When “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart invited Mike Huckabee to discuss the topic of his choice on his program last week, the former Arkansas governor chose one near to his heart: the dignity and value of every human life. That is no surprise, given Huckabee’s strong witness for life during his 2008 campaign for the GOP presidential nomination (in which Charmaine Yoest, now AUL’s President & CEO, served as Senior Advisor) and his support for Americans United for Life, which he calls “the premier pro-life organization in America.”
The ensuing discussion was, to both men’s credit, far more substantial and civil than what normally passes for dialogue in mass-media coverage of the life issue. Big Hollywood TV correspondent Tim Slagle, not a fan of Stewart, observes with glee:
Governor Huckabee very clearly laid out the constitutional pro-life position for the Daily Show audience. Stewart, was defenseless against a rational case for the rights of the unborn, especially since Huckabee’s position was not based in religion, zealotry or misogyny–the straw men Stewart usually attacks.
Although Slagle delights in what he calls the host’s “humiliation,” Stewart — despite his ill-advised attempt to offer a drink to Huckabee (an ordained Southern Baptist minister) and his promoting the “my body, my choice” trope — in fact emerged more humble than humiliated. He admitted that, as a father, seeing an ultrasound made him aware of the wonder of life in the womb, and he also confessed to finding it harder to be “self-righteous” about the abortion issue than his other liberal positions.
Huckabee’s eloquent witness seems to have succeeded in helping Stewart to think more deeply on the issue. One hopes his viewers will too.
RELATED: As Stewart notes, ultrasounds have the power to change the parents’ hearts. Read about how Americans United for Life works toward informed-consent laws designed in part to give a woman seeking abortion the opportunity to see her unborn child in the womb.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |
| Mike Huckabee Extended Interview Pt. 1 | ||
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| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |
| Mike Huckabee Extended Interview Pt. 2 | ||
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| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |
| Mike Huckabee Extended Interview Pt. 3 | ||
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A more succinct version of my above statement:
Stewart laid down the battle lines exactly right: Pro-Lifers believe this is about the intrinsic life of each individual, and Pro-Choicers believe this is a sovereignty question about women having control over their own reproductive systems. Abortion highlights how many women lack control over their reproductive systems where it counts: before getting pregnant. To admit that fact necessitates coming to terms the realities of empty or destructive relationships (whether formal or informal) in which men also have tremendous culpability in the problem. But women will defend abortion to defend an illusion of control, and men will defend abortion to avoid responsibility.
These are the larger pressures that the pro-life movement should be tackling in tandem with the legal and legislative angle. Some of those pressures are societal, and some of them are intensely personal. But as long as they are pervasive enough to cause a significant number of women to seek the illusion of control through abortion, they will cause an obstacle to a recognition of the integrity of life that will be tremendously difficult to prevail against through reasoned argument alone.
Hence, as always, the PRIMARY need for prayer in this effort.
Just one little point; the little girl born as a result of in-vitro can no more be used as a thumbs up for in-vitro no more than a person born as a result of a rape. Thanks for this vid. – Blessings – Rene
>Stewart laid down the battle lines exactly right: >Pro-Lifers believe this is about the intrinsic life of >each individual, and Pro-Choicers believe this is a >sovereignty question about women having control >over their own reproductive systems.
Huckabee highlighted one of two important points surrounding the above comment “Stewart laid down….”. Huckabee pointed out quite rightly that there are two *persons* — mother and baby — each of equal value and, therefore, that the mother should not make decisions that have the impact of directly destroying the child’s life. One person does not own the other. The second point is related to Huckabee’s quote from the Declaration of Independence: “….inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”; however, Huckabee did not say it: The list of rights in the Declaration is an *ordered* list. One cannot pursue happiness without the liberty to do so. And one cannot have liberty without having life. The three liberties are not on the same plane. They form a hierarchy in which pursuing happiness rests upon liberty, which rests upon life. The most fundamental of the three is life, for without it, neither of the other two rights is even logically possible. Therefore, in answer to Stewart’s query regarding the woman’s sovereignty over her body, for two people (mother and child) of equal intrinsic value, the right to life must take precedence over the woman’s liberty (sovereignty) over her own body.