Proponents of liberalism, generally speaking, are becoming more and more difficult to understand.
Last week, the House of Representatives voted 246–168 in favor of H.R. 3541, a bill designed to ban sex-selective abortions in the United States. The measure would have made it a federal offense to perform an abortion based on the gender of the fetus, imposing a penalty of up to five years in prison to perform or coerce a woman into such a procedure.
Although the bill garnered 246 votes in favor of passage, it still failed because it was brought up under rules requiring a two-thirds vote of members present to secure passage.
Defeating the bill, 168 members of the House voted against banning late-term abortions performed for perhaps the most extreme reason imaginable – because the child is not of a desired sex. Of course, liberal Democrats voted overwhelmingly against the proposed legislation after President Obama and Planned Parenthood voiced strong and unrelenting opposition.
The victims of sex-selective abortions are almost always baby girls. How liberal politicians can sanction a lethal form of sex-discrimination is beyond comprehension. But they did. In claiming that conservatives are waging a so-called “war on women” while simultaneously refusing to protect the most vulnerable females on the planet, their hypocrisy knows no bounds.
It is one thing to have voted against the legislation because of a belief that such matters are not federal in nature and therefore should be handled only by the respective states. Similarly, at least two libertarian-leaning members objected because they thought the bill punished motive and did not go far enough to prohibit abortions.
But that is not why liberals worked to defeat the bill.
It was, instead, their stubborn allegiance to abortion absolutism that trumped common decency.
And yet, leftist opposition to the sex-selective ban was only part of the nonsense they furthered last week.
During roughly the same time period, liberals in New York, lead by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, supported a far-reaching ban on the sale of large colas and other sugary drinks at restaurants, movie theaters and street carts. In fact, the sale of any cup or bottle of sweetened drink larger than sixteen fluid ounces would be prohibited under the plan as soon as next March.
Bloomberg did not develop the idea. For years, “intellectuals” on the left have suggested either a sugar tax or strict controls on caloric consumption as part of their imagined war on obesity. When not attacking school bake sales, they scheme to use government to force Americans to eat healthy food whether we like it or not – all in the name of protecting people from themselves.
Putting aside the issue that sugar is not the real enemy, the proposed ban is unworkable in practice. Not to mention the difficulties of enforcement, if people are told that they cannot have a large size sugary drink for health reasons they will simply rebel. For example, being deprived of a sixty-four ounce cola, it would be easy (and presumably legal) to purchase eight bottles containing eight ounces each.
Furthermore, large sugary drinks are only a fraction of the obesity puzzle. How is it possible to blame an entire epidemic on the size of a beverage? What will be the next item on their consumption blacklist?
More importantly, it is none of the government’s business how much chocolate, fat, sugar or cola (legal products in all fifty states) an adult individual chooses to consume. Personal liberty must encompass the ability to make foolish decisions, as well as wise ones.
It would seem, given the above, that some are not as pro-choice as they claim.
But, then again, perhaps they simply see more harm in a Big Gulp than they do in the destruction of a human life.
**** State Senator Christ McDaniel
