It's also a great time to remind people of the wonderful pro-life message of Extreme front man (and former Van Halen and Tribe of Judah front man) Gary Cherone, a noted libertarian.
Rock Star Supports Libertarians For Life: Former Van Halen and Extreme Front Man's Powerful Pro-Life Views
"My hope is to introduce as many who will listen,
regardless of where they stand,
to Libertarians for Life.
For their arguments are persuasive,
reasoning from science and philosophy.
Anyone with an objective mind
will find them hard to ignore."
-Gary Cherone
Former Van Halen and Extreme lead singer, Gary Cherone, is the most politically active of all singers who have stepped up the microphone. Some claim it may have cost him at a second shot with Van Halen, after 1998’s Van Halen III, which introduced Cherone to the band.
Cherone, a native of Boston, has a powerful pro-life view, that I enjoy recalling from time to time. He became active with his pro-life stance by addressing Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder’s pro-abortion views. Shortly after Van Halen III released (an under rated album), Vedder shared his abortion views in Rolling Stone. Vedder told Rolling Stone he felt like he knew every angle of the abortion argument.
"I feel like I know every angle of this issue," said Eddie Vedder."I know the adoption angle; I know what it's like to be fifteen and be in a situation and have to make a decision. Terminating pregnancy is not an easy thing."—Eddie Vedder, Rolling Stone 11/12/98
Cherone challenged Vedder’s claim, and even wound up on Fox News sharing his pro-life views after Chrone’s letter was published. Cherone writes:
An Open Letter to Eddie Vedder
When is a woman not a woman?
Therein lies the only clear refutation of a woman’s rights. A woman’s rights —seems a mere tautology, a redundant catch phrase. Are not rights self evident? Intrinsic assumptions of the inalienable? So, when is a woman not a woman, a right not a right?
When she doesn’t exist?
When does a woman become a woman?
Is it when her first ballot has been cast? Or when she graduates from her class?
Is it when she makes a wish on her sweet sixteenth? Would I be amiss if it were her first kiss?
Is it when she’s diagnosed by the boy next door? Or as ambiguous as the cutting of the cord?
Is it the timeit takes to travel the distance through the canal? Or when she’s kicking and becomes viable?
Is it when her sex is discovered by a sonogram? Or after eight weeks when the changes in her body will be mainly in dimension?
Is it when her brain waves are detected after 40 days? Or is it around three weeks when her primitive heart beats?
Can there be only one true line of demarcation?
One finite measurable point in time that differentiates life from non-life?
Womanhood from non-womanhood?
Rights from no right?
Is it the moment of conception —that point when all of the above is set in motion? That precise moment when a separate human individual, with her own genetic code, needing only food, water, and oxygen, comes into existence?
Indeed, It is at that point, like the infant, the child, the adolescent, that the conceptus is a being who is becoming, not a becoming striving toward being.
She is not a potential life, she is a life with great potential.
She is not the mother, she is another —a somebody other than the mother.
A woman, however beautiful, however complex when fully grown, begins life as a single cell, a zygote—that stage in human development through which we all pass.
She fulfills "the four criteria necessary to all life —metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction.
Her genetic makeup is established at conception, determining to a great extent her own individual, physical characteristics: her eyes, her hair, her skin color, bone structure, her gender.
So let us not be confused, she did not come from a zygote — she once was a zygote. She did not come from an embryo, she once was an embryo. She did not come from a fetus, she once was a fetus. She did not come from a little girl — she once was a little girl.
When is a woman not a woman? The answer is absolute, non-negotiable. To argue against would be to ignore the innate, the fact of the matter. The answer can never be a matter of opinion or choice. This is not a metaphysical contention. This is biology 101.
The answer is scientifically self-evident —as inherent as the inalienable.
Therefore, the ability to pursue happiness is contingent upon liberty —her liberty, and her freedom is solely dependent upon the mother of all human rights... the right of life.
Respectfully,
Gary Cherone—June 1999
Eddie Vedder never responded. It didn’t stop Cherone from seeking an answer. He made a second attempt as Vedder continued to promote his left-wing views.
What About the 98.6 Degree Angle?
Another Letter to Eddie Vedder
The vast majority of people who support abortion take that position with the firm conviction that life does not begin at conception That being said...
If one personally felt "terminating pregnancy is not an easy thing" but was the right of the individual to make that "decision”
Is the life within the mother's womb a human person?
If the answer is no, it is not a human person, why would one feel it "is not an easy thing" to do?
If the answer is yes, it is a human person, why would one advocate "terminating" it?
If the answer is I don't know, if it is, or isn't a human person, how many more "decision(s)" would one make in an uncertain "situation"?
If the unborn is not a human person, no justification for abortion is necessary, however...
If the unborn is a human person, no justification for abortion is adequate.
Nearly all arguments for abortion are based on the faulty premise that the unborn are not fully human.
Respectfully,
Gary Cherone—January 22, 2001
Here's Cherone with his band Tribe of Judah, a band that clearly shared with the world Cherone's Christian beliefs.
This is Left for Dead:
