Eric Sapp is a Democratic faith outreach strategist and former partner at Common Good Strategies. He is currently director of FaithfulDemocrats.com, and founding partner at the Eleison Group.
(cross posted to faithfulldemocrats) Let’s be honest, up until recently, the Republicans have, as my grandma would say, “whipped our petuties” on the issue of abortion. They have been smart, and we’ve been not so smart in how we talk about it. As any of us who have tried to avoid imagining a pachyderm know, framing can win a debate. The Republicans have framed this debate, and up until recently Democrats had insisted on fighting it on their terms.
Given the alternative of “choice” vs. “life,” most people will choose “life.” And the truth of the matter is, to most Americans on both sides, this debate has little really to do with “choice”; it is rather solely about when human life begins and when it becomes murder to kill a baby/fetus. After all, we’d never argue a mother should be given the choice of killing her newborn.
But all of the old, tired rhetoric overlooked a rather important question–especially since the debate is a political instead of theological one: what are we going to do about abortion?
Whether we are pro-life or pro-choice, we should all be able to agree that the fact that 1 in 5 pregnancies in this country end in abortion reflects a serious societal problem that needs to be addressed.
When the debate shifts from when human life begins to how we reduce the need for and numbers of abortions, this shifts from a Republican strength to a Democratic one. After all, most of the public policy prescriptions for reducing abortions are straight out of the Democratic platform…and thanks to tireless work by some smart Democrats (and if what I hear is true, by Obama himself), “abortion reduction” is actually now IN the Democratic platform.
Americans are extremely receptive to a practical argument about how to reduce the need for and number of abortions (Stan Greenberg did a great poll on this). And Democrats have some really great legislation that recognizes that abortion is merely an end result of a long string of social ills. So it tackles the root of the problem by vastly improving services to prevent unwanted pregnancies and targeting the underlying factors that lead pregnant women to choose abortion by improving adoption services, expanding pre and post natal healthcare, creating programs to allow pregnant women to go back to school, etc. If fully implemented, these programs could cut abortions in half in the next decade. Catholics in Alliance has a great study that builds on some powerful reports by Third Way that provide ample data for those interested. .
The Republicans solution on the other hand is, of course, to criminalize abortion. Putting aside the fact that 7 of 9 Supreme Court Justices are GOP-appointed and it will never happen, let’s assume Roe was overturned. If Roe was overturned, the decision on outlawing abortion would be turned over to the states. And if you look at states with legislatures that have tried to limit abortion or with greater than 45% of their population self-identifying as “Pro-Life” (two of the best indicators for whether a state would outlaw abortions if given the opportunity), you come up with around 16 states that would be likely to outlaw abortion, which account for around 10% of abortions in this country. So even if all those states banned abortions, and none of the women from these states crossed the border to get an abortion, overturning Roe would only reduce abortions in this country by around 10%.
When we talk about actually addressing the problem instead of arguing whether it exists, Democrats win, and America wins, and women win. The only losers are the GOP and groups on both the right and left that make all their money by ensuring the debate continues.
Thankfully, Democrats have been wising up to this fact. In a “Nixon in China” moment in ’05, Senator Clinton went before NARAL to argue that Democrats must be willing to express a heartfelt concern about the number of abortions in our country. Senator Obama used much of the same messaging earlier in this cycle, but both he and Sen. Clinton had been hesitant to move much past the “reducing unwanted pregnancies” part of the equation to also include the important (from a policy and messaging–and heck, plain old core Democratic values–perspective) part about supporting pregnant women so that those who want to carry the child to term have options.
But that hesitancy finally went out the window this past weekend on ABC, when Obama said that he wished he’d given the following answer to the abortion question at Rick Warren’s event last month:
“What I do know is that abortion is a moral issue, that it’s one that families struggle with all the time. And that in wrestling with those issues, I don’t think that the government criminalizing the choices that families make is the best answer for reducing abortions.
“I think the better answer — and this was reflected in the Democratic platform — is to figure out, how do we make sure the young mothers, or women who have a pregnancy that’s unexpected or difficult, have the kind of support they need to make a whole range of choices, including adoption and keeping the child.”
This is a HUGE step forward for Democrats and is a great way to take some attention off Palin and put it back on the issues. Abortion can be a winner for us if we keep to this track and unabashedly stand up to the GOP hypocrisy on this issue.
posted September 8, 2008 at 5:42 pm
If you take 100 women, each with a fertilized ovum (i.e. – a new human created by God according to the fundamentalists) only about half will successfully implant or take root in the uterus. The rest will fail to implant and be washed out at the next menstrual period so much so that the woman doesn’t even know she was pregnant. That’s 50 lives created and 50 lives thrown away.
