WASHINGTON — Newt Gingrich got in hot water with pro-lifers when he expressed his belief that human life begins after the implantation of an embryo, not at conception.
In a now-famous interview on ABC News, Jake Tapper persisted, asking the Catholic convert if “implantation is the moment for you.” Gingrich went even further afield from the Catholic and pro-life position: “Implantation and successful implantation,” he replied.
As might be expected, the reaction from pro-lifers was intense and instantaneous.
The Gingrich campaign responded quickly to the controversy, issuing an early December statement that did not refer to the interview but affirmed that the candidate believes that human life begins at conception.
“I believe that every unborn life is precious, no matter how conceived,” the former speaker of the House of Representatives said in the statement, putting himself on record as being against exceptions in the cases of rape or incest.
Georgia Right to Life president Daniel Becker took note of the candidate’s re-stated position. Becker told the Register that in the past his organization had never been able to support Gingrich — who represented Georgia’s 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1979 until 1999 — because Gingrich previously allowed exceptions in the cases of rape and incest.
“This is a significant move for him and a tremendous thing for the right-to-life movement,” Becker said.
People familiar with the situation said that Gingrich held serious and substantive discussions with Catholic and pro-life leaders in the aftermath of the ABC interview.
“It strikes me that what happened [in the interview] was a bit of backsliding to his pre-Catholic self,” said Matthew Franck, director of the Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute, which studies the moral foundations of free and democratic societies. “The position on implantation was a very long-standing one, and his reversion was reflexive and habitual. As soon as he was reminded of Catholic teaching, he came back to his Catholic sense of self. He’s getting better [on the life issues], and I believe his coming into the Church is part of the reason why.”
While serving in Congress, Gingrich attained a 98.6 favorable rating from the National Right to Life Committee. He has pledged to sign two pro-life executive orders his first day in office if elected to the presidency. One order would reauthorize President Ronald Reagan’s Mexico City Policy, which bars U.S. aid to non-government agencies or charities abroad that perform or promote abortion. The other would be the “conscience clause” to protect health professionals from performing “any action or procedure that he or she finds morally or ethically objectionable.”
Gingrich has signed the Susan B. Anthony List’s Pro-Life Presidential Pledge, which calls for defunding Planned Parenthood, as well as signing into law a Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act and nominating candidates for the Supreme Court who will apply the “original meaning” of the Constitution.
Gingrich has also signed Personhood USA’s Personhood Republican Presidential Candidate Pledge, which supports “the unalienable personhood of every American, from the moment of conception until natural death.” Signers promise to support a human-life amendment to the Constitution and “endorse legislation to make clear that the 14th Amendment protections apply to unborn children.”
Marriage Issues
Gingrich also appears to have reversed his previous stand on embryonic stem-cell research. In 2001, when President George W. Bush was weighing the issue, Gingrich said to reporter Paula Zahn on Fox News that he hoped Bush would “draw a sharp distinction between research on fetuses, which I think would be abhorrent and anti-human, and research on cells that are in fertility clinics that have never been in anyone’s body.”
However, at the GOP debate in December in Sioux City, Iowa, Gingrich said, “I am against any kind of experimentation on embryos,” which “should be considered life because by definition they’ve been conceived.”
A month before the Sioux City debate, National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru noted a “different rhetorical emphasis” in Gingrich’s 2011 campaign pronouncements and previous statements regarding embryonic stem-cell research, but called for Gingrich to be more specific about the issue.
While Gingrich has recalibrated his position on pro-life issues, his approach to same-sex “marriage” has remained unchanged.
Back in 1996, he sponsored the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), upholding traditional marriage. And this year, when a homosexual activist challenged his position at a campaign rally, Gingrich responded that if same-sex “marriage” was a voter’s defining issue, Barack Obama was his candidate.
Gingrich opposes adoption by homosexual couples. But he does believe that certain practical “accommodations” can be made. In 2002, he told Time magazine, “There are a lot of practical relationships that we ought to find a way to accommodate. If your partner ends up in the hospital, there ought to be some ability to visit that partner. But I am not in favor of creating the notion of ‘gay marriage’ or ‘gay adoption.’”
Gingrich has signed the National Organization for Marriage’s pledge to preserve traditional marriage. The pledge includes support for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Meanwhile, the candidate’s sister, Candace Gingrich-Jones, has announced that she is supporting President Obama.
