Members: Login | Register | Member List
Previous: A Modern Seminarians' DictionaryNext: In the forum: retreat houses
Back to main
Pro-lifer Jimmy Carter
Maybe this was common knowledge to those who were politically aware in 1976-1980 (I wasn’t), but Jimmy Carter came out yesterday as pro-life. I may disagree with Carter on a lot of things (well, nearly everything in domestic and foreign policy), but I can respect him on this.
And he’s taking his Democratic Party to task for being so unabashedly in love with abortion and so intolerant of liberal and Democrat pro-lifers.
“I never have felt that any abortion should be committed—I think each abortion is the result of a series of errors,“ he told reporters over breakfast at the Ritz-CarltonHotel, while across town Senate Democrats deliberated whether to filibuster the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. because he may share President Bush and Mr. Carter’s abhorrence of abortion. “These things impact other issues on which [Mr. Bush] and I basically agree,“ the Georgia Democrat said. “I’ve never been convinced, if you let me inject my Christianity into it, that Jesus Christ would approve abortion.“
He added that the Party’s rigid pro-abortionism hurts the party as does its extreme liberalism. Okay, from my point of view Carter is himself extremely liberal, except apparently on abortion, so what does he consider to be extreme liberalism?
Is this just an old politician with nothing left to lose (including votes) coming out when their’s no cost anymore? Is he grabbing headlines now that he’s no longer the only living former Democrat president? Maybe.
Or maybe he’s having a real change of heart, a conversion, if you will, that has opened his eyes to the damage that his party—with his complicity—has done over the decades.
-->
COMMENTS
Hi, Dom.
Carter’s become more bitter and strident since leaving office, so the impression you young people 
have of him may not reflect his style as president.
IIRC, he came across as personally-opposed back then.
Posted by RC on 11/4/05 at 01:09 PM Actually, Carter made anti-abortion noises when he was running for president in 1976—a lot more, I might mention, than Jerry Ford did, which is why Carter picked up more than a few pro-life votes (not mine; I saw how he was cozying up to the likes of Sarah Weddington (the Texas lawyer who argued for the winning side in Roe v. Wade and who later worked in the Carter White House).)
Posted by
on 11/4/05 at 03:04 PM Seamus:
Yes, but 1976 was before (just the night before actually) the completion of the great realignment of American politics around abortion. The notion that the president had to have a stance on abortion lay a couple of years in the future. At that time, the Democrat Party was not militantly secularist and Catholics still voted mostly Democrat. The Republican Party was still very much the country-club party and was comfortable with abortion as such (the Bush family had a history of ties to Planned Parenthood, e.g.). Most Protestants, even conservative and evangelical ones, took the view that abortion was one of them “Catholic things” like fish-on-Friday or (closer analogy) contraception.
Carter did win by appealing to religiosity, but mostly in a generic “good and upright” sense, to take advantage of the post-Watergate backlash. He promised “I’ll never lie to you” and vowed “a government as good as the American people.“
The modern Religious Right as such didn’t really exist. Evangelicals had mostly stayed out of politics to that point—you see an example of it in the innocence of Carter’s “adultery in the heart” comment to Playboy, and his abortion comments were generally taken to reflect the same spirit—this is a moral man stating his religious innocence. As a political force, the Religious Right is usually dated to a couple of events that happened during Carter’s presidency that disenchanted evangelicals with Carter—some private school regulations, Phyllis Schlafly’s Stop ERA campaign, a White House conversation Jerry Falwell had with Carter over homosexuals.
I had a conservative political science professor who often said that history would ultimately divide the past generation into the “Carter-Reagan” years and the “Bush-Clinton” years.
CourageMan:
I don’t think anything you say negates what I say, which is that there were people who perceived Carter as being more pro-life than Ford. And while “the great realignment of American politics around abortion” hadn’t taken place, part of the reason for that is that people thought of Jimmy Carter as, if not actually on the pro-life side, then at least leaning that way. (And of course, by “pro-life” I don’t mean “personally opposed,“ although that turned out to be the *only* sense in which he could be characterized as pro-life.)
But soon enough, it became impossible to be a national figure in the Democratic party without being firmly on the “pro-choice” side, forcing former pro-lifers (and people who, like Carter, were perceived that way) to choose between political expediency and principle. Guess which won?
Posted by
on 11/4/05 at 04:41 PM Here is a nice quote from those radical liberals in the 1970’s:
“While the deep concern of a woman bearing an unwanted child merits consideration and sympathy, it is my personal feeling that the legalization of abortion on demand is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life. Wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized—the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old.“
-Edward Kennedy D-MA
JBP
Seamus:
I’m sorry if I came across as correcting you. I was simply noting (and fleshing out all the reasons) that while Carter made pro-life noises in 1976, this would have been unremarkable at the time.
By way of saying ... for Carter to be saying what he is in 2005 *IS* remarkable. About which, I think we agree.
I think he’s just stickin’ his finger in the wind and come to realize (as the Clintons have) that mainstream sentiment toward abortion in this country is shifting away from acceptance. Meanwhile the hard-core lefties that have commandeered his party are as rabidly pro-abort as ever. He wants his party to win in ‘06 and he’s trying to prod them to a more centrist position.
