Carter condemns abortion culture -- The Washington Times: "By Ralph Z. Hallow
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published November 4, 2005
Former President Jimmy Carter yesterday condemned all abortions and chastised his party for its intolerance of candidates and nominees who oppose abortion.
'I never have felt that any abortion should be committed -- I think each abortion is the result of a series of errors,' he told reporters over breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, while across town Senate Democrats deliberated whether to filibuster the nomination of Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. because he may share President Bush and Mr. Carter's abhorrence of abortion.
'These things impact other issues on which [Mr. Bush] and I basically agree,' the Georgia Democrat said. 'I've never been convinced, if you let me inject my Christianity into it, that Jesus Christ would approve abortion.'
Mr. Carter said his party's congressional leadership only hurts Democrats by making a rigid pro-abortion rights stand the criterion for assessing judicial nominees.
'I have always thought it was not in the mainstream of the American public to be extremely liberal on many issues,' Mr. Carter said. 'I think our party's leaders -- some of them -- are overemphasizing the abortion issue.'
While Mr. Carter has previously expressed ambivalence about abortion, his statements yesterday were 'astonishing,' said Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute at Concerned Women for America.
'He has long professed to be an evangelical Christian and yet he had embraced virtually all the liberal political agenda,' said Mr. Knight. 'Maybe with Jimmy Carter saying things he never uttered before, more liberals will rethink their worship of abortion as the high holy sacrament of liberalism."