Brian Brown, director of the National Organization for Marriage, notes “that Speaker Gingrich has thought deeply about the issue of same-sex ‘marriage’ and has spoken out about the effects of redefining marriage on religious liberty and the courts and has released a proposal on religious liberty that is very comprehensive and shows what is at stake, that people of faith have been targeted and religious organizations have suffered.”
Indeed, Gingrich has vowed that, if elected, his first executive order would be to establish a commission on religious freedom. Echoing the fears of the U.S. bishops, he has argued that the First Amendment is “being twisted” to “fit a postmodern world” and that “public expressions of faith in some quarters have gone from being normal to unacceptable.”
Stewardship Issues
As the Republican hopeful with the longest history in the public spotlight, Gingrich’s economic plan and voting record provide insights into his likely priorities as president.
While a member of Congress, Gingrich led the “Republican Revolution” of 1994, which ushered in the first Republican majority in the House in four decades. He famously tried to convince President George H.W. Bush not to renege on his “read-my-lips promise” and raise taxes. His voting record between 1979 and 1998 earned him a 61% favorable score (out of a possible 100%) from the National Taxpayers Union, which supports lower taxes. The average score for Republicans of that era was 56%.
Today, a cornerstone of his economic platform is halting the 2013 tax increases that would result from the end of Bush-era tax cuts. Gingrich believes that stopping the tax increase will promote stability in the economy and notes that job creation improved after the cuts were extended by Congress. Gingrich would make the rates permanent.
The free-market-oriented Club for Growth describes Gingrich in a presidential white paper as being “excellent on tax issues, except when he’s not.” While Gingrich has always favored lower taxes and a pro-growth agenda, he has also supported what the group calls “gimmicky” tax credits, including one to help people buy computers and another to help those who wanted to travel after 9/11, to promote desired behavior.
Gingrich’s economic-policy proposals included an optional flat tax of 15%. Taxpayers who want to file under the current tax code (which would include the Bush tax cuts) would have that choice. But others could file their taxes “on a postcard,” as the campaign website puts it.
“The flat tax would generate growth,” American Enterprise Institute economist Kevin Hassett said. Hassett is critical of Gingrich’s plan to make the flat tax optional, however.
“I think a proposal like that is a bad idea because it doesn’t address the complexity of the current tax code. The flat tax should be mandatory. However, other than that, this is a solid proposal that would really help the economy,” Hassett added.
The Tax Foundation, which seeks to educate taxpayers about tax policy and the burden borne by them, gave Gingrich a C minus, partly because of the uncertainty generated by an optional flat-tax plan.
William McBride, an economist at the Tax Foundation, pointed out that the Gingrich flat-tax option preserves the earned-income tax credit, the credit for charitable giving and the child credit.
“That amounts to a huge tax cut for everybody,” said McBride, who was critical of Gingrich for not being specific about what government cuts he would make to offset this.
One of Gingrich’s economic advisers is author Peter Ferrara, a senior fellow for entitlement and budget policy at the Heartland Institute and former staff member of the White House in the Reagan administration and an associate deputy U.S. attorney general in the George H. W. Bush administration.
“Gingrich has a bold and specific vision that is a modernized version of Reaganomics and embodies the supply-side agenda,” Ferrara told the Register. Indeed, economist Arthur Laffer, considered an architect of the Reagan economic policies, has endorsed Gingrich.
“Newt has the best plan for jobs and economic growth of any candidate in the field,” Laffer argued when he announced his endorsement on Dec. 27. Supporters of supply-side economics contend that tax cuts, including low individual and corporate taxes, will promote investment and create prosperity.
Ferrara said that Gingrich’s plan for entitlement reform rests on “structural reforms, no benefit cuts and market incentives.”
Pie in the Sky?
Gingrich supports reducing regulation, which he believes is an obstacle to economic growth. He advocates repealing both the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which he blames for discouraging investment, and the Dodd-Frank Law, which he says is harming small banks.
Like all GOP candidates, Gingrich has pledged to overturn the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. He has attacked former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a front-runner in the Republican field for president, because the health-care program he created in Massachusetts has a mandate that requires citizens to purchase health insurance. It is often considered a state-level version of the similar mandate in Obamacare.
