2004 Candidate Survey on Life Issues

Do you believe the law should prohibit abortion (i.e., the intentional killing or termination of an unborn child) at all stages of development from fertilization onward, regardless the circumstances of conception, and regardless the method of the abortion (i.e., surgical or chemical)?

Will you aggressively work for and support laws that prohibit all forms of abortion at all stages of human development and without exceptions?

Will you work for and support laws that restrict the use of public funds, facilities, and personnel to facilitate, aid, or otherwise support the procuring of an abortion, domestically or overseas?

Will you work for and support laws that subject abortion to reasonable regulations like (a) waiting periods, (b) informed consent, (c) parental notice or consent, (d) health and safety regulations for clinics, physicians, and staff?

Will you aggressively work to deny tax funding of all public and private agencies that perform or promote abortion?

We libertarians believe in private property that includes one's self. There is nothing in our Constitution that authorizes the politicians and their handmaidens, the bureaucrats, to regulate morality. Edmund Burke late in his political life came to accept the need for social change as our world evolved. Such change must be based upon the will of society, not of political elitist dictatorship.

1 - 5. My answer the Right to Lifers is simple. The government should not be involved in any way shape or form. When the government in multiple ways encourages and subsidizes unwed motherhood including its many ramifications with tax dollars it has a responsibility to the taxpayers to minimize the impact upon society. The government should not subsidize abortion nor should it regulate against it.

Will you work for and support the legal rights of physicians, nurses, pharmacists and other persons to refuse to participate in any health care related services which they believe to be morally and/or religiously objectionable?

6. I agree that persons involved in health care should not be forced to participate in anything they find objectionable but first we must eliminate all labor laws that makes such force possible. A job is the private property of the employer who should have the right to establish his own rules of employment free of government coercion. No one is forcing a prospective employee to accept a job he may find objectionable for religious or any other grounds.

Will you work to prohibit human embryonic stem cell research in all its forms?

Will you oppose any laws that legalize the cloning of human beings, whether for allegedly therapeutic reasons or otherwise, and instead work aggressively to see that all human cloning is prohibited by law?

Will you oppose right to die and assisted suicide legislation?

7, 8 & 9. Cloning, stem cell research and the right to die is going to happen whether we like it or not, if not in the US than elsewhere. The government should not force taxpayers to fund such research but it has no Constitutional authority to prevent private contributions from doing so.

Will you work uncompromisingly to protect marriage and the family by opposing initiatives to recognize homosexual unions and supporting measures to recognize and protect marriage as a lifelong union between one man and one woman?

10. Homosexual unions are an economic problem brought about by regulations that can not be solved by additional regulations. Privatize Social Security, eliminate inheritance taxes, get the government out of the health care business. Let each employer decide for himself what is to his benefit, what he is willing to pay for. The free market has an amazing way of resolving such quandaries.

ProLife as well as ProChoice wants government force to do their bidding without regard to how society as a whole as evolved. The politicians love it. It makes it possible for them to manipulate society morally and economically. One can not separate abortion from its economic consequences.

I would love to revert to the days when parents were responsible for their offsprings malfeasance. Society demanded it. These days the government uses half our wages to tell us what we may do - or not do. Our government indoctrination centers nominally referred to as schools teach government rules not socially evolved values proven by the test of time. Education is controlled by the politicians not the local society. Parents can no longer discipline their offspring out of the fear that a half dozen government agencies will come down on them. Sure, there were abuses. Better some abuses than savagery.

Jim Larsen
475-7954
nauticon@juno.com