By Carter Bundy
I was skeptical about Barack Obama’s infomercial. While no one likes prevent defense, at the very least most of us understand that with a lead and time running out, you don’t start throwing the ball down the field.
But Obama’s got a pretty strong fearless streak. In the third debate, he exemplified his willingness to tackle any issue head-on when he spoke about his plans for reducing abortion. Many pro-choice candidates tend to duck abortion, knowing that there is some segment of the population who vote pro-life to the exclusion of every other issue.
What Obama gets is that abortion is, in fact, tied to other issues, and that there is significant common ground between those whose top priority is reducing abortion and those who believe in economic opportunity for all.
What’s the goal?
I respect the religious views of anyone who believes that the joining of sperm and egg constitutes a full life. I don’t. In fact, I think there’s not much basis for that belief in Christianity. It’s nowhere in the New Testament and was the matter of much debate within the Catholic Church until the late 1800s.
But that’s not my main point. As my friend Ben wisely notes, pointing out that someone’s interpretation of religion is different from yours generally isn’t effective.
What I hope is effective is to point out the common ground and common goals among pro-life and pro-choice advocates.
It seems there are two possible political goals for a pro-life person: to make a symbolic stand for a fellow true believer, or to reduce abortions.
True believers
As to the first goal, if you’re pro-life and looking to make a symbolic statement, McCain’s the wrong guy. McCain himself, when asked what he would do if his 15-year-old daughter became pregnant, said it would be “a private decision that we would share within our family and not with anyone else.”
When running for president in 1999, McCain said “in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in
McCain’s not even close to being a true believer, so a vote for McCain isn’t a principled stand. By contrast, even though Barack Obama doesn’t believe that the government should make this decision for women whose religious beliefs don’t conform to some others’ beliefs, he has consistently championed finding ways to reduce the need for abortions.
Remember, even for those who don’t share the same religious perspective or belief about the role of government as pro-lifers, abortion is still a medical procedure, and it’s always best to pre-emptively avoid medical procedures where possible.
Root causes
The second goal, reducing abortions, is likewise not an obvious call. McCain, despite his rather clear personal ambivalence on the issue, seems genuinely committed to appointing justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade. Let’s take him at his word and examine what that means.
A president can’t outlaw abortion. He can merely nominate Supreme Court justices who will strike down Roe v. Wade. That, in turn, does one thing: allows states to decide how much, if at all, to restrict abortion.
Truth is, probably half of more of all states will continue to have abortion laws similar to the status quo, as will
So we all know abortion will continue nearly unabated regardless of what happens with Roe v. Wade, just with significantly detrimental health effects for women. If your goal is to reduce abortion, does electing McCain help move you towards that goal?
The short answer is no.
Women generally have abortions when they didn’t know about or have access to birth control, they aren’t optimistic about their own ability to provide for themselves, much less an unplanned child, or they don’t believe that the child can/will be adopted easily into a good family.
How do you eliminate these reasons for abortions? On the question of accidental pregnancies, abstinence is the best way to avoid pregnancy. But look how well that works even in a good God-fearing, abstinence-teaching, happy family like the Palins (that’s not meant at all as a slam, by the way — it just shows how difficult abstinence-only is, even in a family as expressly committed to religion as Sarah Palin’s).
You can either push abstinence-only, which seems to be the alpha and omega of McCain’s pregnancy prevention strategy, or teach abstinence as part of comprehensive pregnancy prevention education. Obama proposes better education so that teens prone to unwanted pregnancies can make smart decisions.
Kids don’t have sex because some middle-aged high school teacher told them what a condom is. In fact, when kids know about how STDs and pregnancies happen, and all the ways to avoid them, they’re less likely to need penicillin or an abortion. Want to reduce unwanted pregnancies? You’re far better off with Obama’s plan than abstinence-only.
A second major contributing cause of abortion is economic uncertainty. You can defend McCain’s additional tax cuts for millionaires on some supply-side, trickle-down theory, but his economic proposals are a nightmare for lower-income women.
On education, McCain follows in the Bush tradition of laissez-faire economics: fend for yourself. McCain fought the minimum wage for years, and has proposed slashing Medicaid, which provides health care for the poorest of our young women. Jobs? McCain says the decent-paying ones we force overseas with our lopsided, anti-American trade and tax policies are gone forever.
Obama, by contrast, proposes making higher education accessible for every young woman (and man) willing to commit to military service, social work or other productive service to America for two years. He supports universal health care and is committed to reclaiming decent jobs by instituting fair trade policies and ending tax incentives for companies to leave
The third cause mentioned above is something that both candidates would hopefully address: making adoption easier.
Kmiec’s case
Obama is winning over pro-life conservative Catholic leaders like Doug Kmiec with his thoughtful policies. Kmiec’s article covers more ground than this column, and you can find it here.
For those who aren’t going to read the entire article, Kmiec’s opening summarizes his position well:
“To some of my fellow Catholics, Senator Obama’s answers on abortion make him categorically unacceptable. I understand that view, respect it, but find it prudentially the second-best answer in 2008.
“Not because Senator Obama’s position on abortion is mine; it is not. Not because I don’t believe Senator Obama could improve the articulation of his position; he could, but because I believe that my faith calls upon me at this time to focus on new efforts and untried paths to reduce abortion practice in
Kmiec speaks of Obama’s positions on birth control, education and personal responsibility. He concludes that mere removal of federal protection for abortion will not adequately advance his goal of reducing abortion, and that those interested in reducing abortion should seriously consider Obama.
The wind and the sun
Kmiec’s article brings an Aesop’s fable to mind. The sun and the wind were arguing over who was stronger. They saw a man wearing a coat, and decided that whoever could make him remove it was stronger. The wind tried to force the coat off of the man, but it made him cinch it tighter around himself, and the wind failed. The sun then basked the man with warmth, and the man removed his coat.
Kmiec observes that, “As anyone who’s ever had a conversation with a pregnant woman thinking about abortion knows, good, evenhanded information and genuine empathy and love save more children than hypothetical legal limits — which, as best as I can tell, have saved: well, zero.”
Government can’t give out love, but it can do things that make unplanned pregnancies less likely, and it can do things that give a young woman enough optimism that she may consider carrying the fetus to term.
Even in the best circumstances, women may still opt for abortion (whether legal or not), but if you’re interested in reducing abortion, there are lots of people, pro-life and pro-choice alike, who believe in Obama’s fearless path of common sense and common ground.
Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in