In Texas, Critics Question Bush's 'Life' Culture
Comment from PrisonPlanet.com: While this website fully supports saving the life of Terri Schiavo, the contention that Bush is 'pro-life' is a misnomer that needs to be challenged.
HOUSTON (Reuters) - President Bush's intervention for Terri Schiavo has opened old wounds in Texas where death penalty opponents say his words of support for a "culture of life" ring hollow after so many executions during his time as governor of the state.
Bush said he stepped into the Schiavo case because the United States should have "a presumption in favor of life," but there were 152 executions in Texas during his administration, including some in which the convict's guilt was in doubt, critics said.
"It's hypocrisy at a thousand levels," said University of Houston law professor and death penalty defense attorney David Dow.
"I saw many, many cases where there was substantial doubt about whether someone was guilty or whether the death penalty was the appropriate sentence, but he never said anything," said David Atwood, head of the Texas Coalition Against the Death Penalty. "I really can't say he cares about life."
"We all recognize there is a difference between an innocent person and someone who has committed a heinous crime, but to say one life is important and one isn't, that's politics," Atwood said.
Bush has defended the high number of executions by saying he was confident everyone put to death in Texas was guilty because they had had a fair hearing in the courts he believed capital punishment was a deterrent to crime.
He interrupted a Texas vacation and flew to Washington to sign an emergency law passed by Congress on Monday that forced a review of the Schiavo case in federal court.
Schiavo, 41, has been in a vegetative state since a heart attack in 1990. Last week, a Florida court, at her husband's request, ordered the removal of the feeding tube keeping her alive, but her parents argued it should stay in place.
"In cases like this one, where there are serious questions and substantial doubts, our society, our laws and our courts should have a presumption in favor of life," said Bush, who has spoken often of creating a "culture of life" by limiting such things as abortion and stem cell research.
Death penalty opponents said Bush did not give the same presumption to death row inmates in Texas, where he used his power to grant an execution stay only once while governor from 1995 to 2000.
In 2000, the state set a U.S. record with 40 executions, including that of Gary Graham, whose guilt was hotly contested and became an international controversy.
"In the face of pretty substantial evidence that Gary Graham was not a murderer, George Bush didn't say anything about a 'culture of life,"' Dow said.
Legal experts say Bush has not been totally consistent on the "right-to-die" issue because in 1999 he signed a Texas law similar to the Florida law under which a judge ordered the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube.
The Texas law allows for life support to be stopped under certain circumstances at the request of a family member or other appropriate surrogate.
"If this case had been in Texas the same thing would have happened as happened in Florida," said John Robertson, professor at the University of Texas law school and author of a book on bioethics called "The Rights of the Critically Ill."
But, he said, Bush's support of the emergency bill for Schiavo was not "a direct contradiction" of the Texas law.
"He's saying he thought it was good enough from the state's perspective at the time, and now he's saying there may be cases that might need a second look," he said.
Diane Clemens, head of the Houston-based Justice for All victims' rights group, said death penalty opponents were not making legitimate comparisons.
"This woman is an innocent, brain-damaged individual who has harmed no one. Killers are convicted murderers who have harmed many people. They have had a fair process," she said.
"They have had the very process these people would try and deny Schiavo -- and that is a request for life at the federal level, in the federal courts."
On Monday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the president's decision was based on principle, not politics.
"It (Schiavo case) is a complex case, where serious questions and significant doubts have been raised," he said. "And the president is always going to stand on the side of defending life."
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/march2005/220305criticsquestion.htm
Bush disagrees with South Dakota abortion ban
US President George W. Bush signalled his opposition to a South Dakota abortion ban that forbids the procedure even in cases of rape or incest, saying he favors such exceptions.
But Bush declined to predict the outcome of any legal challenges to the legislation, which would make it illegal to terminate a pregnancy except in rare cases when it may be necessary to save the life of the mother.
"That, of course, is a state law, but my position has always been three exceptions: Rape, incest, and the life of the mother," the US president told ABC news in an interview.
Asked whether he would include "health" of the mother, Bush replied: "I said life of the mother, and health is a very vague term, but my position has been clear on that ever since I started running for office."
The bill, which recently gained final approval from South Dakota's House of Representatives, directly contradicts the precedent set in 1973 when the US Supreme Court ruled that bans on abortion violate a woman's constitutional right to privacy.
The bill grants no allowances for women who have been raped or are victims of incest. Doctors who perform abortion would be charged with a crime. It also prohibits the sale of emergency contraception and asserts that life begins at fertilization.
The governor of South Dakota has indicated he is likely to sign the bill.
A leading pro-choice advocacy group has already vowed to challenge the ban in federal court. But that seems to be exactly what many promoters of the legislation seek.
Advocates of the ban do not deny they aim much higher than South Dakota, a rural and socially conservative state, which even today has only one abortion clinic.
Instead, they are hoping the bill will offer a full frontal assault on legal abortions now that the balance of power in the Supreme Court appears to have shifted with the confirmation of conservative jurists John Roberts and Samuel Alito, both of whom are seen as pro-life.
http://prisonplanet.com/articles/march2006/010306_b_abortion.htm
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