The Twisted Morality of George W. Bush

The widely known and often cited exit polls suggested that quite a number of voters favored President Bush because of his strong moral character. The hallmark of this moral superiority is the fact that the President claims to be Pro-Life. A detailed look at the President's actions, however, provides an interesting contrast to his stated views.

Over the next couple days and postings, we're going to discuss abortion, the death penalty, and the war in Iraq. All three issues seem to contradict the President's Pro-Life rhetoric, but apparently the thousands of Americans that voted for Bush because of his strong morality forgot about those three things when they went to the polls.

President Bush definitely talks the talk of someone who is Pro-Life. Bush's policies on funding family planning organizations during his first term made a very clear statement that the President did not support US tax dollars going towards abortion. One consequence of this policy was that NGOs that work to prevent AIDs in developing countries were denied funding, even if their office only providing abortion related counseling. From a policy standpoint, the President's attempt to limit abortion was weak, and did nothing to address abortion domestically.

Still, the most notable aspect of the President's policies on abortion wasn't something that he did, but rather what he failed to do. Despite having Republican control in both houses of Congress and a Supreme Court that would have the 5-4 margin needed to overturn Roe v. Wade, the President made no attempt to make abortion illegal. How could our President, Savior of the Unborn Child, let this opportunity pass him by?

While President Bush is not going to win an Academic Decathlon (unless it's against a team of people from Alabama), he does realize that public opinion on abortion is fairly clear: no one thinks abortion is a good thing, but a majority of Americans don't support making abortion completely illegal. Only 25% of Americans polled recently, felt that abortion should be completely illegal under all circumstances. President Bush continues to walk a fine line between saying he's against abortion and doing jack shit about it, despite a complete lack of political barriers for the last 4 years.

This raises a question about how well the people in this country who are Pro-Life understand the way our government works. Wouldn't the President, being Pro-Life an all, with no barriers between him and an outright ban of abortion, do something right away to stop the slaughter of the unborn? It's not exactly something that would be good to take your time on, if you were truly against it. This fact makes no sense to me at all, particularly when you hear about how outraged Pro-Life people are about abortion. You'd think if you were the kind of person who enjoyed sitting on a street corner on Saturdays down by the mall with your gigantic aborted fetus poster for everyone to see, that you might have noticed that the President has yet to even mention making abortion illegal. Where's the moral outrage here?

Despite spending 16 of the past 31 years since Roe v. Wade with the likes of Reagan, Bush I, and now Bush II, the Pro-Life camp hasn't figured out that abortion is still legal. In fact, not one of those Pro-Life Presidents, Defenders of Fetal Freedom, ever even attempted to overturn Roe v. Wade.

So here we are with our economy in the toilet, sacrificing our young men and women in Iraq with no plan to get them home, 10% of kids in the US don't have health insurance, and you're voting for the guy because he says he's Pro-Life, and has done nothing to back it up. Thanks.

What this tells me is that a large number of people voted for Bush based on the perception that he stands on this moral mountain peak, but in reality this just shows that they put about as much thought into the whole process of voting as Bush did planning an exit strategy for the war in Iraq.

Abortion is an issue that should never have become political in the first place. Mainly because it's a personal health issue, but even more than that because politicians on both sides of the fence never do a damned thing about it. If you're a Pro-Life American and you voted for Bush this year, someone just sold you some magic beans, and the price you paid was the health and well-being of our children and our soldiers.

If you want good objective facts on abortion based on actual scientific research, click the link on the title of this posting.