Of the 50 or so that do implant, 10-15 will be spontaneously lost due to illness or defects. Of the remaining 35 or 40, 8 to 10 will be intentionally aborted. And of the remainder that go on to term, there will still be the occasional stillborn.
So who is the biggest abortionist is this scenario?
posted September 8, 2008 at 6:04 pm
When tha Republican Party wakes up to the rules of God regarding caring for the fatherless children (Read Dueteronomy 10:18, 14:29. 16:11-14) and see that as a Nation we have a resonsilbilty for the living and caring for the needs of the children of these unwed mothers, then I can take them seriously. But as long as they only care about criminalizing the women and their doctors, I say they are living only half of God’s law.
Sex education, post natal care, job training, medical aid and WIC programs are the means by which we reduce abortions. Outlawing them will only return to the ways of the past. We won’t reduce abortions, just hide them.
posted September 8, 2008 at 8:00 pm
The minute the Democrats start sounding like they really think abortion is bad, and that the numbers really should be reduced is the day that (1) a big chunk of the Democrat base for the last 36 years bails out and (2) I say “Hallelujah! Another step toward two pro-life parties to choose from!”
posted September 8, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Reader John is insinuating that the Democratic party base is made up of baby-killers or those who relish in baby-killing. I would counter this mean-spirited and slanderous rhetoric by simply reminding everyone that those who want choice merely wish for abortion to be on the table as an option, and do not believe the government should have the right to force every pregnancy to go to term, regardless of the situation. But such a position is a far cry from wishing that *every* pregnancy would end in abortion, which is what Reader John posits.
Republican women get abortions, too, you know, and would continue to do so even if abortion were illegal.
posted September 8, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Some Democrats are still going to have a problem dealing with abortion, especially if they are Catholic or share similar beliefs. They have to explain why it should not be banned.
The answer given above is a pragmatic answer claiming that such a ban won’t work, and might make things worse, or focuses on remedies short of a ban.
The problem is that this answer doesn’t address the question of principle: namely, if it is so wrong, why not ban it?
When Democrats answer in such a pragmatic manner, they often sound like they do not really consider abortion that bad. In other words, I believe they need to be more forceful addressing the morality of abortion, before addressing the remedy.
posted September 8, 2008 at 9:37 pm
“When Democrats answer in such a pragmatic manner, they often sound like they do not really consider abortion that bad. In other words, I believe they need to be more forceful addressing the morality of abortion, before addressing the remedy.”
Maybe you’re right, but part of this problem is the result of poisonous rhetoric from the right. Democrats believe in a full curriculum of sex education for young people, including abstinence, which is the only way to prevent 100% STDs and pregnancies, and birth control and all the workings of the human reproductive system. The idea is that education will solve part of the problem – at least teens getting pregnant out of ignorance. I think there are probably some people who don’t care about human life and have no qualms about abortion, whether it’s them or anyone else. But I think there are a great many progressive minded people who would never get abortions and who don’t think abortion is good except in extreme cases, but doesn’t want the government to be the one to make the decision about what constitutes an “extreme case.” To vilify and demonize them as baby-killers or even “pro-abortion” is particularly unfair.
posted September 8, 2008 at 10:14 pm
It’s hard to have a discussion on abortion without snide comments and the conversation devolving into name-calling. And I understand that Republicans do not hold a monopoly on mud-slinging. But to those who self-righteously criticize all Democrats on this issue (which particularly bothers me since I have worked for both Bob Casey and Heath Shuler, who are outspoken and strong advocates on the Life side and who have spent their careers championing legislation that would protect life from conception to death), I have a question… Jesus said that the way to sniff out false prophets is to look at the fruits that they bear. What are the fruits of nearly 30 years of Republican posturing over abortion? What have they accomplished? Nothing. But Democrats last year alone enacted significant parts of the Ryan-DeLauro legislation–which I referenced in the post–which will drastically reduce abortions.
