In 2008 there were some serious pro-life people who actually bought the kind of argument Charles Reid is once again selling. I’m confident that it won’t happen this time. Those were “messianic days” when grown men and women could talk themselves into believing that the election of Barack Obama would stop the rise of the oceans and cause the earth to heal. So why couldn’t such a figure somehow hypostatically unite the apparent opposites of “pro-life” and “pro-choice” in the person of himself? The argument sounded novel and interesting back then. It’s now stale and, increasingly, ridiculous. President Obama is by far the greatest friend the abortion lobby and the movement for legal abortion and its public funding ever had in the White House. If you don’t believe me, just ask them. He’s their man.
Obama fervently believes, and has consistently acted on the belief, that children in utero have no rights that others must respect. He opposes any meaningful legal protections for unborn babies. Under the regime of law he supports, they may be killed at any time for any reason; and he has vowed to make sure things stay that way. He has even opposed the prohibition of sex-selection abortions. For the full litany of the President’s offenses against sanctity of life principles, just visit the websites of major pro-life organizations such as the National Right to Life Committee, Americans United for Life, and the Susan B. Anthony List. Or, if you prefer, you can get the information from the websites of major pro-abortion groups, such as Planned Parenthood or NARAL. It doesn’t matter which side you go to for the info.
Obama and his supporters do not try to hide his abortion extremism. They celebrate and praise him for it. (They just don’t call it extremism. They call it support for “reproductive health.”) So the information is easily available to anyone who wants to have a look. As for Charles Reid’s argument, as I said, I doubt that it will move many votes Obama’s way this time. Serious pro-life people just aren’t buying it. They know an abortion advocate when they have seen one in action as the nation’s chief executive for four years.
What Reid is offering will be relevant on November 6, if at all, only in salving the consciences of folks on the left who will, in any case, vote for Obama despite his pro-abortion record. It gives them a story to tell themselves about how they are actually, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, living by their principles and defending unborn babies. That story is that Obama may be a 100 per cent “abortion rights” guy by the standards of Planned Parenthood and NARAL, but actually he’s “the pro-life candidate.”
October 27th, 2012 | 5:25 pm
Last election Bishop Chaput had a letter in First Things Online to Catholic Democrats for Obama who said they were hopeful of changing Oama’s mind by election time. He told them he understood where they were coming from because he too had been a hopeful Democrat in his younger years and likely would have been among them now, and had hoped to change minds back then as a Catholic cleric voting Democrat. But he said he doubted very much that they could influence Obama to change his views in the election…..but ended the letter with by wishing them luck.
I wonder if telling the Democrats for Obama last time had any any efffect on them…I suspect not because I see there still is a ‘Democrats for Obama’ group around. I wonder if Archbiship Chaput regrets showing sympathy for them by that naive gesture back then.
October 27th, 2012 | 8:17 pm
In light of the Democrats’ “all in” on abortion rights this year, I am surprised that Democrats for Life hasn’t simply rolled up the tent and gone home.
October 28th, 2012 | 8:46 am
I voted for Obama hoping that he would fulfill his promise to change the tenor and direction of the abortion debate, but I also knew that abortion wasn’t his priority. Abortion is not a priority for any Presidential candidate once he reaches office. Presidents want to leave what they consider bigger legacies. Still, I had hopes.
I think Obama started to make an issue of abortion rights when he started to gear up for reelection and realized that he needed a lot of support from his base. A significant part of his base is pro-abortion extremists and so he has made moves that make them happy. It’s this part of the liberal base that sees the Christian right as waging a “war on women.” The charge, of course, is silly, but it’s no sillier than the charge that liberals are waging a “war on Christmas.” But the charge is given credence when Akins and one GOP candidate after another seems to treat rape frivolously.
October 28th, 2012 | 10:36 am
Please point me to any respectable source for your claim that Obama supports abortion at every gestational stage.
October 28th, 2012 | 11:48 am
@Val Fahey: One source would be his voting record while a state senator from IL. But otherwise, check out the websites in the original post from both sides of the debate.
October 28th, 2012 | 3:12 pm
Pro-life advocates have a compelling case against voting for President Obama based on his actual position and given the position of Governor Romney as the alternative. I don’t understand the need to demonize Obama instead of simply making that case.
He opposes any meaningful legal protections for unborn babies. Under the regime of law he supports, they may be killed at any time for any reason; and he has vowed to make sure things stay that way.
