OSCEOLA, Iowa -- In what the Texas governor calls a "transformation," Rick Perry on Tuesday said that he has reversed his acceptance of abortion in some severe circumstances, saying that he now opposes the procedure even in cases of rape and incest.
Perry said the change came after seeing the "Gift of Life" film produced by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. He told an audience of Iowans at Clark Electric Co-op in Osceola that he was moved by the story of a woman who introduced the film during a screening earlier this month in Des Moines.
"She said, 'I am the product of rape.' And she said 'my life has worth,'" Perry said of his exchange with the woman. "It was a powerful moment."
57 comments
But does her mother agree ?
I once saw a rape victim deliberately have the child so that she could abuse it in place of her rapist and she sent pictures of it to the guys wife. This went on for years. She finally had the child taken from her and she spent a year in a mental hospital.
The fundies will praise him to the heavens for having seen the light, yet his 'transformation' is nothing but a cynical move to grab the votes he so desperately needs.
That's the problem with democracy: whoever wins, you've still elected a politician.
"She said, 'I am the product of rape.' And she said 'my life has worth,'"
But if you're the victim or rape, Perry thinks your life ain't worth shit. Nice.
Someone who has been raped has already had their freedoms taken from them once. Their freedom to choose or refuse. Their freedom to insist on contraception, or plan and protect against unwanted pregnancy. Their freedom to take their own risks with their health, happiness and future.
Now Perry wants to make sure that those freedoms, once taken, can never be reclaimed, that the victim keeps on suffering, keeps on paying for their rapist's acts, because he thinks doing so might make him a tiny bit more appealing to voters who never grew out of having imaginary friends.
Rick Perry is the lowest, vilest piece of shit in American politics, which is a really amazing - if disreputable - achievement.
The moment of transformation for Rick was when he realized that to get anywhere in GOP primaries, you have to be completely whack mean misogynist crazy. Meanwhile, I'm glad that lady's life has worth to herself, but to the GOP, once she was born and no longer a means of punishing her mother for "impurity", her only worth is as a propaganda mouthpiece.
If a man is having a heart attack, and a burglar comes at that moment and sets off the alarm, inadvertantly causing the man to be rescued and saving his life, then obviously we should legalise burglary and outlaw locking doors, or it would be like saying that this man's life was not worthwhile.
JesusFacepalms said:
@Frank
We're not all like this. You'll find that the Northeastern part of America laughs at these morons just as much as you guys do.
This is like saying not all muslims are terrorists yet failing to understand that if those who claim to not be terrorists are not doing anything to isolate and remove terrorism, they are basically quietly supporting it. Same with the people you talk about.
With over 305 million people, this lineup of retarded imbeciles were the best GOP could do - doesn't matter what you claim/mean/feel - the next US president could be a batshit crazy religious fascist and the rest if the world will then pay dearly for the US idiocy! Doesn't matter if there is a handful of sane people when the rest of the country is insanely religious and right wing.
Oh for fucks sake, are you seriously this easy to sway with glurgy crap? Besides, her mother at least took her option but please don't take it away from people who literally are one mis-step away from complete financial ruin.
@derpmaster: I doubt that even Israel nuking a major US city would be enough to stop US giving a shit-load of money to Israel.
Headache: Well, what WOULD you have us do? Rational discourse isn't piercing fanaticism (not yet, anyway; being entranced into sharp-line religion is NOT evidence of being sub-human, thank you), I doubt putting them to the sword is a brilliant move, and I'm not sure the Northeast has the kind of resources required to become an independent nation of its own. Nor do I see any reason to believe that the fanaticism is irrevocable/irreversible (I have no use for the concepts of fate and inevitability. If fate does exist, then it only deserves abolition, that the cosmos might be free of its blind tyranny). Nor do I see much reason to believe that it speaks of literal brain injury; otherwise, you'd probably have to declare the entirety of early humanity (who had no real reason to conceive of material monism; the only metric they had was themselves and their psyches) as insane. I'll not stand for declaring the past entire as wicked and evil; I'll trust that we're agreed that good is more ancient than evil?
