"All the women around Bush are opposed to overturning Roe v. Wade – his wife, his mother, his Secretary of State, the [co-chair] of the Republican National Committee ... There is no woman around Bush who is in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade.”
Is the problem with the genuinely conservative women on the list that they are against Roe v. Wade? Was Miers Bush's only real choice because she could be portrayed as conservative but would uphold abortion rights, as all the women close to him demand?
UPDATE: William Saletan marshalls the evidence that insiders know Miers is anti-abortion. I'm not convinced. And again, lots of people are anti-abortion but not anti-abortion rights. And lots of people think Roe v. Wade was poorly reasoned or wrongly decided in its time but don't also think it should be overruled now.
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Does anybody actually know that the women in Bush's life are opposed to overturning Roe v. Wade? I know that this gets said a lot. But do we know this as a fact? The GOP vice chair, the former speaker of the state House of Representatives here in Ohio, is opposed to overturning Roe V. Wade. But so far as I know, none of these other persons have publicly expressed their views.
If it is a fact that all of Bush's female family members are opposed to overturning Roe, how has it come to be known? In other words, has it been leaked to the press and if so, for a purpose?
The only purposes I can imagine that a leak would serve would be either to assure pro-choice persons that his conservatism isn't of the Phyllis Schlafly-variety or perhaps, to persuade them that irrespective of his rhetoric, he's not as pro-life as he seems.
But even if we accept her assertions of facts, Schlalfly's wider point is absurd. Even if every woman the President knows turned out to be pro-choice, it wouldn't mean that he was pro-choice. I surmise that the President can make up his own mind and for his own reasons. Besides, by all accounts Harriet Miers is pro-life and presumably, open to arguments that Roe could be overturned.
Phyllis Schlafly gives me the creeps--she always has--and I think she's acting like a paranoid fool because she doesn't want to believe Bush.
I'll second everything Mark said above, and add that my pro-life conservatism isn't of the Phyllis Schlafly-variety (toxic), either. Nor do I think Bush's is.
Lots of people are anti abortion but not anti abortion rights.
You are right on that one, Ann. On the left, we have been making that distinction for years, but are routinely labeled 'pro-abortion' (like do you know ANYONE who feels happy or celebrates when they find out that someone they know has had an abortion?) A lot of people would agree that abortion, like smoking, is a societal evil, but the best way to fight it is not by banning it, but by doing the things that have cut the abortion rate in half since the mid seventies-- education, family planning and the use of birth control (I once blogged on this in detail in a post called, The Successes of Liberals in Stopping Abortion.) If conservatives would join us in working towards making sure that every pregnancy was a wanted one, then we could TOGETHER put the abortion clinics out of business due to lack of demand.
Of course, as I have posted before, I am on the whole much more satisfied with Harriet Miers than some of the other people the President could have chosen. I think you will find that for every Republican Senator who votes against her, there will be two, three or four Democrats who will support her, in fact it is not out of the realm of possibility that Democrats will provide the necessary margin to confirm her (and if that needs to happen, you can be sure that it will).
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