Category Archives: Rights/freedoms

Push to abolish death penalty moves forward

There’s a continued push here in Colorado to abolish the death penalty:

The bill to abolish the death penalty in Colorado and create a cold case unit is moving forward in the state legislature.In a 7-4 vote, the House Judiciary Committee approved the measure Wednesday. State Representative Paul Weissman, a Democrat from Louisville, says abolishing the death penalty could save millions of dollars which could go elsewhere.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am morally opposed to the death penalty. I don’t see any difference between the state killing someone or a citizen killing someone. Both are wrong.

The issue is being debated in a different way here in Colorado, though.  Instead of debating the morality of the issue,  it is being approached from a financial point-of-view.  That is just different enough that it might pass!

Report: Women misled on abortion risks

This is absolutely disgusting, assuming that the report is accurate. According to Boston.com, a report by “Democrats on the House Government Reform Committee, women are being given false, alarmist information regarding abortion risks. From the article:

Care Net, an umbrella group for evangelical pregnancy centers across the country, instructs its affiliates to tell callers there is a possibility that abortion can lead to greater risk of breast cancer, according to Molly Ford, an official with the organization. She said there have been several studies that say it does, and several that say it doesn’t.

“I know the report is wanting to say that it’s conclusive, but it isn’t,” Ford said.

None of the pregnancy centers the committee staff called was identified, and it could not be determined if any were linked to Care Net, which has helped about a quarter of the nation’s pregnancy centers begin operations.

One pregnancy center told a congressional aide the risk of cancer after an abortion could be 80 percent higher, the report noted. Ford said she doubted a pregnancy center would go that far, but the Web site for a pregnancy center in Albuquerque says the risk for cancer after an abortion is 50 percent or greater.

In February 2003, a National Cancer Institute workshop concluded that having an abortion or miscarriage does not increase a woman’s subsequent risk of developing breast cancer. [Emphasis mine]

How disgusting is this? Are anti-choice groups really so desparate that they would flat-out like to a woman, trying to both scare her and not give her the information she needs to make an informed decision? How can one justify this? It’s a horrible practice, and a horrible thing to do to someone who is trying to face one of the hardest decisions of her life.

If you have to lie to someone to justify your beliefs, then your beliefs are probably wrong.

Flag-burning amendment

Okay, so now that the anti-flag-burning amendment has failed (by only a single vote? WTF?), could someone convince the senate to start working on things that really matter, and quit getting distracted by this election-year pandering? It’s not like this is a new debate. This has been settled for a decade!

“The First Amendment never needs defending when it comes to popular speech,” Leahy said. “It’s when it comes to unpopular speech that it needs defending.”

[..]The Texas v. Johnson case came to the court five years after Gregory Lee Johnson burned a flag at City Hall during a political demonstration at the 1984 Republican National Convention in Dallas.

Johnson was convicted of violating state law, sentenced to a year in prison and fined $2,000. The Supreme Court ruled his arrest was unconstitutional.

Writing for the majority, Justice William Brennan stated, “Johnson was not, we add, prosecuted for the expression of just any idea; he was prosecuted for his expression of dissatisfaction with the policies of this country, expression situated at the core of our First Amendment values.”

Kudos to the Republican senators who voted against this amendment, no matter what their reasons. And big time boos to all the Democrats who voted for this. Show some spine, Senators!