President Obama, Health Care, Abortion, and the Right's Credibility Gap

One of the Right's talking points against the White House health care plan is that it will allow government-funded abortions. President Obama dealt forcefully with that issue in his speech, specifically: "And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up - under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place."

Predictably, if depressingly, the Right doesn't believe Obama. For instance, Bill Donohue of the pro-life group, Catholic League, said before the speech that there "wasn't a chance" the President would mention abortion. Afterward? Donohue accused Obama of deception.

This obtuse approach to reality has worked for the Right... to a degree. The relentless bashing apparently has eroded support for Obama among Americans overall. But it has also backfired -- Republican unpopularity remains constant.

As a pro-life Democrat I would like to point out a few things.

1. Obama isn't an idiot. His promise to exclude abortion from government funding (as is done in most cases with Medicare, following Hyde Amendment guidelines) is a promise which was made to a huge viewing audience. All he had to do was leave out one or two sentences, and the issue wouldn't have been there. Yes, pro-lifers should keep the pressure on. But they serve their cause badly by accusations of bad faith against a man who apparently has heard them. Why is this? Ah...

2. The pro-life movement has been co-opted by the Right. There are various reasons for that, many understandable. Liberals often (though not always) have been tone-deaf on the right to life for the unborn. But that said, the Right has cynically used pro-lifers (esp. committed Catholics and Evangelicals) to over and over again elect Presidents who did relatively little for the pro-life cause. (Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush both appointed pro-choice justices to the Supreme Court, and it was a Republican -- Harry Blackmun -- who authored Roe v Wade).

3. Right-wing pundits claim that the Health Care bill in its various present forms does allow abortion, despite Obama's express claim that in final form it will not. Again, this is where a bit of civility and dialogue goes so far... yet is not happening. I think pro-lifers should publicly praise the President for what he said, then ask him sincerely to make sure language is included in the final bill establishing his assertion as law. Why not work with the White House instead of -- again -- working on the assumption that everything Barack Obama says is said in bad faith?

Why Pro-lifers Are Acting in Bad Faith

I believe it is our movement, the pro-life movement, which is acting and speaking in bad faith. As a pro-lifer who is also a feminist, I have to bring up uncomfortable realities my Right Wing friends won't like.

Former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg told The New York Times Magazine [quoted in Salon]:

"There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often."

Yes, Ginsberg is pro-choice. But her point deserves careful consideration. This is one reason why, as a pro-life advocate, I cannot be a conservative.

My wife, Carol, and I live full-time in an intentional community of Christians called Jesus People USA (JPUSA). Part of JPUSA's outreach to the wider inner-city Uptown Chicago community we live in is our Cornerstone Community Outreach system of shelters for homeless women, children, and men. We are now, and have always been, pro-life. We are now, and have always been, supportive of both private and government programs aimed at creating a safety net for the women we serve.

Right Wing politics are caught on the horns of a dilemma. They overtly disavow responsiblity to via government programs aid the poor. They proclaim their belief in small government, non-intrusive government. YET.... they proclaim the government's right and even responsibility to intrude between a woman and her unborn fetus.

Barry Goldwater, who in many ways founded the modern conservative movement, was pro-choice. And he based that position on the fact that a woman's right to choose what happened to her own body was the ONLY consistent position for a conservative to take.

I agree with him... that it is the only position for a consistent conservative to take. I disagree with him that it is a good position.

I believe that the government does have the responsibility to intervene, with the exceptions of rape/incest or in the case of a mother's life being endangered. This is being a consistent liberal and pro-lifer.

But there's another layer. The woman's right is a right. If we are going to require protection for the unborn, we must also go to extraordinary lengths to support, empower, and safeguard not just the pre-born child but also the woman and born child from birth through all her or his childhood.

Wait! That's socialism! I can hear it already. But I don't much care for the name calling. I'm just looking for some sort of consistently pro-life ethic, one which forgets about political labeling and focuses on human beings -- both mother AND child.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg's words should haunt us. We say we want life... but what do we mean? I look at the women in our Cornerstone Community Outreach programs, hear my wife talk about how hard it is for them once they leave CCO to find jobs, housing, or even basic health care for themselves or their children.

I've always thought it strange that liberalism became the champion of abortion. But perhaps stranger still is the marriage of the pro-life movement with the political Right.

President Obama presents us with an opportunity. We can, as pro-lifers, support his health care proposals while gently pressuring him to make sure his promise is explicitly contained in the language of the bill itself.

And on a deeper level, we can also allow ourselves to imagine a new pro-life movement, one not rooted ideologically in an anti-womanist, anti-liberal, and therefore self-contradictory soil. Imagine it. Look for it. Help to create it. Talk with pro-choice advocates as though they are human beings rather than demonic entities. Admit that the pro-choice movement's roots are not entirely flawed, especially when it comes to their feminist interpretation of history.

