I received a forwarded email yesterday from someone who called herself, Dr. Something-or-other, Ph.D.  I have known some people with Ph.D.’s and rarely do the credible ones have to mention it twice in their name, but I digress.  I don’t know the person who allegedly originated the email, but it urged a vote for Don Wagner for the vacant Third District Supervisorial seat in the upcoming special election.  It alleged that the reason for voting for Don Wagner, was because he is “Pro Life”.

Here is what the email doesn’t mention.

The entire Republican platform says that it is “Pro Life”.  In spite of this, the OCGOP endorsed THREE candidates for local office last election that were adamantly Pro Choice, NOT in any way Pro-Life.  I wrote about that here, and I spoke to two of the candidates.  Both of them nice women, who won those local elections, but decidedly contrary to anything the Republican party purports to stand for.  If this is your issue, at a minimum, the time has come to do a gut check level evaluation of what that really means, to you, to your party and to the candidates that we all vote in lock step with, because the party “endorsed” them, or because some Dr.-Ph.D. told us to.

And, while, we continue to stew in our outrage about the fact that 44 Democrats voted AGAINST Senator Ben Sase’s Bill to require medical aid be given to infants born alive after a botched abortion…..why don’t we ask our selves WHY it took until 2019, for such a bill to actually make it to the Senate floor.  Many botched abortions have occurred in the past 46 years, NOW we realize that?  Have we just learned this, or have the Republicans been asleep at the switch?  While Obama was president, several times the Republican controlled congress managed to get a bill to Defund Planned Parenthood to the President’s desk, only to have it vetoed.  The outrage was measured and predictable.  Doesn’t anyone find it odd that no such bill was forwarded to the desk of President Trump, who promised to sign it?

Don Wagner, is the GOP endorsed candidate for the Supervisorial seat vacated by Todd Spitzer.  Incumbent Irvine mayor, Don Wagner was just re-elected to that position on November 6, 2018.  He was easily endorsed by the OCGOP, at the February meeting of the GOP, even before he was qualified as a candidate for the Third District Supervisor seat.  No one seems concerned or bothered by the fact that he vacates the seat he just ran for, and will leave his city in a special election lurch,  a process that can cost a city hundreds of thousands of dollars, but yay for fiscal responsibility.

Prior to being elected Mayor, Don Wagner was in the State Assembly from 2010 to 2016.  While every Republican in Sacramento portends to be “Pro Life”, they have managed to return to their districts every year and with the same shrug of the shoulders, declare that it is really tough in Sacramento and they just can’t get anything done.  What we must ask ourselves then, is what good are they, and why do we even need them.  Taking up space and collecting salaries and benefits while they lament about their own ineffectiveness.

The actual votes of the Assemblymember, are irrelevant. Just as legislators do in Washington D.C., they can feign outrage and do nothing, as long as they are in the minority.   They pick their issues, and negotiate on them. They can choose which “hill they will die on”, so to speak.  The bottom line in Sacramento, is that all of the Republicans, (save one lone woman from middle of the state) are utterly unwilling to put their limited bargaining power on the line for the unborn.  If the unborn were constituents that Don Wagner and his colleagues had to face, it is easy to imagine they would make the curtailing of abortion in California a higher priority.  As it stands, it is a free for all for the abortion cartel in Sacramento, because there is no incentive for anyone to make a real stand for Life.

Here are some of the victories for the abortion cartel that occurred on Don Wagner’s watch while he was in Sacramento (2010 – 2016):

• AB777 – Required Pro Life medical clinics and Pregnancy Resource centers to promote and provide referrals to Abortion providers.  (This legislation was so reprehensible that the Supreme Court struck it down last year, see the analysis of Nifla V. Becerra at Political Vanguard)
• AB154 – Nurse Practitioners, Midwives and Physicians Assistants can perform abortions. The purpose of this is obvious, to employ more professionals who will perform abortions because, more and more doctors are unwilling to participate in the procedure.  This decline in the number of abortionists is making it difficult for the abortion cartel to expand their business, so they expand it in the way they always have, by endangering women and offering sub-par care.
• AB980 – Cloaked as a building codes revision, this law makes it easier for buildings to be converted into surgical abortion facilities by reducing the standards for plumbing and patient treatment rooms.  Because abortion is a surgical procedure that produces medical waste (i.e. dead babies) and because it potentially involves a life threatening complications, there should be safety, health considerations and ability to transport a patient or for emergency personnel to obtain access to a patient.  These parameters however, can become expensive for a clinic to bring a facility up to those standards.  The way the California legislature responded the the Planned Parenthood sponsored bill, was the lower, rather than raise, those standards for abortion clinics.  Plumbing.  This bill was promoted and sponsored by Planned Parenthood as a plumbing standards legislation.  Ask yourself why they are concerned about plumbing.
• SB128 Assisted Suicide – this appears to have survived it’s court battle.  It was passed in a “special session” in 2015 that was supposed to be dealing with budgetary issues only, this euthanasia law was pushed forward anyways. The stories that have come out about this, place the responsibility for pushing this at this inappropriate time,  upon Governor Brown.  It passed, was signed by the governor, and faced legal challenges shortly after.  The law designed to shorten the life of people with diagnosed illnesses, seems to have survived the court process, as of 2018.  Euthanasia.  California is working to become a leader in killing.

For Don Wagner or any Republican legislator to call themselves “Pro Life” while they served in a State Assembly that fast tracked abortion and other anti-Life legislation in California, is disingenuous at best.  The representation that he is the only “Pro Life” Third District candidate is not only untrue, because there are two other “Pro Life” Republicans in the race, but it is an unfair representation of his do nothing approach to life and abortion issues while he was in Sacramento.  Having had an opportunity to stand for Life, Don Wagner chose to have a seat and not make any difference at all.

Here is a list of Assemblyman Wagner’s accomplishments. The question that should be asked, is, what really, is the difference between Wagner and Loretta Sanchez?