Whack-a-mole with Westlund

Apparently my consideration of why I can't support Ben Westlund had some smoke and mirrors to it that I wasn't aware of.

I lifted information from Westlund's website which brought me to write:

He's got a 100% rating from NARAL, which is a biggie for me. In my experience, prochoice legislators also tend to be consistently strong on civil rights.

I think I gave Kari Chisolm a heart attack. From comments:

WTF?! Are you kidding me?

He might have a 100% NARAL rating (because not many bills made it to a vote) but he co-sponsored the following bills authored by Oregon Right to Life:

HB 2020 – "Unborn Victims of Violence"
HB 2532 – "Women’s Right to Know"
HB 2605 – "Parental Notice"

Look 'em up.

Ben is playing the Gordon Smith game -- trying to appear moderate to the public while using the dog-whistle on the conservatives.

Fournier at Privilege Judo also had exchange with Stacey Dycus of Westlund's campaign on this issue. And from my reading, its a pretty vague and dodgy response, which is too lengthy to excerpt here, go read it for yourself.

So I'm putting the call out to the Westlund campaign. Defend your guy's stance here.

What is Westlund's exact position on the abortion issue?

(fyi: If you respond with Roe protections, you'll lose me immediately. That's federal. I want to know exactly what he would work for at the state level)

TJ's update, 530pm--
Ms. Dycus has been quite responsive to our efforts to gain information on Sen. Westlund's positions, and we thank her sincerely for that. By taking time to address concerns at LoadedO, all voters benefit from the exchange. You can read some of her response in the comments, below. For the purposes of the main storyline, however, I cut to the chase:

Both HB2020 and HB2065 were passed by the House and subsequently died without vote in the Senate. Had they come to a vote, would Sen. Westlund have voted for or against these two bills? Whatever else you want to say about them, please make sure to include "yea or nay" on both bills in the answer.

Stacey's response, which she admits was crafted quickly so don't hold the brevity against her:

HB2020-- I'm not sure- it never would have come to a vote as is and he knew that when he signed on. Ben supports adding criminal penalties for murder of a pregnant woman -Kate Brown had a similar bill, he thinks a family deserves justice when violence ends the possibility of life for a wanted pregnancy. He recognizes that those families feel an additional loss and that, in the case of Laci Peterson, the model for this type of legislation, her pregnancy became a reason for her murder. He opposes the use of this type of legislation to establish personhood to erode Roe. Sorry if it sounds evasive. Punish criminals yes, Establish fetal personhood, no.

HB2605-- nay Ben believes administrative law judge is too limiting as most towns don't have one. He understands RTL wants to create barriers to restrict access by pushing them into 2nd trimester. That is not his motivation. He supports the concept of parental involvement but not adding barriers for teens that add time.