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
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
Thankfully, Democrats have been wising up to this fact. In a "Nixon in
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.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
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.
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
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.
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
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
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.