So before too many more stones are cast at Democrats on this issue, perhaps those winding up to throw should ask themselves if they care more about actually saving babies or perpetuating rhetoric. Because it seems to me that if you really cared about the unborn, you’d look past the rhetoric to which party’s efforts have actually borne good fruit.
posted September 8, 2008 at 10:38 pm
Child murder increased 1600% when Roe v. Wade was decided. That’s counting the illegal ones prior, I Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of NARAL can be believed when he says they basically multiplied the real numbers by 10 when trying to get abortion decriminalized. Overturning Roe v. Wade would have a HUGE impact, if only by removing the consent that is implied by it remaining legal. Overturning is, in fact, imminent–but only if Obama loses. One more judge will do it. You’re doing a heap of rationalizing to call pro-life Republicans “posturing” and whatever else you did above, all because you support a party that supports this atrocity. How ’bout we try an experiment? Let’s elect only Republicans this time ’round, and see how long it takes to get the numbers of abortions reduced by a million per year. It remains a fact: when Democrats win, children die. I wonder why, when all of these doctors and nurses change their minds and become pro-lifers after living the horrors of abortions day in and out, do they all become Republicans? It must be because of all the fine work Democrats are doing to save babies. Your continuing rationalizations are doing incalculable harm.
posted September 8, 2008 at 10:41 pm
That’s supposed to be “if Bernard Nathanson” in my post above. I didn’t mean to say that I am Bernard Nathanson.
posted September 8, 2008 at 10:48 pm
I don’t see how anything I said constitutes name-calling or snide comments. I am simply suggesting, as an actual swing voter inclined towards Sen. Obama, but still considering Sen. McCain, that Democrats, who hold personally strong opinions about abortion but want it kept legal, discuss more forcefully their moral opposition to abortion, whether it be legal or not.
I am myself in such a position. I simply feel that, although I accept any good, pragmatic ideas to decrease abortions, Sen. Obama’s and Sen. Biden’s recent comments moved to quickly away from the morality to not wanting to impose moral beliefs and practical considerations.
If you consider something very wrong, even if you want it kept legal, showing some passion condemning it would not be amiss.
What’s snide or name-calling about that?
posted September 8, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Uh – I don’t think abortions are on the decline after 8 years of continual Republican leadership, including 6 of them when both the House and Senate were majority Repub, and where if I can recall correctly, at least 2 conservative judges were added to the Supreme Court. So Republican leadership hasn’t done anything to reduce abortions; all they’ve done is stir the pot and trick religious righters into voting for them.
posted September 9, 2008 at 6:54 am
BS”D
The problem for Obama and the Democrats here is that Obama is no moderate; indeed he supports infanticide (“post-birth abortion”). He has voted three times as an Illinois state legislator to block abortion-neutral legislation which would forbid killing disabled newborns surviving botched abortions, when the exact same legislation (Born Alive Infants Protection Act) passed the US Senate in 2002 by a vote of 98-0. His answer to the question of when babies get human rights is that it is “above [his] pay grade.” He cannot even say that babies get rights at birth! No wonder liberal, civil libertarian, disability-rights advocate and columnist Nat Hentoff calls Obama “the Infanticide Candidate for President”!
posted September 9, 2008 at 7:41 am
Please stop spreading misinformation, Stephen. These procedures are extremely rare and always done when something is terribly wrong with the pregnancy. This is not even technically called an “abortion” by science. And for someone to act like this procedure represents all abortions is misleading, and for someone to pin this problem on Obama is also unfair. As I stated above, Republicans have been in office for the past 8 years and as far as I can see, abortion is still very legal in the US.
By the way, it’s called IDX.
posted September 9, 2008 at 9:06 am
Here again we hear this talking about Senator Obama’s newly discovered interest in “reducing abortions.” Let me tell you, Obama’s talk about “abortion reduction” is a pretty wrapper, but it doesn’t match the “gift” inside the package, which is a public policy agenda that would, if implemented, substantially increase the number of abortions.
Here’s just one example: One policy that both sides agree actually has substantially reduced the number of abortions performed in the United States was the cutoff of Medicaid funding for abortion on demand. There are various empirical studies that demonstrate that many children have been born, who would otherwise have been aborted, because Medicaid funding of abortion has been denied by the federal Hyde Amendment, and by the comparable policies in effect in the majority of states. By the most conservative estimate, the federal Hyde Amendment alone has saved over one million lives since it was first enacted in 1976. Both sides agree that this has occurred — indeed, the pro-abortion side cites these studies in urging Congress and state legislatures to repeal these pro-life policies, while pro-life groups see this as a success story.
Well, here is a proven “abortion reduction” policy, so is Obama for it? No, because all that “abortion-reduction” talk is just pixie dust to distract the gullible. Pro-abortion think tanks cooked that line up using focus groups, as a way to give the abortion lobby all the policies it wanted, and to give those religious folks soothing words.
