First of all, I am not a crusader on the subject of abortion. This is not my favorite topic. I remember asking a family member who was doctor when I was about 20 years old, before I was married, about it. At the time, I honestly did not know which side I came down on. He simply made the statement that a fetus was an unborn baby, he was infinitely familiar with the process of unborn children. Being anti-abortion because of religious belief was not drummed into me, but his simple comment settled the question for me. And since that time, now with children and grandchildren, there is no doubt in my mind what the proper attitude is about this.
Simply using a little reason here, abortion on demand throughout the U.S. was not legally sanctioned in the U.S. until Roe v Wade. From my reading of it, English Common Law never considered abortion on demand legal and/or acceptable throughout the history of this country, before our modern laws began to kick in. The laws enacted in the last century have been in response to heightened medical technology and a greater awareness of the pregnancy process, and an increased ability to perform abortions on a regular basis. And even early feminists were against abortion.
I agree, we have no direct statements that can be proven concerning Humphrey's attitude. We do have one statement that can be interpreted to support my position, but you disagree. We also have the knowledge of cultural and societal views from which Humphrey came, which is circumstantial evidence, which you contend is fallacious, but I contend is quite valid as evidence. And as I've pointed out before, I gave Humphrey an M, not a C, so I only gave him a 50% conservative, 50% liberal on this issue. I simply did not give him a 100% Liberal rating because when I considered his generational culture and his known statements, I figured a 50% was a fully defendable asssessment of his probable politics on this. As I've previously pointed out, even an Al Gore was pro-life earlier in his career, and he is on the cutting edge of liberalism. I think that is a pretty good indicator of how things have changed. You simply choose to ignore all of this evidence.
The whole reason I chose Humphrey was to illustrate my contention that our culture has drifted to the left. Well, lets throw out Humphrey as a needless detour, and simply agree on the observation that legalized abortion has been a fairly recent phenomena, post Humphrey's generation, coinciding with the baby boomer generation that has more permissive cultural, moral, and political views from the previous generation, that I contend are to the left.
http://www.mtio.com/articles/bissar28.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law
http://www.abortionfacts.com/online_books/love_them_both/why_cant_we_love_them_both_7.asp#When%20did%20the%20first%20state%20legalize%20abortion?
