http://www.elroy.net/ehr/abortion.html

Iraq in 2003 was not Germany in 1941. Iraq had no part in 9/11, had made no threats against the U.S., had no weapons of mass destruction, and yet we invaded that country and killed upwards of 1,000,00 people. That’s “preventative maintenance”? What did we prevent? Al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq until after we invaded (as religious extremists they were secular Saddam Hussein’s natural enemy, and Osama bin Laden counted Saddam as among the worst apostates in the Arab world); and our invasion has monumentally shifted the balance of power in that part of the world to Iran’s favor. That’s “preventative maintenance”?

This is an honest question, so please take it as such: Do you truly, sincerely believe that we have done the right thing in Iraq? Not just since the “surge,” but objectively, in terms of national security and defense, and balancing the rights of the Iraqi people to not be killed against our rights to protect ourselves? Because there really was nothing to protect ourselves against in Iraq, and we knew that. That’s been proven over and over again. So, just as a straight yes or no question, given the information now available to you (and that’s been available to Bush & Cheney since well before we started this war), was invading Iraq the right thing to do?

Not that you care, but if you answer “yes,” it will not make me angry or frustrated. It will break my heart. Because I don’t want to believe my fellow Americans can be ready to kill other living, breathing people, fathers and mothers and children, for no reason at all except to appease our wounded national pride.

That is not only sociopathic, it’s a war crime.

Also, yes I do have two friends (and they are still my friends even after having abortions) who did not bother to use birth control, got pregnant, and then said they just did not want a baby and had abortions. That is using abortion as birth control after the fact.

The purpose of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are to prevent another terrorist attack on American soil. It’s preventive maintenance, like having your car serviced. I understand that civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan have unfortunately lost their lives. It is a sad fact of war. But, ultimately the citizens of those countries will better off without Al-Qaeda and Saddam terrorizing them in their own country. Civilians also died in WWII but that did not stop us from trying to stop Hitler did it?

Life is not perfect; there have been wars since the beginning of time. Also, anyone in the military had to know that they might one day be involved in a war. After all, that is what the military does.

I don’t know what it was in my post about McCain’s resemblance to many of Shakespeare’s villainous male characters that brought you to the subject of abortion, but it seems to be the one most important to you.

Are you aware that McCain himself said he would leave the choice of keeping or aborting an unwanted pregnancy to his daughters (during his run for the White House in 2000)? His “choice” to become pro-life followed directly from his presidential ambition, nothing else. And regarding Governor Palin, I would bet you $1,000 that Bristol Palin’s shotgun marriage doesn’t last 5 years. Teenage marriage can do far more damage to a woman than abortion, to say nothing of what her child will have to endure under the care of two immature parents.

Abortion is an unbelievably difficult and personal issue for each woman confronted by it. Until you have been the child of a mother who had a nervous breakdown and was suicidal after being denied birth control by her Catholic physician (who called her a slut for asking for it) and then had 3 children between the ages of 22 and 25, don’t talk to me about “using abortion as birth control.” Do you know any women who have used abortion as birth control? I don’t. But I have known women who had abortions after birth control failed, or after finding out that their long-desired child had a birth defect so severe that the child would only live hours or days after birth.

I have also lost my best friend to a placental abnormality for which the only cure is a late term abortion, because placenta percreta is only diagnosed after the 20th week. The only cure for this condition is to stop the placenta from doing any further damage, by removing it - and the growing fetus. My friend died when the doctors could not stop her post-partum hemorrhage.

Tell me, Ashley - have you protested the more than 100,000 innocent civilians killed by the U.S. in Iraq? Did you protest the deaths of the more than 500,000 children who could have been saved by prescription drugs we refused to allow into Iraq during the sanctions after Gulf War I?

Let’s start with the actual living, breathing human beings who are suffering and dying without healthcare, or under our bombs, before we turn on women who are making the most difficult choice of all to the best of their ability.

So why don’t you tell the good folks who read Democracy for Vancouver what it is you “respect” about John McCain and Sarah Palin, and why Barack Obama “is not what [you] want in a president.”

Points off for mentioning Christianity, though, as that is a religion you share with Sen. Obama, as well as Sen. McCain and Gov. Palin.