WASHINGTON, July 23, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry gave an inteview yesterday on abortion on ABC News. Host Peter Jennings asked Kerry about his statement that “life begins at conception” to which Kerry responded by drawing a distinction between the beginning of human life and ‘personhood’.
Jennings asked, “If you believe that life begins at conception, is even a first-trimester abortion not murder?” Kerry replied, “No, because it’s not the form of life that takes personhood in the terms that we have judged it to be in the past. It’s the beginning of life.” Catholic League president William Donohue remarked on Kerry’s statements pointing out that when distinguishing between human life and personhood, Kerry mirrored the dichotomy that was advanced by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857 in the Dred Scott decision that legalized slavery. “In that ruling, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote that members of ‘the negro race’ were ‘not regarded as a portion of the people or citizens of the Government.’ Similarly, he concluded that ‘it is too plain for argument, that they have never been regarded as part of the people or citizens of the State’,” said Donohue. Donohue also took Kerry to task for his statement that “being pro-choice is not pro-abortion.” Donohue retorted, “But why isn’t it? Voters need to know exactly what it is about abortion that Kerry doesn’t like. What’s holding back his enthusiasm? In other words, why isn’t he pro-abortion? And what is it that is being aborted? A human life that is not a person? Does even Kerry believe this to be true?” Donohue charges that Kerry is using the “tortured logic” around abortion in a vain attepmt to appeal to Catholics. But warns Donohue, “practicing Catholics know that a baby is a person, and persons have rights, beginning with the right to be born.” See the full transcript of the ABC interview: https://abcnews.go.com/sections/WNT/US/kerry_interview_040722-1.html jhw