Supporting a culture of death
Letter to the Editor
Abe Lincoln once said that to sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
Looking the other way or feigning neutrality when society is collapsing in the clutches of a moral meltdown — from America's past embrace of slavery to today's murderous abortion culture that has killed more than 40 million children since 1973 — makes us accountable.
If we fail to fully understand the mile high stakes of this presidential race in resolving or exacerbating abortion in America and if we are silent, we may become unwittingly complicit in the on-going holocaust of the unborn. Who we elect in November matters greatly.
So let me ask you this: What would you make of someone — in this case, a powerful politician — who absolutely knows the ugly truth about abortion but chooses the path of least resistance and flip-flops on abortion in order to pander for votes?
How should we regard this man, who we know is well acquainted with the truth that abortion methods dismember or chemically poison babies, or suck the brains out of innocent children as they are being born — a brutal act of violence against children? How can we trust a man with the highest office in the world who has chosen to advance his political career on the busted bodies of dead babies?
Vice President Al Gore was once a strong pro-life congressman. I know. I served with him. He is now obsessed with promoting abortion on demand both here and overseas. The distinguished gentleman from Tennessee who once wrote, "I support the Hyde Amendment," to cut off federal Medicaid funds for abortion now demands its repeal. Furthermore, Mr. Gore has stated, "I will always, always defend a woman's right to choose. Every time Congress has tried to play politics with that fundamental, personal right, imposing gag rules and attaching anti-choice language to any bill they can think of, we have stood up to them and stopped them. If they try it again, we'll stop them again. And if they try it after the year 2000, with your help, I'll stop them. That hard-won right will be safe with me as your president."
Today Mr. Gore is the most strident, extreme and driven pro-abortionist in political life. Mr. Gore's candidacy for president represents the single most dangerous threat to the lives of an entire generation of unborn children. If he wins, the babies and their mothers lose. Big time.
As chairman of the Congressional pro-life caucus for almost 20 years, I and other pro-life leaders in Congress worked with Mr. Gore in the early 1980s when he was our colleague. He was rock solid and voted pro-life more than 80 percent of the time.
On Oct. 27, 1983, for example, I offered my first pro-life amendment that was enacted into law to ban funding for abortion in the federal employees health benefits program. As expected, Mr. Gore was part of the pro-life majority that day and voted in favor of the funding ban.
Additionally, Mr. Gore wrote to a constituent in 1984, " ... it is my deep personal conviction that abortion is wrong ... I share your belief that innocent human life must be protected."
That was then. This is now. Turns out that his "deep personal conviction" was not very deep after all.
Looking back, it is now crystal clear that once Mr. Gore set his sights on the presidency, the protection of innocent human life became an annoyance, a potential liability and a perceived impediment to grander things.
Over the side went Mr. Gore's "deep personal conviction," and in its place, a re-invented aggressive Mr. Gore emerged, ready to make war on innocent babies at home and abroad.
Mr. Gore, ever the quick study, mastered the art of abortion rhetoric with its uncanny reliance on euphemism, diversion and deceit.
Amazingly, for a time during the presidential primary with Sen. Bill Bradley, Mr. Gore went to great lengths — almost laughable at times — to say he was never one of us.
Now comes an October surprise. In an obvious attempt to lull pro-life people of faith – Catholic voters in particular — Mr. Gore has put out the word in a Catholic news service story that he's seeking "common ground" on abortion. Sounds benign enough, but it's a trap. This false, misleading, cynical, highly deceptive, self-serving rubbish must be recognized for the fool's bait that it is. Don't let him obscure or obfuscate his strident pro-abortion record — and the deadly consequences it has had for babies.
Mr. Gore is pro-abortion to the core. We know his "common ground" will mean a certain "burial ground" for countless unborn children. It is indeed a trap.
A couple of weeks ago, Mr. Gore celebrated and lavishly praised the FDA's approval of RU-486 — the abortion pill — the newest form of baby poison that will destroy hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of babies.
Mr. Gore stated, "I am pleased with the Food and Drug Administration's decision to approve mifeprostone."
Where is the common ground?
Mr. Gore has repeatedly promised a rigid pro-abortion litmus test for all judges, including every justice selected to the U.S. Supreme Court, thus locking-in abortion on demand in the United States.
Mr. Gore said, "I agree with Kate Michelman that the right to choose is nothing less than a fundamental value. As President, I will make sure that right is never threatened, never weakened and never taken away."
His website says, "Noting that the next president may have the opportunity to appoint up to three Supreme Court justices, Gore said that the greatest danger to freedom of choice will be an anti-choice president."
Mr. Gore adamantly seeks the repeal of the Mexico City Policy, a pro-life policy that bars funding to overseas organizations that perform and/or promote abortion.
Mr. Gore favors federal funding of human embryo stem cell research, which turns unborn babies into guinea pigs.
Mr. Gore seeks hundreds of millions in U.S. tax dollars for pro-abortion organizations, such as Planned Parenthood, which performs or refers for approximately 230,000 abortions every year, and the Population Control, which is the holder of the rights to RU-486 and received almost $100 million from the Clinton-Gore Administration over the last three years alone.
Again, where is the common ground?
Mr. Gore applauded Bill Clinton's vetoes of the partial-birth abortion ban. Now he and the abortion lobby, employing the farce of "common ground," want pro-lifers to support a "health exception to the partial-birth abortion ban," even though the 1973 Supreme Court abortion decision has already defined "health" so broadly as to sanction abortion on demand.
And the list goes on.
Abe Lincoln was critical of those who were silent. Just think what he would think of a man who sells out his "deep personal conviction" for political expediency.
Chris Smith (R-NJ)
U.S. House of Representatives
October 26, 2000
All Viewpoint Stories for Friday, November 3, 2000