We need to re-conceptualize politics because politics isn't just rhetoric and tea parties and talking heads (left and right) demeaning one another while making private fortunes. Politics is about human lives.

Jesus said "As you have done it to one of the least of these, you have done it to me." That is a very political statement. And, I suggest, it is also both pro-life and liberal.

Dialing It Back on Abortion: Jon Stewart & Mike Huckabee Set the Tone

The following guest post comes from Alise McCoy Wright, a cyber-friend of my wife's and mine.

When I was growing up, my parents (and especially my mom) were very involved in the pro-life movement. I believe my first pro-life march in Washington, D.C. was when I was in 7th grade (maybe 8th -- definitely before high school). At that time and through high school, it was a very black and white issue. Abortion was bad. No ifs, ands or buts.

Fast forward to 1997. I've just graduated from college and have my first job teaching in an inner-city school. I'm in a city where I don't know anyone and have only been married for 9 months. I've known for probably a week that I'm pregnant, but kept hoping that I was mistaken. I finally take a pregnancy test and confirm that I am indeed pregnant.

I wish my first reaction when I saw those two lines had been joy, but in reality, it was fear. I was not prepared for a pregnancy and certainly not prepared for a new baby. Fortunately, by the end of the day, I was feeling much better about it and by the time I told Jason, I was absolutely thrilled at the prospect.

But I don't think I've ever forgotten my initial reaction to the circumstance. I was someone who was in a happy (if young) marriage. We had two very supportive families who were able to help us. We were getting involved in a new church and Bible study. Overall, the circumstances were pretty good for us which made it much easier for me to move from fear to excitement. Not every woman has that luxury.

That's not to say that I'm not still pro-life. I still think that in almost all instances it would be better for the woman to choose to have her baby rather than to terminate the pregnancy. As I watch my beautiful daughter growing into an amazing young woman, I have no regrets about being that young mom. But that experience has also shown me that things aren't quite as black and white as I once thought. That there may be other events that play into a woman's decision to continue or end a pregnancy.

Sadly, much of the discourse surrounding this issue is very polarized and polarizing. People on opposite sides are painted with the most extreme brushes and rather than listening, they just shout past one another. Which was why I was absolutely astounded to watch the discussion between Jon Stewart and Mike Huckabee on last Thursday's show. In a time when the major "news" networks do their best to get the most extreme voices on, The Daily Show was able to have a very calm, rational discussion. If you have about 20 minutes, I would strongly suggest checking out these three videos.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Despite these men having very different opinions on the issue, they manage to have a great conversation. And in a day where conversations seem to take a back seat to emotionally charged language and one group trying to out-argue the other, this was a refreshing change. I hope that maybe "the news" will take a cue from The Daily Show and maybe encourage people to talk for a change. I think we'd all appreciate that.

Naomi Wolf Gets Nakedly Honest About Pro-Choice Rhetoric

I hesitate to post this one. As a feminist, though of course a man, I concede Ms. Wolf's own logic fails at points (as far as I can tell). She remains pro-choice. But her naked honesty, transparency, and -- yes -- vulnerability here lead me to urge us who are pro-life to tread carefully in responding. To me, her internal agony is a place to start a conversation between pro-life and pro-choice advocates. Please read it -- even the parts that will irritate you -- with that in mind. What she does is admit that the unborn are human, and that abortion is the taking of a human life. Her existential encounter with those truths is powerful.

Feminist Naomi Wolf Questions Pro-Choice Rhetoric

Abortion and the American Left

The below link should have been the first I posted on this issue of liberal pro-lifers. It offers some seriously thoughtful stuff, and is the home page of sorts for a few of the other links I have (or maybe will later on) offer up. One caveat... a lot of these articles seem rather old. I'll try to find some newer stuff as well.

Abortion and the American Left

Nat Hentoff on Abortion

A raft of articles by very liberal, very pro-life (atheist!), Nat Hentoff. As a liberal Christian pro-life advocate, also a feminist, I find his arguments very compelling and would hope to see many of my liberal compatriots consider them. While it is nearly impossible not to want to gag when dealing with Rightist "pro-life" groups who do in fact use the pro-life issues as a wedge in their anti-feminist agendas, I strongly urge feminists and liberals to read Hentoff's thoughts on this. There really is another way.

Nat Hentoff on Abortion

Is There Such a Thing as a "Pro-Life Feminism"?

