As a pro-choice Dem, I am pleased by the DNC’s plank on abortion. It reaffirms Roe…AND it also show party’s respect for pro-life Dems. Most smartlly, it challenges the Republican party to connect its rhetoric to results. For years, Rs have simply condemned Roe, criticized women, and curried favor with Catholic hierarchy…which is all male. But they made little effort to actually support women in their choice to have a child. They did not commit to funding. Now, thanks to Doug Kmiec, Tony Campolo and others, our party has specifically acknowledged the need to make sure that pregnant women receive pre and post natal health care, parenting skills, income support and caring adoption programs.
The platform underscores the fact that a woman’s decision to have a child is not make in isolation but is connected to questions about many aspects of her life. By specifying that a women should have access to services during pregnancy and after, the language reflects a significant part of the Catholic moral tradition of the common good…and the truth that the relationship that we have with one another can help us make good choices.
For years, Dems have pointed out that Democratic party policies in fact help to reduce the number of abortions. Abortions were reduced under Bill Clinton and rose under George Bush. This new language by explicitly connecting the support for women to the issue of abortion helps to make show why that could be so.
posted August 20, 2008 at 12:30 am
While I share and support your point of view, I think there’s probably a more winsome way to present it than “reducing the number of abortions.” Rigid anti-abortionists will not accept reduction of the number of abortions as an acceptable goal, while they are not likely to argue against supporting pregnant women and providing health care “for the unborn child.”
posted August 20, 2008 at 7:24 am
Thank you Kathleen for articulating such a wise point of view on the “revived” conversation re abortion and the election. Evangelicals, like me, who are also progressives, like me, understand completely how a person can vote for a candidate who is pro choice. Our problem would be voting for someone who was against choice. Often such candidates limit the action of God in history, in such a way as to be nearly idolatrous.
Never place a period where God has put a comma, and that includes the interpretation of scripture, which doesn’t prohibit abortion in the first place. How the punishmentalists have managed to get away with rank distortion of scripture is beyond me. You’d think they never heard of the golden rule. The disrespect of scripture and the arrogance with which it is done — joined to the absence of compassion for women, with potentially accidental milk in their breasts — keeps me away from any candidate who doesn’t support the right to choose an abortion.
We need a Rick Warren for progressive, not closed, evangelicals.
posted August 20, 2008 at 2:24 pm
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend writes: “Democratic party policies in fact help to reduce the number of abortions. Abortions were reduced under Bill Clinton and rose under George Bush.”
Sorry, but this is an urban myth based on flawed research. Kennedy is wrong. The whole notion has been debunked by Dr. Randall O’Bannon, director of research for National Right to Life. You can check out for yourself O’Bannon’s analysis of this lie here at: http://www.nrlc.org/news/2005/NRL02/AbortionIncreaseMyth.html
As the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was fond of saying, you’re entitled to your opinion, but you’re not entitled to make up your own “facts.”
posted September 2, 2008 at 8:24 pm
The Catholic Church is not nor will it ever be pro-choice. A pro-choice Catholic is an oxymoron.
“When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb.”
Pray to Mary, she will show you the Truth.
posted November 17, 2008 at 10:33 am
A pro-choice Catholic is an apostate.
Don’t be surprised by this woman’s individualistic views which very often are outside the teachings of the church. When she was young, when her mother didn’t like the homily, they were simply ushered out of the church by her. And they called themselves ‘good catholics.’
A good cafeteria catholic at best.