Obama advocates repeal of the Hyde Amendment (and as a state senator, he voted against restricting state funding of elective abortions). Moreover, in 2007 Obama gave a speech to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund in which he promised abortion would be covered in his national health care plan, which means that everybody would be required to pay for elective abortion through taxes, mandatory premiums, or both. And, Obama is a cosponsor of the so-called “Freedom of Choice Act” (S. 1173), which would invalidate virtually all state and federal limits on abortion, and which also provides that “A government may not . . . discriminate against” abortion “in the regulation or provision of benefits, facilities, services, or information.” Does that sound like a policy that will result in “abortion reduction”? Obama told the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, “The first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act. That’s the first thing I’d do.”
By the way, Warren Chesnick is confusing two different issues. Mr. Chesnick is talking about partial-birth abortion, an abortion method in which the premature baby is delivered feet first, except for the head, which is then punctured. I am afraid that Mr.Chesnick is repeating some very old and very discredited disinformation: even the head of the National Coalition of Abortion Providers, the abortionists’ “trade association” in Washington, estimated that this method was used 3,000-5,000 times annually, and “in the vast majority of cases” on “a healthy mother with a healthy fetus that is 20 weeks or more along” (New York Times, Feb. 26, 1997). Congress banned partial-birth abortion in 2003, but Obama criticized that bill,) and is cosponsor of a bill (the “Freedom of Choice Act”) that would make partial-birth abortion legal again, among other things.
But Mr. Mendelsohn wasn’t talking about partial-birth abortion. He was talking about the fact that Obama was the leader of the opposition to the Illinois Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in 2001-2003. This bill would merely have conferred legal protection on a baby who was born alive during an abortion — who was ENTIRELY outside the mother, and alive. Obama explained, at the time, that he objected to defining a “previable fetus” as a person (even when that baby was entirely born, and alive). The documentation is in a National Right to Life White Paper issued August 28, 2008, posted here:
http://www.nrlc.org/ObamaBAIPA/WhitePaperAugust282008.html
A bill virtually identical to the bill that Obama killed passed Congress in 2002 with not a single dissenting vote. It is no exaggeration to say that Obama’s vision of “abortion rights” is the most extreme of any candidate for president ever nominated by a major party.
Douglas Johnson
Legislative Director
National Right to Life Committee
Legfederal@aol.com
posted September 9, 2008 at 10:18 am
Sorry, Don. There is a delay on when comments post, and your very reasonable response was not up when I commented. Thanks for the contribution.
posted September 11, 2008 at 12:09 pm
Have we fogot that Barack Obama followed his pro-abortion views to their logical conclusion in that he was willing to accept infanticide? He may not be a proponent of infanticide but his views necessitate the toleration of it. You really think Planned Parenthood will let such a rich money source be dried up? Abortion is profitable, and with all the global warming hysteria, reduction in population is really a good thing.
The analogy of reducing abortions is deceptive. As the profit issue is key there. But one could extend the analogy to other instances where personhood was radically denied to others. Like slavery, following the logic then, the only problem with slavery was the number of slaves or the social condidtions making slavery beneficial. Also, the Holocaust would not have been such a bad thing if the number of Jews were killed were fewer. And Germany only needed more economic incentives to see that killing Jews was not a good thing.
Obama’s consistency in wanting to overturn every restriction on abortion to his tolerance of infanticide should not be swept under the rug for a red herring that claiming to want to reduce abortions justifies overlooking a morally depraved view of human personhood
Here is a thoughtful response by a philosoher and theologian to Obama’s acceptance of infanticide.
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5887
posted September 15, 2008 at 12:16 pm
If anyone is still reading this thread, I’d like to recommend this post from the Daily Kos beginning:
Pro-lifer for Obama Hotlist
by rjyelverton [Subscribe]
Mon Sep 15, 2008 at 07:53:55 AM PDT
I am a pro-lifer who voted for Bush in 2000 due to the possibility of Bush appointing justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. (I voted in Georgia, however, so my net effect on the final outcome was slight.) My views on the landmark case alone will probably turn off most capital L liberals, but I urge you to keep reading. There are many of us out there, angered by how Bush has taken the vote of Christians and used it to accomplish all matter of nastiness. I have been used and though I still abhor abortion, I cannot with good conscience select McCain for the presidency.
I have been having a discussion with family and friends on Facebook concerning McCain and Palin and I wanted to share some of my thoughts from that conversation.
Here’s the connection:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/15/104549/202
I posted on Kos that people should visit this site and read your post. I hope they will. Don the libertarian Democrat