Gingrich was embarrassed recently when The Wall Street Journal unearthed a 2006 newsletter published by Gingrich in which he praised the Romney plan he now criticizes. Gingrich hailed the Romney plan as “the most interesting effort to solve the uninsured problem in America today.”
Gingrich, however, was not without criticism of the plan even in the 2006 newsletter, including his concern that the “exhaustive” list of conditions that must be covered could bankrupt the program.
Still, Tad DeHaven, a scholar at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, isn’t sold on Gingrich’s commitment to small government. “I don’t see him as someone who can be trusted to pursue a limited-government agenda,” DeHaven said.
Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute disagrees.
“The one thing Newt brings to the table that the others don’t have,” said Hassett, “is that he would have the understanding of Congress not only to get Obamacare repealed but to get an alternative passed. It is going to take a lot of strategizing, and Newt is the guy to do that.”
Register correspondent Charlotte Hays writes from Washington.
The Register has been profiling candidates who are vying for the White House in 2012: Michele Bachmann Ron Paul Rick Perry Mitt Romney Rick Santorum The series has also included these candidates, who have since suspended their campaigns: Herman Cain Tim Pawlenty
Edward Pentin: Images of Rome's 2013 March for Life
Tom Hoopes: Why Catholics Are Grateful to George W. Bush
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Well, you got it right in the headline—Newt’s views have “evolved.” They’ve evolved all over the place, back and forth, left and right, up and down—not just his views on life, but his views on everything continue to evolve and evolve and evolve ad infinitum. Newt Gingrich is a man who evolves every day—so much so that you’re never sure just which Newt Gingrich you’re getting on any particular day. As for inadvertently “backsliding” to his pre-Catholic days—perhaps he wasn’t required to know the catechism before converting. Most Catholics aren’t required to know it today, which is why so many of them seem to “evolve” right out of the Church over time. Will Newt?
I was wondering where a discussion of the Speakers’ personal morality (2 divorces, infidelity, abandoment of spouses, ethics violations, etc.) would be addressed. Since Newt and NCR deems it appropriate to opine of the morality of others, one might think that you guys would address his questionable history of Newt Gingrich’s morality.
Furthermore, 40 million Americans are denied access to healthcare as a result of the policies you appear to be cheerleading (I am basing that accusation on the fact that only sources opposed to comprehensive healthcare were referenced in your article). Don’t like Obamacare, fine. But in the absence of any affordable plan for working class Americans, it appears as if the represented Health Care plan is for nothing but emergency room care (which doesn’t cover cancer screenings, thus increasing death) for working class Americans. What’s the Catholic Plan? More tax cuts? We already tried tort reform (didn’t reduce health care costs or increase coverage).
I also noted that you made no mention of capital punishment concerns.
I would hope that a website that claims the mantle of “Catholic” might engage in more comprehensive analysis of how a particular candidate engenders Catholic values. It, unfortunately, appears that this was more akin to a partisan Republican advertisement that left much of Newt’s “Catholic” story out. I hope you do better next time.
Tom, you can go on his website and he goes over all the moral issues, one by one, and has spoken of them often, very often, in fact just heard him discuss it again on a Newsmax interview, donw by Ronald Regan’s oldest son. Much that hs been said is false, and his daughter wrote a columng about the supposed deserting while the wife has cancer story. First of all, she did not have cancer, the visit to the hospital was so the kids could see their mom, and the divorce was already in the mill, so to speak. Today we have to be very careful, since the left, and other republicans, will use lies, sprinkled with a pinch of truth, so looking for various sources is the best way to go. He has repented, asked for forgiveness, so who are we to say he has not changed, or is not worthy of our forgiveness and our trust that he will be a great president? He is what we need, and I pray for his strength to keep focused on the task at hand, keeping humble.Obama will eat Romney for lunch, and he is too soft on many issues, me thinks. Christ’s peace.
He has no NO TRACK RECORD OF GETTING RID OF ABORTION. He is not going to limit IT EITHER AND NEVER HAS DONE SO. LOOK BACK at his record during his time as Speaker during the Clinton administration. You are red faced and believe just about anything.
It is so fun to watch stupid gullible people who can be bought.
