As I noted yesterday, there’s so much extremism, lunacy and flat-out falsehoods (aka, “lies”) in the GOP’s 2016 platform, it’s hard to know where to start. After covering “highlights” from the sections on energy and the environment, let’s move on to the GOP’s official views on”protecting human life.” What I want to know is whether Republican 2016 candidates – Barbara Comstock, for instance – agree with this stuff. For instance:
- “…we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to children before birth” (This means that life begins at conception, which in turn means that abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and several types of contraception would be illegal. Does Barbara Comstock agree with criminalizing women and doctors – throwing them in jail for murder, presumably – or not?)
- “We oppose the use of public funds to perform or promote abortion or to fund organizations, like Planned Parenthood, so long as they provide or refer for elective abortions or sell fetal body parts rather than provide healthcare.” (The “sell fetal body parts” has been shown to be false, yet Republicans keep repeating it anyway. More broadly, does Barbara Comstock agree with the GOP’s war on women’s reproductive freedom and on Planned Parenthood?)
- “We urge all states and Congress to make it a crime to acquire, transfer, or sell fetal tissues from elective abortions for research, and we call on Congress to enact a ban on any sale of fetal body parts. In the meantime, we call on Congress to ban the practice of misleading women on so-called fetal harvesting consent forms, a fact revealed by a 2015 investigation. We will not fund or subsidize healthcare that includes abortion coverage.” (Similar questions here.)
- ” We salute the many states that now protect women and girls through laws requiring informed consent, parental consent, waiting periods, and clinic regulation.” (Does Comstock support these efforts to make it harder for women to exercise their right to control their own bodies?)
- “We oppose embryonic stem cell research. We oppose federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.” (Does Comstock support gutting medical researchers’ ability to work on cures for diseases from Parkinsons to diabetes to pretty much everything else? Even though these excess embryos from IVF procedures would simply be discarded if they weren’t used for something like embryonic stem cell research? Why does Comstock prefer discarding embryos in the trash, rather than using them for life-saving medical research?)
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