RUSH: Wesley in Newton, North Carolina, welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. Glad you waited.
CALLER: Thank you, Rush. How you doing today?
RUSH: Just fine, sir.
CALLER: Question for you. Actually it’s not really a question, to begin with. Probably about half an hour ago when you were talking about the stem cell research — you said we wouldn’t be able to swallow this when you said it, actually, but — you came across like this whole stem cell research debate is the Democrats’ attempt to really push abortion, but I don’t really understand that, because their whole technique at abortion is they like to come out by saying, “I’m pro-choice,” but I do not get how that can be transferred over to the stem cell research debate because I think it comes off like the only thing they’re trying to do is kill the babies, and that’s the way it’s coming off whenever you say it, like… Do you understand what I’m saying?
RUSH: Not quite. Sounds like you’re agreeing with me, but I don’t think —
CALLER: I am agreeing with you to a degree, but what I don’t get is I’ve always said there’s three different kinds of Democrats when it comes to abortion. There’s the ones that say, “I’m pro-choice,” when they tried to hide behind that.
RUSH: Yeah?
CALLER: And there’s the ones that say, “I’m pro-abortion,” and then there’s ones that say, “Kill the babies! Kill the babies!”
RUSH: Wait a minute. I don’t know too many of them that are actually out there saying, “Kill the babies, kill the babies.” That’s the outcome, but I don’t know too Democrats actually out there saying that.
RUSH: Right. But that’s how I think you came across when you just said —
RUSH: No. Oh, you’re saying I came across that way.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: No. I like to cut to the chase. What is abortion? It’s killing the baby. Sorry! The Democrats will never say that’s what they’re doing. I will. But, come on, if we can’t… Look it, if we’ve gotten to the point here where we can’t honestly describe anything that’s happening, whether it be a war or whether it be what happens in an abortion, then we’re hopelessly mired in a quagmire of communication advancement. By the way, I don’t think all Democrats — I have to stipulate this often: I don’t think all Democrats are — are pro-abortion, pro-choice or however they hide it. There are a lot of them that aren’t. I’m talk about the leaders. I’m talk about the people that are going to make this happen, the people that are talking about embryonic stem cell research. Let me be blunt. I find that works best. It offends people, but the why beat around the bush? If another method for attracting the stem cells that you would get from embryos can be found, such as amniotic fluid, what’s wrong with that?
Why would you cast that aside and say, “Nope. We gotta have them from the embryos”? But what if they’re the same thing? “Well, we still gotta have them from the embryos.” Well, then why? Why do you want them from the embryo? See, the abortion movement is in trouble. It’s not a massively supported movement right now, and it’s always a subject that’s under debate, and it’s losing ground in a lot of places. This was a way of keeping the debate alive without talk about it, the whole embryonic stem cell research debate is really about abortion without using the word. If you can get the same stem cells, forgetting for a moment that they show no promise yet. We don’t know if they will. Some people are saying it’s going to be 20 years. Meanwhile, other stem cells are showing lots of progress and promise. Adult stem cells, cord blood stem cells, there’s any number of stem cells you can get where you don’t have to kill the baby — sorry! — you don’t have to abort the fetus. But for some reason killing the baby seems first and foremost the top of the list what has to happen here. Why? To cure grandma’s Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s, of which there has been not one shred of evidence that embryonic stem cells do that yet? It’s all a bunch…
“Yes, Rush, but you can’t deny people their hope.”
I know. I know. We can hope for the most ridiculous, irrational things, and if somebody comes along to throw water on it with a little reality, they are the bad guys! They are the meanies. We’re supposed to sit here and indulge people in their hope, even though there is none. It’s just (sigh). I don’t know. Folks, there’s some days I think that I’m just too smart to live in this country and maintain sanity and happiness.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: I got an e-mail from someone who said, “Rush, why are you so convinced that the Democrats’ position on embryonic stem cells is so oriented toward making sure that abortion remains a common occurrence?” (sigh) Folks, in explaining this, let’s go back to the story out of Bangor, Maine that starting next week if you’re driving around in an enclosed car or truck in which there are children, and you are smoking, you’ve subject to a $50 fine, if you’re driving on a state road or a city road, which it’s impossible not to be driving on one of those — well, unless you’re out in the sticks on gravel, I guess. Who knows?
The point is they said, one of the council members in Bangor Maine who herself is a smoker said this is tantamount to killing the kids. It’s tantamount to murder. Now, isn’t it interesting they can say that about smoking, but you can’t say that about abortion? When I say abortion is about killing children, I got people calling me, “Well, that’s a little brutal, don’t even you think?” No, it’s true. It’s what happens. It’s perfectly fine to say smoking with kids in the car is killing them, tantamount to killing them, even though how many decades is it going to take, and they would have to be in there every day for hours on end. But here’s the real reason. If Tom Harkin and any of the other Democrats were to come out — and what’s got this argument sparked today is the survey paper released yesterday that says that stem cells from amniotic fluid in the womb are perhaps just as valuable as embryonic stem cells.