This statement stretches President Obama’s position—not to mention the current status of abortion law in the United States—so far beyond what may reasonably be claimed to be true that it need not even be refuted here. Just imagine what PolitiFact.com, FactCheck.org, or the Washington Post FactChecker would make of it.
He has even opposed the prohibition of sex-selection abortions.
This is the sole statement, from a White House spokesperson, not Obama himself, on the bill that was to ban sex-selection abortions:
This is a statement about a particular bill, not about sex-selection abortion itself. Pro-life advocates may reasonably lament the fact that given current law—under which women need give no reason for procuring an abortion—it is virtually impossible to craft a bill that would effectively bar sex-selection abortion, but that is the situation, and not one attributable to President Obama. Under American law, a woman can have an abortion in the first trimester for any reason, for example, if she simply does not want a child (or another child). Under such circumstances, how do you prevent a woman from having an abortion if she does not want a girl or boy (or another girl or boy)?
It should be noted, by the way, that PRENDA, the bill in question, was not a serious attempt to prohibit sex-selection abortions.
Had the Republicans brought up the bill under normal rules, it would have passed with a vote of 246 to 168 (a 59% majority), but instead it needed a two-thirds majority because it was brought up under the fast-track procedure, so it failed. Is it at all realistic to have expected a Democratic president to endorse such a measure?
Suppose we were able to craft a law prohibiting sex-selective abortions. Who is the one person who would actually not the woman’s motivation for abortion? Obviously, the woman herself. However, note the provision in the law under discussion:
In a very real sense, those trying to prohibit abortion for sex-selection, or abortion for any reason, leave intact a woman’s right to procure an abortion. Women are never to be held legally responsible for procuring abortions of any kind. All the pro-life movement wants to do legally is make it more difficult to procure abortions, not prohibit them from having them.
October 28th, 2012 | 5:22 pm
One source would be his voting record while a state senator from IL.
TXW,
Whatever one may think of Obama’s voting record as an Illinois Senator, Illinois had quite restrictive abortion laws at the time, and Obama’s votes were all aimed at preventing further restrictions, not on lifting existing restrictions. So his Illinois voting record in no way indicates that he believes the unborn “may be killed at any time for any reason.”
October 28th, 2012 | 5:33 pm
Probably all but a handful of the 6000 people who actually qualify as pro-life voters will vote for Romney. For the overwhelming majority of voters, abortion is not a significant factor in the vote for President.
October 28th, 2012 | 8:27 pm
Nice try, Joe, but the lower bound for annual attendance at the March for Life is about 250,000, the New York Times‘ studious refusal to cover it notwithstanding.
October 29th, 2012 | 6:16 am
@ David Nichol 1. “Pro-life advocates have a compelling case against voting for President Obama based on his actual position and given the position of Governor Romney as the alternative.” and 2. “All the pro-life movement wants to do legally is make it more difficult to procure abortions, not prohibit them from having them.”
1. Thank you for this acknowledgement. It is a point denied by many pro-life Democrats. Let those who are pro-life know there is a compelling case against voting for Obama.
2. This is a meme you keep coming back to David: that the pro-life camp does not take an all or nothing stance. As I have remarked to you before, many of us in the pro-life camp see nothing wrong with punishing women in appropriate cases. However, the goal is to save unborn children and the fact that we cannot save all of them immediately does not mean we should shut up and do nothing. Nor should our opponents dictate to us how we should speak or act. Opponents of the slave trade in the 19th century took a gradual approach to tackling that particular evil. Many pro-lifers are doing the same now with abortion.
You say that “his Illinois voting record in no way indicates that he believes the unborn “may be killed at any time for any reason.”” Yet if he never speaks out against a single abortion, if he cannot even mention a case when the law should intervene and if, having power as a politician to do so, he does nothing to protect the unborn, it is not an unfair statement of his position. Neither of us would say that keeping slaves is a matter of private opinion and that the law should do nothing. Yet that seems to be the case the abortion lobby wants to make.
A question for Mr Obama brings this matter into sharp relief: Are there any circumstances under which an abortion should be illegal so that a woman is prevented from procuring it and a doctor from performing it? In other words, Mr President, please state the circumstances in which the unborn may not be killed.
October 29th, 2012 | 10:01 am
I work for a Catholic diocese. In our curia, it’s reasonable to guess that a majority of my colleagues voted for Obama last time. Many probably will again this time, partly out of ethnic and cultural habits which are hard to break.
