Janet Contreras Vs. Ed Pastor : Abortion
70Pro-Life Or Pro-Choice?
It's simple enough: In Arizona CD4, conservative Janet Contreras is pro-life while liberal Ed "Pelosi Puppet Progressive" Pastor is pro-choice. Any political neophyte could have guessed that much. However, as they say, the Devil is in the details. So...a bit of a closer look at each candidate's position on abortion, perhaps?
Why not.
Although not much investigation is required to ascertain Janet's stance, which is straightforward: If you're pregnant, please do bring that child into the world alive and healthy if you can. Her candidacy has been endorsed by Arizona Right To Life, and that pretty much sums it up. She's as pro-life as Sarah Palin.
Ed Pastor, though? Now, that's a little more complex. For one thing, he's an avowed Roman Catholic. The Church has been strongly pro-life, anti-abortion from Day One. Last time I checked with the Pope, it still is. The official dissertation on abortion begins with the following words:
The Catholic Church has always condemned abortion as a grave evil. Christian writers from the first-century author of the Didache to Pope John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae ("The Gospel of Life") have maintained that the Bible forbids abortion, just as it forbids murder.
Yet Congressman Pastor not only advocates abortion, he advocates the extreme forms of abortion. I'm more or less pro-choice myself...but not even I can stomach the idea of the following Ed Pastor Vote Match Responses:
NO on banning partial-birth abortions. (This one is definitely murder in my book.)
NO on funding for health providers who don't provide abortion info. (Your favorite doctor doesn't take Medicaid or Medicare patients. Why? Because he's pro-life, refuses to provide stacks of abortion literature in his waiting room, and is therefore punished by a federal government that is perfectly willing to deny him any of your taxpayer dollars. Period.)
NO on making it a crime to harm a fetus during another crime. (Your wife is seven months pregnant with your first child when a mugger assaults her at the mall and the baby dies as a result. Wife recovers (physically). Simple assault, the baby's death at the mugger's hands not even a misdemeanor...according to Ed.)
Dang. How do you reconcile those two things, Congressman? Did you abandon the Roman Catholic Church? Have you been excommunicated but managed with the help of a complicit mainstream media to cover up your disgrace? I'm not judging your personal faith--God knows I'm not God--but how do you manage such blatant hypocrisy and still sleep at night?
Because I just don't understand for one second how any man could possibly be a Roman Catholic of true faith and a believer/supporter of abortion in even the early stages of pregnancy...let alone the three horrific examples listed above.
It's a mystery for sure.
Connections
Campaign slogans can be cool things...or they can betray the users in unforeseen ways. One of the coolest was coined by challenger Ruth McClung in Arizona CD7 after incumbent Raul Grijalva foolishly called for a boycott of our mutual home state:
BOYCOTT GRIJALVA, NOT ARIZONA
You couldn't beat that with a stick. Ed Pastor's slogan in CD4, on the other hand? It sounds sort of okay on the surface:
PUTTING PEOPLE BEFORE POLITICS
Not so cool, really, now is it? Hard-left Progressives are expected to support abortion "all the way". But that's all about politics. Were Ed to suddenly begin practicing Truth in Advertising (don't hold your breath), that slogan would read:
PUTTING POLITICS BEFORE PEOPLE, PUTTING POLITICS OVER ON PEOPLE, AND THEN LYING ABOUT IT TO THE PEOPLE.
Anyone who's so much as heard Janet Contreras speak from the podium realizes she's real. There's not a hypocritical bone in the lady's body...but she does have a steel spine, will support the rights of all her constituents (even those not quite yet born)...and deserves to represent Phoenix in Congress as We the People take our country back just 13 days from now.
Contreras 2010 and Remember In November.
CommentsLoading...
That's why we have elections, for sure--the people get to have their say. My job in writing this article (as I see it, anyway) was not to judge whether pro-choice or pro-life (or a hybrid blend of the two as is true for me personally) is the "right" way to think...but simply to lay out the contrasting positions of the two candidates clearly for readers too busy making a living to do all their own research.
It's an opinion piece, too, of course, so my opinion is clearly shown--but not as a judgement regarding the way you or anyone else might feel on the issue.
I dread to think of what happens to all the children born that weren't wanted. A lot of them don't live very good lives. The parent may be a drug addict, they may end up in foster care or worse.
One time I saw a bunch of people protesting outside of a planned parent clinic against abortion, went over and asked them why don't you find out where the child molesters live and protest outside of their homes, warn parents and the children in the neighborhood and let them know where they are. Why not protect the children that are all ready here
Definitely. Emotions run as high on either side of this issue as on ANY issue...possibly higher.
The flip side, of course, is that for every "unwanted child" story like you've described, there is an equally powerful story about a child who was not wanted...but who would tell you, as an adult, that they're glad they were born. I'm particularly reminded of our friend, Adam, a Colorado truck driver.
Adam and I met when we drove for the same water trucking company, hauling fresh water to the drilling rigs in the western Colorado gas boom a few years back. He was 23 at the time, a tall, rangy young cowboy with strong driving skills, a sense of humor, and a Get 'R' Done attitude.
A couple of months later, our company founded a full time night shift to complement the day shift. Adam and I were two of the five charter members of that night shift and worked many of those long, dark, cold nights with our two assigned "big rig" tankers hauling to the same rig.
So we got time to talk, here and there, and I came to know him well. He had also been a professional rodeo bull rider for a time, as had I. It didn't show, but his jaw was full of wire and other metal from a significant meeting with a bull's horn. His best ride ever had happened in Casper, Wyoming (he had an awesome trophy buckle); mine had occurred in Pleasant Grove, Utah.
But he'd been unwanted as a child, born to a drug-raddled Mom, sired by a drug addicted Dad as well, popping into the world on a cold night in the back of a pickup truck full of stoned young people...and dumped unceremoniously in the nearest dumpster, left to die.
Only thing was, when the trash crew came along the next morning to pick up that dumpster, he squalled loudly enough to be heard by the garbage men.
After he grew up--in a series of foster homes--he tracked down his Mom...and they developed a decent relationship. He also tracked down his Dad, a cop in Grand Junction, no less, and still addicted to heroin--and when the father/cop became aggressive rather than friendly and actually took a swing at him, Adam beat the holy crap out of him.
So the cop called his buddies after Adam left, Adam was arrested, and his half brother--whom he'd never met until that day, but who couldn't stand their mutual biological sire, either--bailed him out.
Adam was always willing to make it abundantly clear to anyone who asked: He would have really been p----d off if he'd been aborted.
gr82bme 19 months ago
First off, there is birth control. Anyway, I think it is the women's choice