How the Democrat Became Pro- Abortion and a Warning to the GOP

Catholic in the Public Square has a wonderful post up at Catholics, Republicans and Abortion: How We Got Where We Are Today . It clearly lays out how the Democrat party became a enemy of the unborn. It shows a lot of history here that should be reviewed.

At the link he has there is a fascinating insight. He makes the case that in 1965 if one had to guess one would imagine the Republicans would be come the Pro-Abortion party and the Democrats the Pro-life party.

Consider this:
Ted Kennedy, then as now the lion of progressive Democrats in the Senate, wrote to a constituent in 1971 that "the legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life. . . . When history looks back on this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception." Even in 1976, three years after Roe v. Wade, Kennedy insisted that "abortion is morally wrong. It is not a legitimate or acceptable response to any problem of society. And if our country wishes to remain true to its basic moral strength, then unwanted as well as wanted children must be unfailingly protected.

What about the GOP. Well in this among other things we see another Goofy thing that President Nixon seemed to endorse.

We do not know for certain what Richard Nixon thought about abortion, but both he and his successor, Gerald Ford, were very keen on "population control." In 1970 Nixon appointed John D. Rockefeller III, to head up a commission on the "challenge" of population growth in America, and two years later the Rockefeller Commission issued a report proposing no fewer than forty-six measures for cutting down on births. With typical Rockefellerinspired arrogance, the commission boldly advocated a nationwide program of contraceptive "services" to minors and government-subsidized abortions.

That proved to be a fatal overreach, for it set off a firestorm of criticism from Catholic bishops, and Nixon, facing reelection in 1972, ended up renouncing the whole report. But he never abandoned his commitment to population control. Early in 1974 he set in motion another commission, headed by Henry Kissinger, to study the "Implications of World Population Growth for U.S. security and Overseas Interests," more commonly known as NSSM 200 (National security Study Memorandum 200). This commission issued its report in December of 1974, with instructions that it was to remain classified until 1989. Just as the Rockefeller Report had Rockefeller's fingerprints all over it, this one was unmistakably Kissingerian. It was based on the premise that the population explosion in "LDCs" (less developed countries) poses a security risk to the United States. Why a security risk? Because high birthrates mean large numbers of young people, and young people are the ones most likely to jeopardize our investments, block U.S. access to strategic raw materials, and generally challenge existing world power structures. So we have to induce these countries to limit population through contraception, sterilization, and abortion. But we must be careful! With their long memories of colonialism, these people can get touchy about Western interference. So a kind of stealth program was recommended. It was to be presented in terms of the "rights" of individuals "to determine freely and responsibly their number and spacing of children." It also recommended using the U.N. and other multilateral institutions as fronts to disguise U.S. involvement. Finally, in spite of its recommendation that population limits be wrapped in the rhetoric of individual "rights," it added that "mandatory programs may be needed."

This is the warning and should be heeded. Those people that had access with these wacky theories are trying to gain legitimate access to the party again.

Mark Krikorian is the executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and a contributor at the National Review and their Corner blog is a prime example of this.

Pro-lifers need to take note. As the Wall Street Journal stated in their March 15, 2004 editorial

“So determined is conservatism’s nativist wing that it’s even made common cause with radical environmentalists and zero-population-growth fanatics on the leftist fringe. The Federation for American Immigration Reform and the Center for Immigration Studies may strike right-wing poses in the press, but both groups support big government, mock federalism, deride free markets and push a cultural agenda abhorrent to any self-respecting social conservative. FAIR’s founder and former president is John Tanton, an eye doctor who opened the first Planned Parenthood chapter in northern Michigan. By Dr. Tanton’s own reckoning, FAIR has received more than $1.5 million from the Pioneer Fund, a white-supremacist outfit devoted to racial purity through eugenics.Board members of FAIR actively promote the sterilization of Third World women for the purposes of reducing U.S. immigration prospects. And if anything disturbs the good doctor more than those Latin American hordes crossing the Rio Grande, it’s the likelihood that most of them are Catholic, or so he once told a Reuters reporter.

CIS, an equally repugnant FAIR offshoot, is a big fan of China’s one-child policy and publishes books advocating looser limits on abortion and wider use of RU-486. CIS considers the Sierra Club, which cites “stabilizing world population” fourth on its 21st century to-do list, as too moderate. And like FAIR, CIS has called for a target U.S. population of 150 million, about half of what it is today.

Unlike their counterparts on the restrictionist right, these organizations don’t distinguish between legal and illegal immigration. They want the border sealed as a means to a fanciful, neo-Malthusian end. Both sides, however, do share the same intellectual framework -- an overriding pessimism and lack of understanding about markets, which is why both also tend to oppose free trade.

So oppose immigration reform if you like. But please stay away from these folks. THEY ARE USING YOU