{"id":421,"date":"2008-09-04T08:38:09","date_gmt":"2008-09-04T12:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/anglicansamizdat.wordpress.com\/?p=421"},"modified":"2008-09-04T08:38:09","modified_gmt":"2008-09-04T12:38:09","slug":"the-palins-what-it-really-means-to-be-pro-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/the-palins-what-it-really-means-to-be-pro-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The Palins: what it really means to be pro-life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Damian Thompson at the Telegraph<\/a> gets it right.<\/p>\n

At 5 am this morning I woke up from a nightmare, reached blearily for the laptop, clicked on a video link and heard what, for me, were the most important words of the US election campaign so far: “And we were so blessed<\/em> in April \u2013 my husband and I welcomed our littlest one into the family, a perfectly beautiful<\/em> boy named Trig.” (My italics.)<\/p>\n

The outspoken Sarah Palin may, for all I know, mess up the Republican campaign and\/or make a bad Vice-President of the United States (though I doubt it). But please, don’t anyone tell me that those words were political rhetoric. And don’t dare suggest that when Todd raised Trig’s arm in a tiny wave it was a stunt.\"\"<\/p>\n

The adjective “blessed” and the adverb “perfectly” really mean something in this context: they show that love can overpower the natural human reaction to the birth of a baby with a serious mental handicap.<\/p>\n

Todd and Sarah Palin aren’t in favour of “choice” \u2013 but, when they were told in advance about Trig’s condition, they made the right one. As a result, Sarah may well receive extra support from Christians. Good. Isn’t that how public figures are supposed to attract votes in a democracy \u2013 by acting according to their principles?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Damian Thompson at the Telegraph gets it right. At 5 am this morning I woke up from a nightmare, reached blearily for the laptop, clicked on a video link and heard what, for me, were the most important words of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[256],"tags":[2233],"class_list":["post-421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-pro-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.anglicansamizdat.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}