Crooks and Liars has some more about Toomey's radical pro-life position. When asked if he would outlaw abortion he said (as you saw in the clip above):
I think that Roe v Wade was wrongly defined, wrongly decided and I think states should be free to restrict abortion and I would support legislation in Pennsylvania that would ban abortion and I would suggest that we have penalties for doctors who perform them if we were able to pass that law.And then when asked whether people should be put in jail for performing abortions, he said:
At some point doctor's performing abortions, I think would be subject to that sort of penalty.Jim O'Toole of the P-G points out that:
In a riposte, Mr. Toomey's aide Nachama Soloveichik blasted the ad although she did not rebut any of its specifics.You'd think that if they got anything wrong, Soloveichik would've said so.
Pat Toomey - Pretty hard to distinguish from Rick Santorum
I imagine there isn't video of Ricky saying that Toomey was too right wing for Pennsylvania, because they would have used it.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the right equation is:
Rick Santorum < Pat Toomey
A tape? No.
ReplyDeleteBut the American Spectator reported in 2004:
Rick Santorum has slavishly praised Specter in a television spot. Santorum also sent his own staff to buoy Specter's team in the field, and has told everyone within earshot that the primary challenger, Rep. Pat Toomey, is "too conservative for Pennsylvania."
That's right, Rick Santorum, the man who raised a firestorm last year comparing consensual gay sex to "bigamy," "polygamy," and "incest," has determined that Toomey, a man whose positions are very similar to his own, is just too far right.
Even Lil Ricky thought Toomey too right wing for Pennsylvania
If Toomey is just recommending “penalties” against doctors who do abortions, he either evades the real issue or doesn’t follow his own logic far enough. I assume most anti-abortion activists would state flatly that abortion is murder. If so, brought from the moral-religious sphere into the civil-legal arena, abortion has to be defined as first-degree murder, because it’s by definition premeditated. And the doctor can’t be the only one to be charged: the woman premeditates the abortion, contracts the doctor and pays for it. As an analogy: consider a man who pays a hit man to kill his wife. Does only the hit man get charged and the originator of the crime go free?
ReplyDeleteSo, if Toomey wants to “penalize” a doctor for performing an abortion but doesn’t mention punishing the woman, he’s showing cowardice toward his own convictions. Either abortion is murder and its two participants should spend their lives in jail, or it’s not and the penalties, if any, are much milder. If Toomey wants to be serious, let him stop being mealy-mouthed, face this issue and say clearly which side he’s on. Then we’ll see what he and his supporters are really made of.