In one particularly frustrating conversation in 2008, my interlocutor said that Obama had identified himself as pro-life! It was true, of course, that he made that claim. However, the claim itself is demonstrably not true. When I pointed out that he indeed said that, but that he was LY-ING, the person dismissed the issue with a comment that “God’s will will be done no matter what we do. So let us pray for that.”
Certain of the commenters on this article display the same sort of reasoning. For example, imagine at this late date pretending to need a “credible source” for Obama’s pro-abortion position.
Those whose thinking is so bent should contribute to the Common Good by staying away from the voting booth! Not that God’s will won’t be done–it will, in the end. Meantime, perhaps we could work hard to discern how His will should affect our civic behavior.
October 29th, 2012 | 10:40 am
Dave Nickol,
I wish that were true about Illinois restrictions. Then I wouldn’t have spent some Saturday mornings protesting in front of the Planned Parenthood on Lasalle St. in Chicago, which is down the road from the former Cabrini Green housing project, and in the Spirit of Marg Sanger that population had to be kept under a lid, restricted, so to speak.
October 29th, 2012 | 5:19 pm
Obama had identified himself as pro-life! It was true, of course, that he made that claim.
Joe DeVet,
Can you document this claim? Certainly some Obama supporters argued that it was reasonable for those who were pro-life to vote for Obama for a number of reasons, including that he was “pro-life” in a broader sense than being opposed to abortion. A similar argument is being made this time around, as well. But I can’t find any evidence that Obama ever referred to himself as “pro-life.”
Pro-life and pro-choice are both woefully inadequate labels for describing a person’s position on abortion. And calling any of the major-party candidates for president of vice-president an extremist is empty political rhetoric.
October 29th, 2012 | 6:21 pm
A pro-abortion stance is THE litmus test for Democratic candidates for president. Any “Democrat for Life” who believes they have a chance to alter their party’s position is living a fantasy. Democrats will never accept their position, and the honest thing to do would be to leave the party.
October 29th, 2012 | 10:21 pm
Bart Stupak was a vital swing vote in the Obamacare debate 2 years ago. As a pro-life Democrat he could not support Obama’s signature initiative without some assurance that abortion would not be covered by the monstrous healthcare overhaul. Following an Executive Order signed by President Obama that supposedly ensured that abortion would not be covered, Stupak declared victory for the pro-life movement. This in spite of the fact that many had said the Executive Order was toothless and would not prevent anything.
Mr. Stupak has finally come out saying the HHS mandate violates the executive order and is illegal.
October 30th, 2012 | 8:39 am
Ian,
“Yet if he never speaks out against a single abortion, if he cannot even mention a case when the law should intervene and if, having power as a politician to do so, he does nothing to protect the unborn, it is not an unfair statement of his position.”
The problem with Obama is not that he has failed to “speak out against a single abortion” but that he thinks the law currently draws the lines correctly. In other words, the question for most people, including Obama, is not whether abortion itself is moral or immoral but which abortions to allow and which to make illegal.
Most pro-life activists are absolutists—no abortion ever under any circumstances. Others that are generally considered pro-life will permit abortion if it saves the mother’s life, and others extend it to rape and incest.
There are few pro-choice absolutists who would allow abortion in all circumstances. Most pro-choice activists accept the trimester system established by Roe. This is why it is easy to portray pro-lifers as extremists and pro-choicers as more reasonable or flexible.
It is thus inaccurate for you to claim that Obama does nothing to protect the unborn. He protects all those unborn that are already under protection of the law. He doesn’t join you in wanting to create still more restrictions on abortion and he certainly is not interested in prohibiting it altogether, but that doesn’t mean that he supports abortion in all circumstances.
October 30th, 2012 | 9:14 am
@Publius,
As a pro-life Democrat, I disagree with the idea that being a member of a party is any indication of a person’s thinking. My religion is Catholicism and my political party is a convenience. I vote in the Democratic primary is all it says. For me, politics is the “art of the possible”. I am aware that Bismarck said that, but the key is that politics changes depending not only on what needs to be done but also on what can be done.
I believe we need to keep politics out of our religions, otherwise the politics takes over. Read your history. Our politics needs to be informed by our beliefs but can never be our beliefs without corrupting them. Power has a tendency to do that.
And despite my registration as a Democrat, I have never voted a party ticket. I choose based on my conscience and inform my conscience constantly in reaching for God.
All that said, we have too many who think that party affiliation is an adequate substitute for personal conviction.
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