Hillary Clinton's and Barack Obama's America is Callous and Cruel

On March 10th, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered a speech at the Women in the World Summit in New York.  It was revealing since it laid out part of the foundation for the Democratic Party's 2012 presidential election campaign.  Below are the closing remarks in her speech:

Now, we know that young woman in Tunisia and her peers across the region already are facing extremists who will try to strip their rights, curb their participation, limit their ability to make choices for themselves. Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to. It doesn't matter what country they're in or what religion they claim. They want to control women. They want to control how we dress, they want to control how we act, they even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and bodies. (Applause.) Yes, it is hard to believe that even here at home, we have to stand up for women's rights and reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America needs to set an example for the entire world. (Applause.) And it seems clear to me that to do that, we have to live our own values and we have to defend our own values. We need to respect each other, empower all our citizens, and find common ground.

We are living in what I call the Age of Participation. Economic, political, and technological changes have empowered people everywhere to shape their own destinies in ways previous generations could never have imagined. All these women - these Women in the World - have proven that committed individuals, often with help, help from their friends, can make a difference in their own lives and far beyond.

So let me have the great privilege of ending this conference by challenging each of you. Every one of us needs to be part of the solution. Each of us must truly be a Woman in the World. We need to be as fearless as the women whose stories you have applauded, as committed as the dissidents and the activists you have heard from, as audacious as those who start movements for peace when all seems lost. Together, I do believe that it is part of the American mission to ensure that people everywhere, women and men alike, finally have the opportunity to live up to their own God-given potential. So let's go forth and make it happen. Thank you very much. (Applause.)

Clinton was building a case against Republicans because in her world they are anti-women.  According to Clinton, "They want to control how we dress, they want to control how we act, they even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and bodies."  Although she didn't say it directly, it's obvious that Clinton even thinks that Republican women are anti-women since they share conservative values, specifically values relating to the rights of unborn children.

In Clinton's world, attempts to restrict abortions at any stage of fetal development are infringements of a woman's right to control her body, or as she puts it, a woman's right to choose.  Clinton and her devotees make no distinction between the life of the unborn child and the rights of the mother in whose body the child is growing.  In their world, the child has no rights until it is born, and even that is questionable at this point.  That's why they have no problem with partial birth abortions, for example.

In my leadership classes at the University of Virginia, I used to bring up abortion in general and partial birth abortions in particular to show how callous and cruel we have become as a nation.  Although my students had heard about partial birth abortions, most of them had no idea what the procedure was so I explained it to them in detail:

1.      When the baby's head is about to leave the birth canal, the doctor forces the head back in and manipulates the baby's body so that the feet come out first.  In effect, he manufactures a breech birth.

2.      The doctor allows the baby's feet and body to exit the birth canal until the base of the baby's head appears.

3.      The doctor punches a hole at the base of the baby's skull, inserts a vacuum tube, and sucks out the baby's brain.

4.      The baby is "born dead," and the partial birth abortion is complete.

My students were horrified when I described the procedure.  Many of them thought that I was making it up.  Their assignment for the next class was to look up partial birth abortions.  Needless to say, the next class was very interesting.  I recall a black woman in one of my classes saying that partial birth abortions are very rare so they should be permitted.  Thankfully, I had statistics.  In the previous year, about 2,000 partial birth abortions had been performed in the United States.

I said to the black woman, "In pre-Civil War days, slave owners could lynch their slaves with impunity because they were regarded as his property.  Is that true?"

She said, "Yes."

Then I said, "Although we hear a lot about slave owners lynching slaves, it didn't happen very often because slaves cost a lot of money.  In effect, lynching a slave was destroying an asset.  Do you agree?"

She said, "Yes."

My final question made my point.  I said, "How many lynched slaves were too many?"

With tears in her eyes, she said, "One."

While the whole class watched, I said, "One partial birth abortion is too many as well for the same reason."

Get ready because the 2012 presidential election will be a humdinger.  All the vicious, partisan, and nonsensical attacks that Barack Obama said he would not use are exactly what we are seeing, and we can expect much more and much worse as Election Day approaches.  We can even expect the partial birth abortion procedure to come into play again since in the world of liberal Democrats any attempt to curtail it represents an attack by conservatives on a woman's right to choose. 

I believe that Sandra Fluke was a plant-a shot across the bow if you will.  She was invited into the limelight by Democrats to exploit women's issues and hopefully to drive a wedge between women and the eventual Republican nominee.  That's why I wrote "Sandra Fluke has become the Poster Child for the No Morals Movement", "Sandra Fluke and the Democrats' Sleight-of-Hand", and "Do Democrats Want the Fluke Uproar to Continue?" 

A nation is defined by the rights that it grants to its most innocent and helpless.  Who is more innocent and more helpless than a newborn baby?  This battle is too significant to lose.  I hope you understand why it is so important to defeat Barack Obama and his liberal supporters in November.  Their America is callous and cruel.  Our America is caring and free.  It's time for us to take back the America we love. 

Neil Snyder is a chaired professor emeritus at the University of Virginia.  His blog, SnyderTalk.com, is posted daily.