"Pro-life" apparently doesn't mean pro-life. Fred Thompson has received the endorsement of the National Right to Life Committee even though he doesn't favor a human life amendment to the Constitution, didn't favor Terri Schiavo's right to life during his November 4 NBC "Meet the Press" appearance, and once lobbied for a pro-abortion group.
One conservative news service
claims that Thompson has a 100 percent pro-life voting record. In fact, he got only 86 percent in the 105th Congress.
Even more significant, Thompson has now flip-flopped on one of the most important issues of our time--whether disabled people should have the right to life.
At a November 13 news conference at which the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) announced its endorsement of Thompson for president, NRLC executive director David N. O'Steen said, in response to my questions, that Thompson had provided "some clarifications" of his controversial "Meet the Press" remarks and that he now favors the right to life of disabled people like Terri Schiavo.
Even if Thompson somehow manages to explain this flip-flop to the satisfaction of pro-life voters, he still has some other matters involving life and death that cry out for explanation.
First, Thompson registered as a foreign agent for the deposed Haitian tyrant, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, who had incited his followers to murder 27 people by necklacing, the barbaric practice of burning them to death by putting a gasoline-filled tire around their necks and igniting it.
Second, Thompson gave advice intended to benefit two Libyans accused of killing 189 Americans, including college students, 15 active-duty military and 10 veterans, in the
Pan Am 103 bombing. One Libyan was convicted in the case.
This activity occurred on Thompson's part when the "consistent conservative" was a Washington lobbyist.
His flip-flop on the Schivao case is the more immediate problem. Ignoring the fact that Schiavo's parents wanted her to continue to receive treatment and food and water, and that they wanted congressional intervention simply so they could continue to take care of her, Thompson said on "Meet the Press" on November 4 that it was an end-of-life private family matter. This is the view, of course, that prevailed in the courts and which enabled her estranged husband to order her starved to death. It was horrifying.
O'Steen said that Thompson had since told NRLC that he supports measures to make sure that a person like Schiavo will be legally guaranteed treatment and food and water.
"Legislation that we support, both on the state and federal level, to see that when patients want treatment, including food and water, or when their wishes are unknown, that institutions be required to provide this treatment until the patient can be transferred to a willing provider, he agrees with us," O'Steen said. "And he believes that in cases where the patient wants treatment and the families want treatment, it should certainly be provided. He also believes
