Barbara Boxer Goes Off The Rails--Again

One very important issue in the matchup between incumbent Senator "Her Majesty" Barbara Boxer and Republican candidate Carly Fiorina will be one that didn't play a big part in the primaries. The Republican primary candidates ranged from moderate to absolutist on the issue of abortion, with Fiorina in the moderate camp. It's one reason I voted for a different candidate.

But the issue becomes a different one in the general election. Boxer is among the most adamant pro-abortionists in the Senate, while Fiorina, who is moderate about "choice," is a hawk on forbidding federal funding of abortions. That is a principled position, even though I think moderation in relation to abortion is a moral mistake. Still, it means that Fiorina is taking a stand in favor of a "woman's right to choose" (bad), but neither encourages abortion nor wishes to have antiabortion taxpayers foot the bill (good). I've lived in this State and its liberal environment long enough to think that on this issue, Fiorina is about as good as we're going to get.

The illustration is a representation of an eight week old baby in the womb. Abortion advocates call that a "thing," a "problem to be dealt with," a "fetus," or "that mistake." I'm just a simpleton, so what I see is a small, helpless, innocent human being. Fiorina isn't sure what she sees, but at least she doesn't want to kill it, or have us pay for its death. Boxer, of course, sees the rotten little troublemaker who is going to send innocent women into deadly back alleys for their abortions and the source of imprisonment for conscientious doctors who are only trying to help.

Boxer is not your ordinary run-of-the-mill abortion supporter. She absolutely exalts in it. But she's facing a California electorate that only recently rejected a ballot measure which would have required that underage pregnant girls to inform their parents that they are considering having an abortion. So this isn't as simple for Fiorina as it might seem on its face. Boxer once faced Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum in a Senate abortion debate. He pushed and pushed, and then pushed some more to get Boxer to state at which point a baby becomes a human being with rights.

Boxer waffled, dodged and obfuscated. But Santorum kept pushing. Finally, probably out of exhaustion and failure to deflect the question by calling it unfair, Boxer answered. "I think when you bring your baby home, when your baby is born, the baby belongs to your family and has rights." Thanks, Babs. And before then, while you're still at the hospital, I assume it's not a human being, so you can just toss it into the medical waste container. "Reprehensible" is far too mild a word to describe your viewpoint. And at least in the past, California voters seemed to find that to be a perfectly reasonable position.

Although I deeply disagree with the law, science and moral philosophy inherent in the original version of Roe v Wade, I can at least recognize that at a very early stage of pregnancy, there is a difference of opinion even among antiabortion folks about when life actually begins. There are also those of us who are reluctantly willing to make early term exceptions for incest, rape or the physical survival of the mother. But those are areas of genuine, thoughtful and theological disagreement.

Boxer, on the other hand, supports both partial-birth abortion and funding of partial-birth abortion. In the debate with Santorum, he kept asking her "if X part of the baby still remains inside the mother's body, should it still be morally and legally acceptable to kill the baby so long as it hasn't completely emerged?" Boxer dodged that question on multiple occasions by deflecting the question with indignant charges that Santorum was "losing his temper." But she finally had to capitulate and answer the question. As far as I'm concerned, her answer not only disqualified her from being in the Senate, but disqualifies her from being a member of decent society.

Her position is even clearer than that of Hillary Clinton at around the same time. Clinton was asked, "if the abortion is scheduled at noon, but the baby is born in the elevator on the way to the abortion table at 11:50 AM, should it be legal to allow the baby to die, since the legal decision had already been made to terminate the pregnancy?" Unlike Boxer, Clinton actually had to consider the question for a moment before giving an answer that ignored the issue entirely. Boxer's answer probably would have been "of course--just toss it down the elevator shaft."

Boxer has already tested the waters on abortion by tossing out the usual attack on Fiorina's modest pro-life stance. "She wants to make abortion a crime, and that would mean women and doctors in jail." Fiorina didn't waffle or shrink from the attempted attack. "That's a ridiculous statement. I happen to believe in the sanctity of life, but the great majority of Californians disagree with Barbara Boxer, who believes that taxpayers should be funding partial-birth abortion."

Wherever Fiorina stands on early and mid-term abortion, she's very clear on late-term. She abhors it, and will fight to keep it from being funded by the taxpayers. If she continues to use the real words "partial-birth abortion," and continues to explain her opposition to the homicide of a fully viable tiny human being, she could very well bring along even the pro-choicers. At least those pro-choicers who aren't cold-blooded baby haters like, say, Barbara Boxer.