Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Governor Dannel Malloy assured Connecticut’s Democratic Party, early on in the political season, that he will not be running for a third term. Democrats are rather hoping this may somewhat deflate the Republican march to the governor’s office. There are two groups that have been running against Mr. Malloy during his two terms: Republican gubernatorial hopefuls patiently awaiting the moment Mr. Malloy would throw his hat in the ring once again, and Mr. Malloy himself, whose progressive political prescriptions have curdled. His own worst enemy, Republicans will sadly bid Mr. Malloy good-bye. Not so Democrats. Mr. Malloy’s not unexpected announcement has thrown wide the door to multiple possibilities. Perhaps the most amusing is the non-announcement of Democratic President Pro Tem of the Senate, Martin Looney, who was asked if he had plans to enter the gubernatorial race. Mr. Looney did have such plans, but they were narrowly circumscribed by conditions: if Mr. Malloy would do M...

The controversy several years ago centering on the question “Is the fetus a person?” was not settled by appeals to religious conscience; it has been settled, not to everyone’s satisfaction, by 1) technology and 2) the common sense Americans are often praised for.  Common sense is, after all, a sense, very much like the other senses through which we receive the world in all its gore and glory . Ultrasound shows us that the fetus at later stages in a pregnancy moves and reacts to attempts to snuff out its life by an abortion provider – in consultation, of course, with his sometimes uninformed victim, the prospective mother of the child, prospective because the abortion is also, sadly, an un-mothering. The late term fetus, reasonable people sense, is clothed in personhood. Only one who holds extreme views on abortion would deny this. The late term fetus – some dare call it a child -- is certainly not a part of the woman’s body, as for example her liver, which can nev...