Catholic Pro-life Bloggers Not Getting Huckabee?

Today has been a huge day for Governor Huckabee on the Pro-life Front. The Arizona Right to Life Endorses Mike. The Missouri Right to Life just endorsed Huck today. Also the Alaska Right to Life Endorses Mike Huckabee.

As I mentioned earlier Huckabee just praised Catholics the other day in Georgia and their leadership in the Right to Life Movement. He stated:

"I want to say thanks to our brothers and sisters particularly in the Catholic Church, who were way ahead of some of us who are Baptists and other evangelicals, whose voices were louder and clearer and sooner," Huckabee said to applause. "And I thank them for the leadership that they have given to the voice of the pro-life movement across the world."

Now with all this in mind I was very disturbed and perplexed at what I read on the New Republic Blog in their entry Who Will Save The Unborn?.

Here is the part that has me floored:
I expected Mike Huckabee to be a crowd favorite, based on his years as a pastor, his passage of Arkansas' Unborn Child Amendment, and his loud support for overturning Roe. Later that afternoon, at a tea for right-to-life bloggers at the Catholic Information Center a few blocks from the rally, I begin to understand his lack of support. "Huckabee is very religious, and he makes a lot of pro-lifers uncomfortable," says Dawn Eden, a popular anti-abortion blogger and author of The Thrill of the Chaste, sipping on her tea. But aren't pro-lifers very religious? I ask. "It's his association with anti-Catholics like John Hagee," she says, referring to the immensely popular televangelist who once accused Catholics of "plung[ing] the world into the Dark Ages."
Her message is clear: Catholics, who have historically been the heart of the pro-life movement in the U.S., don't trust evangelicals with their cause. With unmatched urgency, the Catholic Church put a significant amount of money into forming pro-life groups after Roe. The Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities, approved soon after Roe by the full body of Catholic bishops, called on each diocese to establish a pro-life office. The Church's National Right to Life Committee is the largest antiabortion organization in the country. As Roy White, then executive director of the committee, asserted in 1975, "The only reason we have a pro-life movement in this country is because of the Catholic people and the Catholic Church." Jill Staneck, a Chicago nurse and prominent pro-life blogger, tells me at the tea, "Some evangelicals have been trying, but Catholics have 2000 years of consistency on this issue, and since Catholics make up one-quarter of the population, they are not going to trust this issue to just anyone."

Good Grief. First I am going to give these bloggers the benefit of the doubt. I am not sure that they said Evangelicals cannot be trusted. I suspect the New Republic might be a tad off here as what they were really saying.

However facts here. If they have problems with Huckabee because he has been on the stage with "anti Catholics" then they better do some research. They will find that many of their Catholic leaders in the pro-life movement as well as McCain and Romeny have a much more closser association with anti Catholic than Huckabee ever has. Including Hageee!!!Please go see my post McCain Embraces Anti -Catholic Hagee Horrors!!!! . WHat will they do when they see Brownback and Santorum are associated with him!! Get the smelling salts!!!

I refuse to believe that Catholic Pro-life Bloggers could be so blind!!!

If they want to doubt to Huckabee's and his pro life bona fides then they did too look at what happened in Arkansas where the emotional politics of abortion and immigration collided.

"As for allowing immigrants to receive free prenatal care, Huckabee said that's part of his pro-life sentiment as well as that of Amendment 65 of the state constitution, which says that Arkansas considers life to begin at conception. "I believe that because it's a human life, then by our law and by our constitution even that unborn child is an Arkansas citizen because he or she is going to be born in this state," Huckabee said. "The prenatal care for the entire pregnancy costs less than one-third of what one day in the neonatal unit at Children's Hospital would cost if the child has complications at birth."

Sometimes positions come into conflict. We see a real life example of how Governor Huckabee stuck to his pro life stands even when IT WAS VERY UNPOPULAR. This example was when the hot button of issue of immigration/illegal aliens and the Pro-Life stand of the Dignity of the human person in the womb came into potential conflict. I will do a post on Huckabee's immigration views later. A view that I expect neither side of this debate will like that much. However his view is closer to the Catholic position than some of the Republicans running.

Amendment 65 of the Arkansas state constitution states that that Arkansas considers life to begin at conception. Life period. It means that life in the womb no matter who you are or where you are from is going to be to be defended under the Consitution of the State of Arkansas. That is because it is at its most vunerable. Governor Huckabee found himself under tremendous political fire for sticking to that. He had a consistent ethic that shows him to be truly pro-life.

As you can see this was not a popular position. I expect some supporters of Governor Huckabee's right now don't like it. But when the rubber hit the road he stood on the side of LIFE. He knew that it to deny these benefits for the unborn child would be to adopt the logic of the forces of evil that state personhood and dignity of the human person can be eliminated by legislative fiat. Life was Life the Governor said and if it was in Arkansas it shall be protected.

Governor Huckabee stands for life even if some finds the unborn child , a troublesome burden, if the child has medical problems, or if it happens to be in the womb of someone here even illegally. That does not matter. That human life deserves protection and equal treatment under the law. Huckabee stood his ground instead of taking the easy way out. A consistent pro-life ethic we need in these days of the culture of death. A ethic that even challeges us conservatives at times. Huckabee withstood that test and was a political prophet and voice for it. He spoke to the people of Arkansas's souls on that matter.

Perhaps just perhaps Catholic Pro-life Bloggers did to take another look at Governor Huckabee!!