He may personally be pro-life, I dunno. I’m just saying I don’t think the timing of his comments is accidental. Hillary has been working hard of late to appear centrist because she knows she will never be elected President if her leftist, liberal goals come to be understood by middle America. He’s trying to help her, and the Democrats, look reasonable.
It worked for Bill. Remember “safe, legal and rare”?
Posted by
on 11/4/05 at 08:55 PM Remember the term “Reagan Democrat”?
Heck, even Algore had one of the best pro-life voting records in the Senate up until he ran for Prez in 1988.
Expressions “personally pro-life” and “I think abortion is wrong” mean just about nothing these days.
I’ll believe Mr. Carter is pro-life when he can say “I believe unborn children are worthy of the right to life, and my actions reflect that belief”.
Posted by
on 11/5/05 at 07:50 AM I know he is an activist in building houses, but has he ever been seen demonstrating at an abortion mill?
Posted by
on 11/5/05 at 09:55 AM As a pro-life Democrat, I am glad that Jimmy Carter has spoken out on the abortion issue. I think that Carter has always had some pro-life leanings. It should be noted that the Hyde Amendment (banning federal funds for abortions) is law because of Jimmy Carter and Tip O’Neil. Like Carter, then House Speaker O’Neil was quietly pro-life and packed the House-Senate conference committee with like minded Democrats. Carter resisted intense pressures to veto the Hyde Amendment and allowed it to become law. Jimmy Carter is a evangelical Christian. A lot of us Protestant evangelical Christians were slow to recognize the importance of the abortion issue back in the 70’s and I supect that Carter was no exception. Roman Catholics basically started and were the pro-life movement in the 70’s.
I know a lot of Catholics and evangelical Christians who have disagree with Repuhlican views on a number of issues that have been voting GOP because of abortion. The Democratic Party would be wise to listen to Jimmy Carter because many religious voters who come to the Democrats if only the party moved away from the pro-abortion fanatics.
Jimmy Carter is a politician, and there is no evidence of his being pro-life outside of these comments.
He spent four years as president embracing the abortion culture.
These are empty words, and I detect no sincerity in them. If he wants to claim he’s prolife, let him start monitoring what’s going on Saturday mornings at abortion clinics.
He is not pro-life any more than is Bill Clinton. If one claims Carter is pro-life based on these comments, why doesn’t Bill Clinton fall in the pro-life camp for claiming abortion should be “rare” and is a “tragic choice,“ etc.?
Posted by
on 11/5/05 at 11:09 AM Well Jay,
Clinton would be an anti-abortion politician then wouldn’t he? I am not convinced that those politicians that campaign as pro-life or pro-choice are actually either rather than political campaigners.
I am convinvced that those that promote the culture of life such as the Knights of Columbus, Habitat for Humanity and the Special Olympics generally deserve our support more than any politician.
JBP
What reparation is he doing for his silence?
Posted by
on 11/5/05 at 08:57 PM Sorry, I have to add.
“I’ve never been convinced, if you let me inject my Christianity into it, that Jesus Christ would approve abortion.”
I have never been convinced that people who are silent for thirty two years while children are hacked to death really know Jesus Christ, their Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifyer.
He is not sure that Jesus would approve of Abortion! This is not pro-life, this is a mush man who is not certain of matters pertaining to Christianity or humanity.
Posted by
on 11/5/05 at 09:13 PM Yes Isabelle,
But better than most.
Come on, if the guy wants to testify, then why try him?
(judge not be judged etc)
JBP
But better than most.
Better than most isn’t going to count much with God. “Whatsoever you Did to the least of my brothers you did unto Me” That’s Judgement day and it isn’t my judgement. I’m just offering a reminder in Charity.
God Bless,
Isabelle
Posted by
on 11/5/05 at 09:39 PM Carter’s last words in the article: “have some concern about, say, late-term abortions, where you kill a baby as it’s emerging from its mother’s womb.“ A little hedging here? Politician through and through.
Posted by
on 11/6/05 at 03:27 AM “his party—with his complicity—? “
Let’s see now . . . Blackmun, Burger, Stewart, Brennan, Powell (Roe); Blackmun, Stevens, O’Connor, Kennedy, Souter (Casey). All Republican appointees. Abortion was made legal and is kept legal in this country by Republican judges appointed by Republican presidents. Carter did not nominate any of the justices who have given us abortion and sustain it.
Posted by
on 11/6/05 at 10:05 AM This morning, just saw a Carter interview on our local PBS station - a show called NOW: Global Health, America’s response. He cited that UN-sponsored programs had brought the incidence of AIDS in adult women of Uganda down from 13% TO 6% ... but that with the Bush administrations refusal to support condom distribution there, the trend has reversed and gone back up to 9% and growing. When asked how this could be - he singled out a very small but ‘committed’ group of fundamentalists having a grip on this condom issue, but that most Christians are not against such condom distribution. He also claimed the USA to be the least charitable ‘rich nation’ - but that, in time, he hopes we could rise to the level of the likes of Belgium and The Netherlands.
I, for one, am stupefied by such comparisons.
Posted by
on 11/6/05 at 11:14 AM Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
Comments are being moderated. After you submit your comment it could take up to a couple hours, but usually only a few minutes, before it will appear. Thank you for your patience. If you have any questions, you may contact Domenico Bettinelli.
