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.