Did not George Bush say he was against abortion, yet DID NOTHING TO REALLY LIMIT IT? I have read most of you all in your various blogs and saved many dumb and stupid careless comments as evidence of you all being for the Iraq War that killed millions of civilians. Thousands of children no longer have fathers or mother because of your support.
Duhhhh.
I have a kneeler in Florida that you can bow or kneel perfectly in a 90 degree angle before his image and we can photograph it and send it to the Vatican for their Ecclesiastical and Canonical approval to check if you are doing this CORRECTLY.
The Pope would not approve because I know he saw misguided people in Germany in the 30s as a youngster doing the same thing. THE Nazis were lauded as Saviors and those who would get rid of abortion too. Yet they killed 65 million Jews and were womanizers.
Get real. But go ahead get out your kneelers and start to kneel before your demigods of Congress. So far the Tea Party has yet to deliver what they said they were going to do. Abortion is still sorry to say legal. Mamby bamby ‘tudes of those patronizing kneeling before these demigods did this.
Pray first before you write another stinking misguided “this man has all the saintly answers”. Immediately we here in the SE ( I live in Fla) can see right through all this nonsense.
Don’t you dare tell me I am in stinkin mortal sin because most of your prickly pears Never go to CONFESSION ON A MONTHLY BASIS YOURSELVES.
Go get your kneelers. Do it correctly. Call us in Florida and Georgia and Lousiana and Miss and Alabama for us to line up and take a picture of your happy deed of doing it correctly. Remember no man on Earth is perfect. And no way is this womanizer getting rid of abortion. Sorry folks but Cnn reads my blog.
What about immigration issues and foreign policy? I agree with Tom in Lazybrook on healthcare and echo his question on capital punishment.
I have never liked Newt Gingrich, but am intrigued by his conversion to Catholicism and what this could mean for his political life.
He has no NO TRACK RECORD OF GETTING RID OF ABORTION. He is not going to limit IT EITHER AND NEVER HAS DONE SO. LOOK BACK at his record during his time as Speaker during the Clinton administration. You are red faced and believe just about anything.
It is so fun to watch stupid gullible people who can be bought.
Did not George Bush say he was against abortion, yet DID NOTHING TO REALLY LIMIT IT? I have read most of you all in your various blogs and saved many dumb and stupid careless comments as evidence of you all being for the Iraq War that killed millions of civilians. Thousands of children no longer have fathers or mother because of your support.
Duhhhh.
I have a kneeler in Florida that you can bow or kneel perfectly in a 90 degree angle before his image and we can photograph it and send it to the Vatican for their Ecclesiastical and Canonical approval to check if you are doing this CORRECTLY.
The Pope would not approve because I know he saw misguided people in Germany in the 30s as a youngster doing the same thing. THE Nazis were lauded as Saviors and those who would get rid of abortion too. Yet they killed 65 million Jews and were womanizers.
Get real. But go ahead get out your kneelers and start to kneel before your demigods of Congress. So far the Tea Party has yet to deliver what they said they were going to do. Abortion is still sorry to say legal. Mamby bamby ‘tudes of those patronizing kneeling before these demigods did this.
Pray first before you write another stinking misguided “this man has all the saintly answers”. Immediately we here in the SE ( I live in Fla) can see right through all this nonsense.
Don’t you dare tell me I am in stinkin mortal sin because most of your prickly pears Never go to CONFESSION ON A MONTHLY BASIS YOURSELVES.
Go get your kneelers. Do it correctly. Call us in Florida and Georgia and Lousiana and Miss and Alabama for us to line up and take a picture of your happy deed of doing it correctly. Remember no man on Earth is perfect. And no way is this womanizer getting rid of abortion. Sorry folks but Cnn reads my blog.
Our Catholic pro-life stance also has to include concern for the living. I am tired of electing these “pro-;ife” canddates only to have them honor our abortion stance, but having no problem eliminating programs that help the disadvantaged and poor.
Lazybrook Tom is wrong on many things - 40 million americans are NOT denied access healthcare. It is health insurance that we are talking about and many in that invented and inflated number of 40 million simply choose not to have health insurance because they don’t think they need it. Many are not entitled to it because they do not have the personal resources to pay for it and just giving it to them will bankrupt any rational system - much as they almost bankrupted the housing finance market. If similar economic illiteracy continues to run this country, every aspect of it will go bankrupt!