Remember that trances, particularly heavy trances like the one you speak of, cannot hope to wane overnight, but those who suffer the trances deserve only frustration of schemes, not vilification or demonization. (q.v. The leaders of the American Revolution, while no longer monarchists, not suddenly being socialists; example of a trance not disappearing immediately right there) Also remember that many who WOULD speak out may not speak out as sharply as they otherwise might simply out of fear of ostracization, a pretty powerful fear in a species as socially inclined as ourselves (the occasional autistic aside). Does not being strong enough to exceed the fear of ostracization make one worthy of scorn and hatred? Answer: no. It's long past time we stopped regarding strength as a virtue in and of itself, or weakness as blameworthy. None choose to be strong or weak, after all; it's inborn, not voluntary. "WEAK" AND "EVIL" ARE NOT PERFECT SYNONYMS.
The next time one of these loons goes off on an anti-porn crusade, arguing that it objectifies women, I'm going to respond that anti-abortion positions like this one do too. The difference is that, in porn, her entire body is being objectified. The pro-life position only cares about her uterus.
@Headache:
Please, calm down some and consider this possibility:
Obama is heavily favored for re-election, unless he or somebody in his government does something incredibly stupid in the next eleven months. This means that rather than fighting a hard campaign and most likely loosing it, the more moderate and broadly-appealing potential Republican candidates may be waiting until the 2016 election to declare their candidacy.
This increases the odds of Obama's re-election, since the remaining Republican candidates have little chance and are primarily running to maintain their popularity with their base voters.
The expected outcome is that Obama gets re-elected, and we are treated to another several months of progressively more extreme statements by the Republican candidates followed by some impressive back-pedaling by whoever gets the nomination. The end result should be okay, even if the quotes in the meantime are painful to read.
@Skynight
Absolutely correct. There is hope for these people; many Atheists/liberals I know WERE them at one point.
Besides, Headache is just a bigoted troll. Of course he wants all Americans to DIAF.
If you support banning abortion I don't see any good reason to support a rape or incest exception.
Whether it's rape or consentual she can put the baby up for adoption. She doesn't even have to look at the baby if she doesn't want to.
As for incest, why does that always get tacked on? If it's incest but not rape then it was just as much her mistake as her "partner's".
Note: I'm pro-choice, I just find it ridiculous that some people try to argue that it should only be OK in rape and/or incest.
On top of that, Romney is leading the polls. In Iowa! Even THEY don't want Perry!
@TheReasonator
The only exception I can see making sense is late-term abortion. That crosses some ethical boundaries.
"In what the Texas governor calls a "transformation" "
Do they play the Lil Wayne 'Transform You' song at the beginning of the movie?
That would be funny.Anywho,back to reality.
WTF Perry? All it takes to change your mind is meeting one person who happened to made from rape? Really? Why does that matter? She just wouldn't exist if she had been aborted. Do you know how many miscarriages, abortions, early deaths etc. that lead to people not existing? In order to prevent that you'd have to outlaw women's bodies from having a near 25% chance of spontaneously miscarrying during the first trimester too.
Many, many women are not here because they went to back alley abortionists. And many, many children are not here because the women who would have gladly welcomed them were left sterile by back alley abortions. That's all O.K., though, because we are only talking about "impure" women, anyway.
Why abort a pregnancy that results from even a "vountary" incestuous relationship? Because carrying it to term has a very high likelihood of producing a baby with a fully expressed lethal or semilethal. Aside from the cases you hear of an estranged brother and sister unwittingly marrying, though, few cases closer than first cousin are truly "voluntary".
I was born under extreme circumstances. I was a threat to my mother's health because of a car accident when she was sixteen. All the doctors she spoke too said 'abort'. She chose not to. THAT is what the right to choose is for. So one one can tell a woman, one way or another, what to do with their body. My mom chose me. That is why I'm pro choice. That's the only reason I'm here.
Of course her life has worth. She is a sentient, sapient, human being.
A blastocyst is only worth something as long as it is wanted by the mother. That sounds very harsh, but what's worth more-something that has the potential to be a human being, or a real human woman who is worth something and had no choice in wanting to conceive or not. As someone in this thread noted, the choice to have the baby's father be a man she cared about, the choice to use contraception, have already been stripped from her. Would Rick Perry strip this choice from her too? I guess. Then again, he's just a rank politician, playing to Iowa's evangelical base.
@Stonespiral: I am glad that you are here and I'm glad you used your experience not to become a frothing pro-life loon. I hope your mom ended up okay.
Rick Perry on Tuesday said that he has reversed his acceptance of abortion in some severe circumstances
Let me get this right: Rick Perry once demanded that everybody follow his sub-set of values or be called a pinko commie fascist, an enemy of the USA, a Satanic, and against God's will, and now he **changes** his stance, and once again everybody has to follow him like a sheep, lest he be called a pinko commie fascist, an enemy of the USA, a Satanic, and against God's will?
