On abortion, Sen. Obama doesn’t sound like a candiate of change or unity.
But Obama’s record on abortion is extreme. He opposed the ban on partial-birth abortion — a practice a fellow Democrat, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once called “too close to infanticide.” Obama strongly criticized the Supreme Court decision upholding the partial-birth ban. In the Illinois state Senate, he opposed a bill similar to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which prevents the killing of infants mistakenly left alive by abortion. And now Obama has oddly claimed that he would not want his daughters to be “punished with a baby” because of a crisis pregnancy — hardly a welcoming attitude toward new life . . .
Having endorsed partial-birth abortion, Obama has little room to maneuver on the broader issue. But he does have some. He could take the wise counsel of evangelical Democrats such as Amy Sullivan and come out strongly for policies that would reduce the number of abortions — support for pregnant women, abstinence education, the responsible promotion of birth control. An organization called Democrats for Life has proposed the creation of a “95-10 Initiative” in which states and the federal government would work toward the reduction of abortion rates by 95 percent within 10 years. That would be a unifying national goal.
Tags: abortion, Barack Obama
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It’s good to see the word “extreme” making a comeback.
Obama’s already made appeals for greater support and education for women. He said in South Carolina, almost a year ago:
“I think that most Americans recognize that this is a profoundly difficult issue for the women and families who make these decisions. They don’t make them casually. And I trust women to make these decisions in conjunction with their doctors and their families and their clergy. And I think that’s where most Americans are. Now, when you describe a specific procedure that accounts for less than 1% of the abortions that take place, then naturally, people get concerned, and I think legitimately so. But the broader issue here is: Do women have the right to make these profoundly difficult decisions? And I trust them to do it. There is a broader issue: Can we move past some of the debates around which we disagree and can we start talking about the things we do agree on? Reducing teen pregnancy; making it less likely for women to find themselves in these circumstances.”
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Sen. Obama’s desire to focus on education is fine but seems dismissive of how seriously so many feel about abortion.
Because it is so controversial an issue, is it best to just ignore it? Except his record doesn’t ignore abortion but very strongly supports it.
He may not need the votes of those who oppose abortion or even those who favor its increased regulation, but Obama is helping to galvanize more support for McCain which probably wasn’t there before.
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It should be noted that the above quote in your original post is by a pro-life conservative Republican.
“Having endorsed partial-birth abortion.” What crap. And Gerson knows it. While Gerson like to be the moral voice of the right, he cannot avoid his past as a paritisan hack.
The Democrat is pro-choice. Is this a shocker? Partial-birth is a controversy invented by the pro-life movement because its general position on legalized abortion is losing its appeal. If all else fails, bring in the straw man.
(Wow, to think that I got kicked out of a sociology class at Sherwood High School for wearing an abrasive anti-abortion shirt.)
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That’s funny about the shirt, Chris.
I don’t understand why there’s any doubt that Obama supports all abortions, partial-birth or otherwise. Gerson may be a hack (I actually don’t like his so-called “compassionate conservative” moralism myself) but I don’t think the facts on Obama’s record are in dispute.
How’s partial-birth abortion a straw-man? It’s practiced and its gruesome reality illustrates the nature of all abortions. The general public may be more pro-choice than conservatives would like, but PBAs are so repugnant that even that ban got through Congress four (?) times and finally signed by Bush.
Abortion can be regulated, the question is how much. Sen. Obama seems to think no regulation is necessary and my bet is most feel that is extreme.
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It is a straw man because it is rarely practiced and it is an argument that pro-lifers use as a means of turning others against all legalized abortion (the other 99.9 percent of abortions). It using the worst case scenario for rhetorical purposes.
“its gruesome reality illustrates the nature of all abortions.”
This is what I am talking about.
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I don’t think it’s as rare as been claimed.
But I think you’re right in the larger sense. But what’s wrong with that?
Abortion supporters do the exact same thing if not worse, by citing the worst case scenarios for rhetorical purposes.
Instead of citing the 99.9% cases where abortion is performed, the slightest proposed restriction is struck down by invoking the 0.0001% of cases where an abusive father raped her daughter. Therefore, every girl needs abortion on demand w/o parental notification.
Pro-lifers have gone no where until the PBA ban. Despite Pres. Clinton’s and Democrats’ claim that they want abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare” they are so beholden to abortion, they refuse to do anything to restrict it.
PBA was a useful issue in putting the lie to that claim.
So I think we agree. I just don’t have a problem with it.
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Also, while PBA was used as an issue to illustrate how bad abortion was, the only issue was banning that specific (and rare) practice. All other (and most) kinds of abortion are still allowed.
On the other side, the worst case scenario is argued to allow any and all abortions at any time. That’s a big difference.
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I think we just approach the issue from different perspectives. Abortion rarely bothers me and it bothers you. Not much commongroud here.
In the Gerson article, he used Democrats for Life. I wonder if McCain will be listening to proposals made by Republicans for Choice.
If we could ban PBA but protect abortion before 28 weeks, I would be fine with that. I was part of the pro-life movement long enough to not trust them.
Thanks for the good debate.
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From this and some other comments you have made, it sounds like you have had dealt with your fair share of wing-nuts. Hopefully, some of us aren’t that bad.
I bet McCain would be willing to listen to RFC, at least more than most.
Thank you too.
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My advisor at Ricks College once blamed Reed Irvine for my liberalism. I am sorry if I seem overly combative.
I deal with extreme conservatism on a daily basis. It comes with living in Rexburg, ID. My issue is less with with Conservative Republicans and more with the conservative movement types such as Weyrich, Norquist, and Dobson (though they have become very strong in the GOP). On the left, I have the same issue with Marxists. Extreme ideology is scary.
I do not view you as fitting anywhere close to this. Your father is surely not, though he is still a conservative. However, I cannot imagine how he deals with the wing-nuts in the Utah legislature.
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Coming into this late (I’ve been in Amsterdam the past few days–really, pretty much any American politician’s positions on anything are utterly non-left-wing compared to the positions of a good chunk of that particular town), but can we just agree that the overvocal extremists and near-extremists on abortion in the US are both largely jerks (though, admittedly, jerks who firmly believe their positions are right) who tend to do more harm to their side than they ever can hope to advance their own positions?
There are extremists on the issue, of course, who aren’t overvocal about it, who focus more on practice than insult, and so on, but they get drowned out by the louder voices. (If you insist that you’re one of those, though, i suspect that you’ve got a better than 50-50 chance of being self-delusional.)
I’m a liberal Democrat who’s emphatically not a Clinton (H or B) fan, but i tend to think Ms. Clinton got it right a few years ago when she pointed out that the focus among both pro- and anti-abortion sorts ought to be working on the root causes that lead people to abortion, and then once we get through *that* we can worry about the stuff on the margins that we’re spending way too much energy on now.
Not that i think she (or pretty much anyone else) is really doing that right now, but i do believe that the abortion argument in the US at the moment is pretty much a case of trimming the leaves rather than hacking away at the roots.
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I should probably let David B have the last word, but I just wanted to agree that extremist jerks on both sides hurt their own cause.
And I remember that speech Sen. Clinton gave and she did sound very reasonable, but like you point out that’s not how she sounds now. It was a nice gesture that she could afford in an off-cycle year which got people excited. Sort of like when her husband said he wanted abortion to be “safe, legal, and rare.”
Hopefully we can go to more of that. But probably not this year.
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