There is nothing wrong with NCR running blogs (personal opinion pieces, if you didn’t know what they are) advocating one candidate or the other. Don’t you believe in the open market of ideas - or must they only agree with yours?
If you continue to be an Obama supporter, you really need some help.
The man has shown himself to be pathological liar in the past. Why on earth would anyone believe a word he says now? His conversion to Catholicism is interesting, but not interesting enough for me to throw my brain out the window. The man has been a fraud his entire political life. I might forgive him for it, but I’m certainly not going to cast my vote for him.
Newt would be so much better than Obama for just about any child in the womb. He would appoint a conservative supreme court justice. Obama will appoint another liberal if he wins. Our nation hangs on the edge of an advancing abortion culture and a slippery slide into socialism.
In the history of the human race there has only been one perfect person, and He is NOT on the ballot!
It seems that conservatives standards for candidates is higher than the Churches are for Sainthood.
I don’t think this serves the conservative movement well. We tend to throw overboard our leaders at the drop of a hat, meanwhile everything up to and including murder is not a disqualifier for the other side.
so, Catholics commenting on this post, where is your charity as a Christian? Are not all welcome to repent from their sins and accept the faith? many of you seem to hold this man in contempt shame on you…where is your hope in Jesus! what little faith you have. We have all been the Prodigal son and were you not welcomed home? if you were not I’m very sorry, brothers and sisters wether you vote for Mr. Gingrich or not to throw his personal issues in his face is uncharitable do you know his confession to the Holy Spirit?? Pray, Pray, Pray, for all people don’t be Catholics in name only!!
What we have here is a liar. Next?
Keith, this article is listed under ‘news’ and is not represented as opinion. It appears to be nothing more than a slanted political advertisement that only incorporates a portion of Newt’s “catholicism”.
With regards to your comment regarding health care, millions of Americans cannot afford health insurance. Its more than 40 million. People are having their health put at risk because they cant afford to go to the doctor for health maintenance issues. But some “Christians” think tax cuts are more important than helping people stay alive. We can afford to pay for universal health care, but many of our leaders are just too selfish. Risk pool insurance costs 11,000 per person per year in most states. If you are working class, its quite difficult if not impossible to afford it. Perhaps it might help if Catholic “charity” hospitals decided to focus on charity more than on large payments to non-medical practicing administrators. I doubt that Acension or Cristus or or St Mary’s or Seton have more real charity than for profit hospitals.
Dear ANON from Florida. You are entitled to your opinions but not entitled to make up facts. Where did you ever come up with the notion that the Nazis killed sixty-five million Jews? Crawl back into the
fever swamp you crawled out of, please!
Gingrich is always ‘evolving’ - whatever will get him what he wants. And he takes all the credit for the good things that happened while he was Speaker but he was one among many - but newt always grabs the spotlight. But here’s what worries me most: how has he ‘evolved’ in his views of marriage and fidelity? Recently, someone mentioned how Callista is a good Catholic and she even sings in the choir but even while callista was having a 6 year affair with married gingrich, she claimed she was a spiritual woman and a ‘devout’ Catholic…so I wonder what type of Catholicism does she practice? And she ‘taught’ gingrich her brand of Catholicism…I just don’t trust either one of them…we can and must do better.
We can do better than Newt Gingrich…much better.
Jan. 20, 2012…Here’s what scares me about newt gingrich. While he was having a 6 year affair with his current wife Callista, she was claiming to be a ‘spiritual’ woman and a ‘devout’ Catholic and singing in the choir at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. So if she was claiming to be a devout Catholic during that period of time, that says to me that their idea of what it means to be a ‘devout’ Catholic is skewered…Gingrich has often said that ‘rules are for little people’ so he does not feel bound by any rules, Catholic or otherwise. I believe he is a man who will say and do anything to get what he wants. People criticize Mitt Romney because of his wealth but when I try to decide who should be the nominee I picture this: when Romney’s wife was diagnosed with a serious illness, he held her close and comforted her and promised to love her and stay with her no matter what whereas Gingrich dumped his wives when they were found to have serious illnesses and married his latest mistress…I’ll vote for Mitt Romney.
All sinners…he is solid now & has the guts to make the changes needed
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