pat, please do NOT forget his comment, Do you really want to punish a girl with a baby?

You continue to disappoint, Mr. Buchanan. Where's the fire in the belly for the fate of a fetus AFTER it's born?
How about looking for a candidate who wants to do something about the fact that we have one of the highest infant mortality rates in the western world?
While you're at it, why don't you take up pandering to the anti-evolution crowd as well? Go on, Champ, take us back to the Stone Ages.

So instead we should vote for the guy who wants to put women back in the kitchen, barefoot, pregnant and at the total mercy of men? I'll take Mr. Abortion, if that's all right with you.

Re: phyllis
Ma'am. I'd take abortion too; but Mr. Buchanan is a grown man and it is just too late to be legal, even if it is alright with him.

This is such a surpise surprise surprise that the Catholic church; a feudal organization with a Hitler youth as its nogin would want to pervert the democratic system to have control over society, even if it means doing a deal with the devil. The democrats are the most kind hearted and generous people on the planet. I think they are mostly good. I don't think any of them celebrates abortion. No doubt, some view it as a terrible sin. But no society calling its self free can constrain a girl in the privacy of her doctor's office or in her bedroom or in her body. If women are not free, men are not free. We are not separate beings. We are equal people. I don't care if my church is the most repressive on the planet; I am not going to vote as they vote, or think as they think. We need something besides old forms and ideas to guide us into the future. People cling to their past when their present isn't working. The present isn't working in America. You want to drag women back to the dark ages so you can burn them as witches. Why not just drag the dark ages into the present? I won't help.. Do it alone... I believe in the separation of church and state, but there was never a church that accepted any limits to their authority. If you ask me to sit down and try to resolve practical problems with people mired in faith and drowning in dogma, I will save my trouble. Why not let it all fall down, and then try living apart from these idealists. Why should anyone try to make a deal for a practical solution to real problems in society with anyone who is so captured by their ideals that they can no longer ask or answer the moral question. And, for Catholica, God Bless Them All; they are just as played out as the rest of us. They don't have time to make the moral argument. They don't have the gumption or the guts to form personal relationships with every person ready for an abortion, before an abortion, to give them family, and give them support, and give them love. The God bessed Catholics don't want to make the moral argument, even though they have a good one. What they want to do, instead, is to make a law and apply coersion, and to reduce all people to slavery for their king; and for that, there is no moral argument. Catholics are only acting out of frustation, and seeking power out of faith in earthly authority. If they queer the whole workings of Government to serve their ideal, they are not doing so out of morality, but in avoidance of morality; because working government serves a moral good. So where is the morality in hamstringing government that should be instituted for good? Can't we see the morality of the democrats, as people? Can't we see the morality of a government that can patch roads, repair bridges, provide for education and health care? All morality withers before idealism. And that is what Catholicism is: an ideal. The ideal that is the Catholic church is as old as dirt. It is naked power.

Re: Masako; Man, He does not want to take us back to the stone ages. He just wants to get stoned, and drive the national car. You know what a joker he is with those beady eyes and squeeky voice. Can you imagine that Mr. Buchanan as president? Followers make leaders, but followers do not make good leaders, or make leaders lead well. And in this country of uneducated and unispired people we don't want to have leaders smarted or more motivated than ourselves out of fear of tyranny. Tyranny is the least of our problems. Blind idealism is running us into the ditch... Best to ya.... Sweeney

I wrote up the following dissection of this article on my blog (http://weirdthingoftheday.blogspot.com/2008/08/12-av-5768-left-handers-dayvinyl-record.html):

Pat Buchanan fails to source any of his statements in Catholic source material, authoritative or otherwise; this introduces some doubt as to whether what he has to say reflects Catholicism at all.

Buchanan claims that Barack Obama is “pro-abortion”, a position that your author has never heard any politician take and probably never will. Someone who is pro-abortion would advocate abortions, whereas the position that real non-anti-abortionists take is to be pro-choice, i.e., they advocate the right of women to choose whether or not they have an abortion. The difference is akin to the difference between advocating pornography and advocating governmental non-interference in people's choice of reading materials.

Buchanan talks about “partial-birth abortion” (a political term, not a medical term) as being somehow extremely offensive and nauseating without the least mention of alternate methods of abortion. It is difficult to imagine any form of surgery not being nauseating to anyone unused to seeing surgery performed.

Buchanan wisely avoids the clichéd, misleading debate over “when life begins”. He is also correct that they are human, though this is irrelevant; cells rubbed off the inside of my cheek with a cotton swab are human, too, but destroying them is not murder. More relevant is that Buchanan assumes without explicitly stating the anti-abortionist answer to what that debate should really be about, that the unborn have the status of people, without giving any reason why we should accept this. Given that Buchanan is a Catholic, he proves himself ignorant of his own scriptures. No mention of deliberate abortion is made in the Hebrew Bible or New Testament, but the penalty for feticide is a fine (Exodus 21:22), as opposed to killing the mother, which can merit the death penalty (Exodus 21:23). If the fetuses in the case cited had the same status as a person as the mother, the penalty for killing them should be the same; as such, the status of a fetus is therefore something less than that of a person. QED. Notably, these inconvenient verses tend to be ignored by anyone claiming on alleged scriptural authority that abortion is murder.

Re: Aaron Solomon Adelman; Sir; the question of when life begins is not irrelevant, but is not germane to the question at hand; which is, in fact, When rights begin. Children have to get their rights from some one as a legacy, and if parents have no rights to give them because they have been lost to institutions apart from their government, like the churches, then we have no rights to give, or to spare for future generations. The problem is not too much of rights for the Mother. If she had sufficient rights she would have sufficient hope to induce childbearing. It is hoplessness that causes abortions, and it is lack of rights that causes hopelessness. So I will not deprive women of their rights over a meaningless conception. Life without rights is meaningless. Life with rights is meaningful.,, , Everyone wants to share a meaningful life. And it is people who enjoy rights and suffer the want of them. Institutions would not know whether they had rights or not. ... Since it is not possible to erase hopelessness with a law; it will always be futile to try to correct all behavior resulting from hopelessness. Morality is not improved with law, and we know this because the immoral have always governed with law. If you want to improve morality improve people; and the only fast way to make anyone better is to give them their rights. And you cannot give rights to anyone who cannot be held responsible, as in the case of children. If a person has rights, they protect the person from invasion and slavery, or exploitation. They in turn can defend their rights. Usually, one must defend their rights from enemies, as friends, and countrymen join in the protection of rights. And everyone can tell their friends from their enemies by who defends their rights, and who attacks them. We have no guarantee from the Christians or any religious group that they will be bound by law or loyal to government, or will defend our rights. We may as well surrender to the fact that though they may be right to feel outraged, that they are attacking the victims of abortion, and not taking their Christian responsibility to heart.... They have to decide whether they will become Americans or whether they will stand apart, having separate institution, and knowing no government save their own, because as it stands they are making themselves the enemy of all America stands for in equal rights for all.