Friday, March 6, 2009

So Much for Caring About Innocent Life

When social conservatives are asked to contrast their position on abortion (anti) and capital punishment (pro), their pat answer is that the life in an abortion is an innocent one, whereas the life in the death penalty case isn't.

Well, apparently that is just one more argument of convenience, at least for Colorado State Senator Dave Schultheis:

Democrats were outraged Wednesday morning when Republican state Sen. Dave Schultheis said he planned to vote against a bill to require HIV tests for pregnant women because the disease “stems from sexual promiscuity” and he didn’t think the Legislature should “remove the negative consequences that take place from poor behavior and unacceptable behavior.”

Apparently from Schultheis' point of view the guilt of the mother, however poorly justified even that is, trumps the innocence of the fetus. This sort of inconsistency of argument is exactly what one would expect from a viewpoint based, not on reason, but on arbitrary decrees, especially those several centuries old.

Here were Schultheis' actual words:

"Sexual promiscuity, we know, causes a lot of problems in our state, one of which, obviously, is the contraction of HIV. And we have other programs that deal with the negative consequences — we put up part of our high schools where we allow students maybe 13 years old who put their child in a small daycare center there.

We do things continually to remove the negative consequences that take place from poor behavior and unacceptable behavior, quite frankly, and I don’t think that’s the role of this body."

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