The Democrats are all beside themselves, you can’t do that on the day before Senate debate. Why, this is one paper! Harkin is urging the media to ignore it and not pollute the upcoming Senate debate on this, too important, creating false hope, all of this rigamarole. The real answer to the question is: Iif they give up, if the Democrats, the liberals ever give up on their push for embryonic stem cell research, what happens? By definition, it weakens their case for abortion, because to give in to the less wretched alternatives, such as adult stem cells or amniotic fluid stem cells, the Democrats are, in an implied way, conceding that we ought to try to limit the death option, and they thereby imply there’s something morally wrong with that kind of research — and they can’t do that. They cannot ever admit there’s anything morally wrong with embryonic stem cell research because in a then says there’s something morally wrong with abortion, and they will never, ever do that, and they will fight having to do that, regardless what research comes along.
And, I’ll tell you what, if tomorrow there were a cure discovered for, say, Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s in any kind of stem cell research other than embryonic, they would try to discount it — and I am not exaggerating and I’m not making it up. That’s how important this is. They can never, ever allow themselves to admit that there is something morally wrong about abortion. It’s just the exact opposite, in fact. Holding out this false hope of “great cures for horrible diseases” in embryonic stem cell research, actually points out the moral high ground in abortion, does it not? Which propels the whole movement — and of course as selfish and passive the American people have become, why, they’ll fall prey to the argument: “It’s just an embryo! I mean, that’s not a kid. Don’t kid me, Limbaugh. Killing a kid? You’re killing an embryo! It’s no different than killing the yolk of an egg. Who believes you’re killing a chicken? Yeah, yeah! Besides that, I’ve got Alzheimer’s! I need to get cured. I’ve got Parkinson’s. I need to be cured. We’re going to have babies all day left and right. I just need one to cure me,” and that’s how they’ll sell it. (sigh)
You know, if we encourage the choice — like they say they’re pro-choice, but you can’t exercise a choice and still be pro-choice. I tried that once on this very program. I came out and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I am pro-choice. I have decided I have changed my mind. I am pro-choice. I choose for pregnant women to give birth, put the baby up for adoption, keep it, or what have you.”
Feminists called: “You can’t do that!
I said, “Why? Choice is choice. I’m choosing.”
“You can’t do that!”
That’s why if we encourage the choice to have the mother keep the baby, we are again conceding the implication that abortion is a less moral choice, and the Democrats will never, ever concede that no matter what — and that’s why they’re not going to let go of the embryonic stem cell research as a thing that holds out great promise, even though there’s more promise in occasion in other areas. One other smoking story, this is from the UK. We’ve already had our version of this here. I think this was in some county in Maryland. “
“An English couple are facing a council investigation into their smoking habits at home. Jeanette Gordon-Crawley, 54, and her husband Gavin, 51,” three years younger than his wife; that’s problematic, but that’s another discussion, “from Caernarfon, north Wales, have been told by their local council that their next-door neighbour has complained that she can smell cigarette smoke from their house in her living room. Moira Duell, an environmental health officer with Gwynedd County Council, sent them a letter headed: ‘Alleged Odour Nuisance’, the Sun said. In the letter she said: ‘Your neighbour alleges that cigarette smoke is permeating into her living room from your property. To enable further investigation into the matter I would like to visit your property to discuss the matter further.'”
Can you imagine this? Well, of course you can, because it’s already happened here in the United States, except in Maryland, a woman who was 300 yards away — 300 feet away, a hundred yards, a football field away — claimed that a couple smoking in their house with all the windows closed, she could smell the smoke, the secondhand smoke, and on that basis, they were going to ban cigarette smoking in their house. It didn’t quite work, but, as I say, these things, once they’re brought up, they never go away. Isn’t it time, folks, we got serious about this? All of this death, all of this cancer, all of this discomfort, the noxious fumes, isn’t it time to ban the product? For crying out loud, I have never in my life heard about the pitfalls of a product that causes death, and the product still survives — other than guns, but that’s a different story. The libs are on the same take there, but aside from that, we’ve got a product that, if you listen to these people, murders!
It murders the innocent; it kills the victim, and what are we doing? We’re continuing to produce the product, and we’re taxing the people who buy it, and what are we using the proceeds for the taxation of tobacco products for? Health care! Smokers are single-handedly — or not quite, but smokers — are bearing the huge burden via the taxes they pay on health care. They deserve a medal. They deserve the Congressional Medal of Honor, or the Medal of Freedom. These people are devoted to improving your life, and they’re being called murderers! Yet the product still survives. It’s just curious, isn’t it, ladies and gentlemen? All of this horror that we hear about this, and yet nobody moves to ban the product. They move to ban the use in more and more places, but they refuse to ban the product.
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