order to somehow argue in future Senate hearings and elsewhere that the new standard set by Cuomo in New York and attempted by Tran and Northham in Virginia should now be the defining standard on whether or not a Supreme Court judge to replace Ginsburg should be rejected or approved.
Exactly.
Isn’t it already legal to provide naught but palliative care to trisomy babies?
And it’s already legal to terminate a pregnancy with a stillborn (not an abortion).
All those commentors are saying that’s what this law provides, but isn’t that already legal?
So why the bill?
Why do these bizarre (and rare!) cases like stillborn, radically deformed (to the point of inability to survive past a few days), or ectopic pregnancies get brought up by the left in these debates? To obscure? Or is it true that pro-lifers are misconstruing the bill?
It’s behind a paywall and nothing is going to get me to pay the Democracy Dies in Darkness crowd. I’ll wait until the movie comes out.
Well, that’s preposterous. That would require imagining a future in which Emergency Measures enabled by the second New Green Deal, using the Population Equity clause, mandated first-term abortions, with a provision that the pregnant woman (or man) can apply for a waiver if they prove they are emotionally stable, have sufficient means to support the child, and will execute the necessary carbon offsets to permit them to have a child.
In these circumstances the State shall allow the pregnancy to continue to term. (Initial drafts of the law said the state must allow, but it was changed to “shall” at the demands of the ZPG Caucus.)
I can’t see anything today that makes that likely. Next week, sure, but today? C’mon.
Congratulations, Bethany.
…
What gets me is that Ralph Northam is actually a medical doctor — “… since 1992, Northam has been a pediatric neurologist at Children’s Hospital…”
His wikipedia page states that, “Ralph Northam is opposed to the death penalty.”
Well… Not for the guilty, just for the innocent.
She put it in terms that might get the Democrats attention.
Decorum and Decency Die on K Street
I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me that the old Weekly Standard published pro-abortion ads. After all, Bill Kristol was a contributor to Northam’s gubernatorial campaign.
With modern technology today, ultrasounds can tell pretty much everything going on within the womb as the pregnancy progresses. The life of the mother has always been the priority. What did they do before this decision came up? It’s a chilling and diabolical picture – the envelope keeps moving, and the most vulnerable are the biggest victims.
Just don’t turn into Jennifer Rubin.
I agree with all that Bethany said, except for this. I don’t want careful answers. I want to know what they actually think.
Apparently, Bill had a senior moment Thursday, when he tried to spin opposition to Tran’s abortion bill into another justification for being #NeverTrump, and forgot to mention his donation to Northam. He’s had a number of other people on Twittr remind him of that, and of the fact his wife also backed Northam’s campaign, if that’s also slipped his mind.
(Probably should add here that when William Safire decided he had made a mistake in 1992 in voting for Bill Clinton, because Clinton governed far to the left of where he ran in 1993-94, Safire owned up to it in his column in the New York Times. Kristol was mad at Trump, which in his logic then justified donating and voting for Northam over Ed Gillespie in 2017, but with his tweet attacking the VA abortion bill here, he refuses to show the courage Safire did in admitting a mistake, and tries to act as though he never had supported the guy who was backing Tran’s bill. A little mea culpa on Kristol’s part would at least go a little way towards showing some self-awareness of how his Trump hatred led him astray in an election where Trump wasn’t on the ballot).
Where is Ruth?
I simply do not understand the commitment by leftists to abortion. To the point that several left-y pundits have offered sexual services to politicians for keeping abortion sacrosanct. (How ironic!) It’s sick, sad and selfish. I sat in a college history class once where the lefty prof was going on and on about how the European settlers decimated the Indians with diseases like small pox and the prof queried the class about what if one of those Indians or descendants would have come up with the cure for cancer? (White guilt anyone?) I just couldn’t resist….I raised my hand and asked what if a baby aborted since Roe v. Wade or one of their descendants would have done the same thing. Her response? That’s different because that is a woman’s right to choose and the Indians didn’t ask for death and disease. Did the fetus ask for death? The fetus is not a person said the prof.
That is the whole thing in a nutshell. As Peter Singer has argued until a human is self aware, they aren’t a person and we should be able to end their life. Wait until leftists figure out that advanced Alzheimer’s patients are not self aware or that some disabled people are not self aware. If you will kill a baby at 33 weeks gestation, then you will kill anyone who doesn’t meet your criteria for protection of life.
My twin is disabled (MR/CP) and my son was born at 32 weeks gestation. Both are enjoying life! The thought that my mom or I would get a pass for killing either one of them based on our own choice is absolutely chilling!
I love this. I’d Love to quiz him about his actual beliefs and interpretations of current events.
I’m leaving the same comment in both places:
Women’s reproductive rights are the new states’ rights.
The new law proposed in Virginia would even magnify the double standard that now exists between abortion and causing the death of a fetus by other means. A drunk driver in some states can be charged with murder if the action, although accidental, causes the death of an unborn child. The Virginia law below clearly states that the mother can lawfully bring about the death of her unborn child. A woman who agrees to unprotected sex while drunk can legally abort her unwanted pregnancy. A drunken man(or woman) who accidentally causes this same action with a vehicle can be charged with a felony. Is this not a double standard?
2012 Va. Acts, Chap. 725 (SB 674) provides that in cases of fetal death (as defined by § 32.1-249) caused by a wrongful act, neglect or default of any person, ship, vessel or corporation, the natural mother of the fetus may bring an action against such tortfeasor. No cause of action for the death of the fetus may be brought against the mother of the fetus.
Ms. Mandel’s article is excellent.
The comments at WaPo are quite shocking.
Read the comments at WaPo. There appear to be a great many people possessed by a spirit of hatred and death. It’s probably not nearly so many as the comments would suggest, as something about the dynamics of online commenting seems to favor the extremes.
Democrat legislators are getting increasingly vicious with progressively more insane abortion laws to prepare for when Gingrich leaves the Supreme court. Which obviously leads to the following headline:
Somewhat Ruthless Democrats Become More Ruthless Before Supreme Court Becomes Completely Ruthless
Ha!
Sorry. I’m tired.
Ginsburg, not Gingrich. Gingrich is a kind of weird former House Speaker.
And Ginsburg is a kind of weird former Supreme Court Justice.