7.18.00
“Choose Death!”

7.10.00
Try, Try Again

6.27.00
“Ownership Is Freedom”

6.23.00
Gore the Rich-Basher

6.16.00
Co-Opt City

6.12.00
Reform, Part II

6.09.00
Bipartisan with a Vengeance

6.08.00
What’s Wrong with the Gore Ads?

6.01.00
The Unbearable Lightness of Being W.

n the 1980s, annoying teenybopper fans of the George Michael band Wham! used to wear T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan "Choose Life!" Today's Democrats should probably sport slightly different versions of the shirt, exclaiming "Choose Death!"

What else to make of Al Gore's tortured answer to the question on Meet the Press of whether he would allow a pregnant woman to be executed or not? The gut reaction of most civilized people, perhaps without being able to explain quite why, would be: "Of course not." But Gore, mindful of trespassing against pro-choice orthodoxy in any way, froze up and refused to answer.

It wasn't until Monday that he came up with the answer: He would allow the woman to decide whether not to be executed with her child in her womb. "The principle of a woman's right to choose governs in that case," Gore said.

At least give him credit for consistency. He's in favor of abortion in all circumstances, even if it means the state executing an unborn child for crimes committed by her mother!

Gore, of course, couldn't answer any other way, because otherwise he would give up the logic of the "pro-choice" position. If there is something abhorrent about the state electrocuting or poisoning an unborn child, there is something wrong with abortion too.

Let's say the pregnant woman about to be executed decides to delay her execution to exercise her "choice" to have an abortion (perverse, yes, but we're assuming this woman already has other blood on her hands). How is what will happen to her unborn child in, say, a saline abortion, different from what would happen in the death chamber?

It's not — which is why Gore is forced to say both are OK. There could hardly be a starker example of the logic of "the culture of death" — except, of course, the vice president's position on partial-birth.

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