quote:
Barack Obama set off a firestorm last week with his comment to Relevant magazine editor Cameron Strang about abortion: "I have repeatedly said that I think it's entirely appropriate for states to restrict or even prohibit late-term abortions as long as there is a strict, well-defined exception for the health of the mother. Now, I don't think that 'mental distress' qualifies as the health of the mother."
Setting aside Obama's misread of Supreme Court precedent and subsequent suggestion that women choose abortions because they are feeling "blue," his progressive base was surprised to hear that he had "repeatedly said" that states can restrict late-term procedures.
A review of news coverage of his position on late-term abortion shows that Obama only began to emphasize his support of a ban this year and did so in religious media outlets and settings and on Fox News.
Obama, a longtime supporter of reproductive rights, has long been a critic of the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Gonzales v. Carhart upholding the federal ban on the late-term intact dilation and extraction procedure (which did not include an exception for the mother’s health)….
Yet by January of this year, battling back against the Jeremiah Wright tapes and the Muslim rumors, Obama took to religious news outlets to prove his Christian credentials -- he shifted emphasis and began talking about his support for late-term abortion bans….
By June, in his meeting with 30 Christian leaders, Obama was asserting that the health exception would be limited to "physical" rather than "mental" health…
I spoke this week with the Rev. Tony Campolo, a spiritual adviser to Bill and Hillary Clinton, and a member of the Democratic Party Platform Committee. Campolo, an advocate for an "abortion reduction" plank in the party's platform, said he was speaking for himself and not the party or the committee (which has not met yet)….
…offering contraceptives through Medicaid to teenagers would be "extremely difficult" to sell and "would open up the Democratic Party to frontal attack by conservative Republicans," he said. And Campolo favors federally funded abstinence programs, not just to prevent pregnancy but because "everyone has to understand that sexual acts are not just feel-good experiences," but ones with a "spiritual dimension. ... We have to explain why we're saying no, in terms that transcend religiosity."
Campolo's discussion of abstinence and the spiritual side of sex didn't seem that far off from what Obama told Relevant last week:
"If we are continuing what has been a promising trend in the reduction of teen pregnancies, through education and abstinence education giving good information to teenagers. That is important -- emphasizing the sacredness of sexual behavior to our children. I think that's something that we can encourage. I think encouraging adoptions in a significant way. I think the proper role of government. So there are ways that we can make a difference, and those are going to be things I focus on when I am president."
Obama got kudos from Planned Parenthood in 2007 for co-sponsoring Prevention First, a bill that would fund comprehensive sex education. But when Obama starts talking instead about abstinence to Christian magazines, he's going down a dangerous path. If he wins in November, and if evangelicals can claim a role in his victory, what will they expect from his administration, given that he talks about "the proper role of government" in the same breath with "the sacredness of sexual behavior" and abstinence?
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posted 10 July 2008 11:22 AM