Ok.
I don't like Rick Perry because of his ties to the Bilderberg Group and Bohemian Grove, but I may give him another look. Could be a case of wolf in sheep's clothing, but this is an encouraging story at least.
@ JesusFacepalms
This sort of medieval bullshit also makes me glad I don't live in America. I fully take your point that you're not all like this, but you can get stuck with cunts like this in high office, possibly even the White House. We can't - mercifully!
Lol more of this "every life is sacred" crap.
Lady, your life is about as valuable as the other seven fucking billion people on this planet. Somehow, I suspect that the world would still have kept turning if you had been aborted.
And call me cynical, but I suspect that Perry couldn't really give a shit about abortion (or anything except himself). He just says whatever he needs to say in order to get the average idiot to support him.
You're here because your mother made a choice.
This will probably sould really mean, but the world would have kept turning if you were aborted.
@ Headache
Easy for you to say, but not as easy to do as you'd like to think in a country in which virtually all of the media is in right-wing hands and the elections, voter registration laws, voting machines and even the courts are in the hands of the extreme right-wing.
We scream our fucking heads off about what the Republicans are doing, but who hears it when the other side owns the news, radio and print media? In more liberal parts of the country, like the West coast, we do manage, with difficulty, to get real news, but in many other parts of the country, they don't. I have intelligent, socially liberal, pro-choice relatives in the South who think I'M the one who's misinformed about most other political issues when they're the ones living in a total news blackout and they don't even know it. How are they supposed to stand up for what's right when they see, read and hear nothing but misinformation 24/7? Especially the older ones, who don't use the internet? Don't throw stones until you know what you're talking about.
In my fantasies, I'd love to see medical research come up with some way for men to be impregnated, just so these bastards could experience the "gift" of being violently raped and then forced to carry and give birth to the criminal's baby.
Hmm.
Perry has a point, in a round about way.
IF one is "pro-life" then one thinks that the zygote/whatever is human. In that case, aborting a "life' that is the result of rape or incest is, literally, punishing the child for the sins of the father.
The child can still be given away.
Of course, being "pro-choice" means that this is silly.
Oh, and Headache. You are trying to support a false dichotomy. Either with us or against us. If you do not attack them, then you support them! Of course, why not "if you don't attack us, you support us"? Hmm.
Oh, it doesn't have a soul until it has a brain.
No, it doesn't have a soul until it has a brain.
Oh, it doesn't have a soul, no, it doesn't have a soul, oh, it doesn't have a soul until it has a brain.
This really isn't all that different from school age kids being shown 'The Silent Scream' in class to change their views on abortion. Few succumb to the tactic as well as Rick Perry.
I wonder what other kids of propaganda he'd be open to?
You are also most likely the product of a mother who didn't spend every day looking at you and seeing the piece of shit that raped her, reminding you how much she hated him and by extension the child he forced on her. Even if you were perhaps abandoned by your mother to escape the memories and put into foster care your upbringing probably wasn't filled with neighbors that heaped the sins of the father on the child or shamed you for being a bastard child born out of wedlock and unwanted by her parents.
You basically missed out on a life full of the stuff serial killers are made of, and you should be thankful for it. That's certainly not the life I'd want for a child and making sure they never have it is a small mercy.
If a fetus is a living human being entitled to the rights of personhood then it shouldn't matter if there is rape involved and much less incest(which wouldn't need to be specifically iterated in law unless it applied to consentual incest, so that exception only makes sense from an anti-disability standpoint and I've always deplored the position that abortion should be an exception just in cases of disability).
I am pro-choice on the whole, but I respect the opinion that rape and incest shouldn't be exceptions more than the inconsistent opinion that abortion is murder but murder should be OK if the pregnancy came from rape or incest(major facepalm)
I'm an indirect product of a miscarriage. If my mom hadn't miscarried during her first pregnancy, I would not have been conceived. My life has worth.
Should we then force women to have miscarriages so that other sperms will meet other eggs? Or should we just recognize that chance put us here, and if it hadn't, we wouldn't know the difference?
What about the worth of the lives of the children in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in Palestine, in Eritrea, in Sudan, who are casualties of war.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
To post a comment, you'll need to Sign in or Register . Making an account also allows you to claim credit for submitting quotes, and to vote on quotes and comments. You don't even need to give us your email address.