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Trouble for Obama’s Pro-Life Supporters

Ross Douthat tackles Barack Obama’s answer to Rick Warren’s question about the beginning of life:

Warren, to his credit, didn’t pose a metaphysical question, or a biological one. He asked a legal question: “At what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?” Obama tried to dodge by saying that from a “theological perspective” or a “scientific perspective” the issue is “above his pay grade.” But Warren asked a more narrow question, and one that any politician who votes on abortion laws should be able to answer. And of course, as a supporter of Roe and Casey, Obama does have an answer: He thinks that a baby acquires rights when it’s born - well, perhaps depending on how and why it happens to be born - and lacks them at every juncture before birth. He just didn’t want to come out and say it.

Exactly.

Add to the Warren forum issue, the continuing debate over the draft Democratic platform. As one pro-abortion rights commentator recently observed:

On Tuesday, August 12, a loose coalition of anti-abortion progressive evangelicals and Catholics held a press event to toot their own horn. The new Democratic Party Platform, they claimed, took a big step in their direction. The Platform’s explicit support for a woman’s decision “to have a child,” they argued, represents a common ground position. But the fact that pro-choice advocates have always supported both the right to choose an abortion and the right to choose a child immediately undercuts any illusion that anti-abortion progressives either understand what choice means or have any sincere desire to stand on common ground with pro-choice progressives. Rather than standing on “common ground,” these self proclaimed pro-lifers are hanging on the edge of cliff by their finger tips.

Not only is the new platform stronger in its support for the right to choose abortion, it embraces the concept of reproductive justice including not only family planning but comprehensive sexuality education. If, in fact, these folks had anything to do with this new plank, they did those of us who are pro-choice a big favor.

The 2004 Platform on choice was 59 words; this year’s Platform devotes 127 words to the issue and sounds like a lot more than lip service to women’s reproductive health. Support for Roe in the old Platform was justified on the basis of privacy and women’s equality. The new Platform makes no mention of privacy; instead, it derives its moral authority from a “woman’s right to choose safe and legal abortion” and talks about empowering people to make informed choices. A notable omission is the Clintonian phrase “safe, legal and rare,” replaced by a more honest and modest goal of reducing unintended pregnancy through better health care, family planning and comprehensive sex education. Sex education was not even mentioned in the old Platform.

The progressive pro-life desire to see the Platform commit to reducing abortions was subtly undercut; this year, the Platform merely “recognizes” that sex ed, family planning and good health care will have the effect of reducing the need for abortion. In all other areas, the Platform uses strong language of commitment: the Party “strongly and unequivocally supports Roe” and “strongly supports access to affordable family planning services.” Even the Platform’s support for pre and post natal care and income support for women who have children is properly framed as a right on its own and not as a means to reducing the need for abortion.

All in all, the Platform comes very close to embracing the full reproductive health agenda that has been consistently advocated by the pro-choice, progressive women’s movement.

And then there’s this from that same commentator:

Doug Kmiec, an antiabortion Republican Catholic who has endorsed Obama, noted that “The Platform still falls short of the Catholic ideal.” Falls short! It is a slap in the face to Kmiec’s Catholic ideal, which includes not only no abortion but no birth control even for married couples, and abstinence-only sexuality curricula. The Platform also makes an oblique reference to condoms as a means of preventing the transmission of HIV and AIDS, which the Catholic Church still rejects.

It’ll be interesting how the Obamacon pro-lifers try spinning these developments. Personally, I think they’re going to have to punt on abortion and try making a double effect argument.