THEY ATTACK YOUR RIGHTS JUST FOR SHOW

This story (from the anti-abortion LifeSiteNews) is getting a lot of attention on the right:

Until the eve of his presidential campaign, Jeb Bush was director of a philanthropy that gave tens of millions of dollars to Planned Parenthood and financed its advocacy of "unrestricted access to abortion" around the world. The charity also approved money to global abortion providers while he sat on its board.

In 2010, Jeb was named one of the founding directors of the Bloomberg Family Foundation, established as a tax-exempt foundation to advance the vision of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He resigned from the board at the end of 2014 to prepare his presidential campaign.

While a Bush spokesman has responded to concerns by saying that Bush would not have voted on every initiative of the foundation, a pro-life leader told LifeSiteNews it "stretches credibility" that Bush was unaware of the foundation's pro-abortion work, given the centrality of such work to the foundation's mission, and its scope....

In March of 2014, the Bloomberg Philanthropies announced a $50 million undertaking to expand "reproductive health," including lobbying foreign nations to loosen restrictions on abortion....

Bloomberg clarified how the partnership would work while receiving Planned Parenthood's Global Citizen Award at its annual gala last March 27.

"I am happy to say our major partner in this project will be Planned Parenthood - Global," Bloomberg said. "In some countries, our funding will help advocates work towards better sexual health policies for teens and better access to contraceptives. In others, we'll help push for less restrictive abortion laws and more government funding for high-quality, accessible services." ...

I don't know if this is going to damage Bush's status as a GOP front-runner -- I think he's appealing to the non-zealots in the GOP electorate, who might find this a deviation from their principles but who'll probably take him at his word when he says he'll be fervently anti-abortion if he becomes president.

I take him at his word on that, too, because he's always made that part of his political brand:

... Jeb ... declared in 2003 that he was "probably the most pro-life governor in modern times." As governor, Bush signed a law to create "Choose Life" license plates in Florida, the proceeds from which flow to anti-abortion advocacy organizations. He also aggressively intervened in two high-profile cases to prevent a mentally disabled rape victim and a 13-year-old girl from being able to have abortions.

In the former case, involving a 22-year-old rape victim who was both pregnant and developmentally disabled, Bush asked a court to appoint a guardian to represent the woman's fetus. The woman had been raped while living in state-supervised facilities, but did not have the mental capacity to identify her attacker....

In 2005, Bush fought to prevent a pregnant 13-year-old girl, who was a ward of the state, from having an abortion. He was overruled by a judge, and CNN later reported that Bush's "abortion activism shocked some state officials who believed he was reaching beyond the powers of his office."

... The former governor recently embraced a federal ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy....

He'll undoubtedly pursue similar policies if he's president. He'll pick a fervently anti-abortion running mate. He'll make opposition to abortion a Supreme Court litmus test.

And yet he signed on to be part of a Bloomberg initiative that he knew was pursuing reproductive rights. Why? Because, really, he doesn't particularly care about abortion. Being anti-abortion is just obvious positioning if you're an ambitious Republican. Never mind the fact that this positioning has real-life consequences for real people -- he did it because that's what he assumed his voters wanted, and what the voters he's hoping to attract want.

Apart from (perhaps) Rick Santorum, I don't know if any of the eight thousand Republican presidential candidates really care about abortion deep down. And yet I think every one of them would, if elected, pack the Supreme Court with the judges who'll overturn Roe v. Wade.

Hey, it's just politics, right?