Is there such a thing as a "Pro-Life Feminism"? Dang, I sure hope so. It is a position I've tried to articulate for years. I don't pretend it it is easy -- either mentally or emotionally -- to support womens' rights while also supporting the unborns' right to life. But for this poor male nimblewit, womens' rights have haunted me over the past fifteen years at least. And as I read and think and pray, I've had to discard all sorts of muck both theological and political, the "conventional wisdom" of an astonishingly reactionary Evangelical subculture. At the same time, I continue to encounter my own blindness re feminism's depth of critique. That is, I am handicapped by my maleness from existential knowledge of what being a woman means now, or has meant in the past. As those who've read my blogs, both bluechristian.blogspot.com and the moribund aremenreallyhuman.blogspot.com, may remember my lengthy and sometimes uneven journey.

Sarah Palin, whom I think would be a terrible president, nonetheless is a member of "Feminists for Life," one group whose name neatly encapsulates an anti-abortion position with a pro-feminist one. I hope they are more than a Republican front, however, as my cynicism forces me to ask the question. Are any of them voting for Obama, despite the pro-life portion of their name?

Meanwhile, it now appears Sarah Palin isn't willing to call herself a feminist any longer, as she did earlier in the campaign. Interviewed by Katie Couric of CBS a while back, and asked by Couric "Do you consider yourself a feminist?", Gov. Palin answered:

"I do. I'm a feminist who believes in equal rights and I believe that women certainly today have every opportunity that a man has to succeed, and to try to do it all, anyway."

But when asked days ago by NBC Nightly News' Brian Williams the same question, Gov. Palin's answer seemed aimed at her very conservative Evangelical base:

"I'm not gonna label myself anything, Brian. And I think that's what annoys a lot of Americans, especially in a political campaign, is to start trying to label different parts of America different, different backgrounds, different . . . I'm not going to put a label on myself."

Well, I have to put the feminist label on myself, because it has a whole lot to do with how I look at things. When I see on television a spokesperson (male and white) from the Southern Baptist Convention talking about pro-life issues, I experience the urge to either assault my television or regurgitate. The Southern Baptist Convention has removed women from nearly all positions of leadership within that denomination, even from the mission field where those women are winning hearts to Christ and serving with their hands the poorest of the poor. The level of offense this causes me cannot be measured on the Richter Scale.

It is of some comfort to find that so-called "secular" feminists also struggle with the pro-life issue, though usually those who do so in public get significant push-back against their efforts. Camille Paglia, writing on Salon.com, does some real soul-searching. (Thanks, Annie, for pointing this article out to me.) I don't agree with Paglia's conclusions in more than one respect, but they are worth hearing:

Let's take the issue of abortion rights, of which I am a firm supporter. As an atheist and libertarian, I believe that government must stay completely out of the sphere of personal choice. Every individual has an absolute right to control his or her body. (Hence I favor the legalization of drugs, though I do not take them.) Nevertheless, I have criticized the way that abortion became the obsessive idée fixe of the post-1960s women's movement -- leading to feminists' McCarthyite tactics in pitting Anita Hill with her flimsy charges against conservative Clarence Thomas (admittedly not the most qualified candidate possible) during his nomination hearings for the Supreme Court. Similarly, Bill Clinton's support for abortion rights gave him a free pass among leading feminists for his serial exploitation of women -- an abusive pattern that would scream misogyny to any neutral observer.

But the pro-life position, whether or not it is based on religious orthodoxy, is more ethically highly evolved than my own tenet of unconstrained access to abortion on demand. My argument (as in my first book, "Sexual Personae,") has always been that nature has a master plan pushing every species toward procreation and that it is our right and even obligation as rational human beings to defy nature's fascism. Nature herself is a mass murderer, making casual, cruel experiments and condemning 10,000 to die so that one more fit will live and thrive.

Hence I have always frankly admitted that abortion is murder, the extermination of the powerless by the powerful. Liberals for the most part have shrunk from facing the ethical consequences of their embrace of abortion, which results in the annihilation of concrete individuals and not just clumps of insensate tissue. The state in my view has no authority whatever to intervene in the biological processes of any woman's body, which nature has implanted there before birth and hence before that woman's entrance into society and citizenship.

On the other hand, I support the death penalty for atrocious crimes (such as rape-murder or the murder of children). I have never understood the standard Democratic combo of support for abortion and yet opposition to the death penalty. Surely it is the guilty rather than the innocent who deserve execution?

What I am getting at here is that not until the Democratic Party stringently reexamines its own implicit assumptions and rhetorical formulas will it be able to deal effectively with the enduring and now escalating challenge from the pro-life right wing. Because pro-choice Democrats have been arguing from cold expedience, they have thus far been unable to make an effective ethical case for the right to abortion.

The gigantic, instantaneous coast-to-coast rage directed at Sarah Palin when she was identified as pro-life was, I submit, a psychological response by loyal liberals who on some level do not want to open themselves to deep questioning about abortion and its human consequences. I have written about the eerie silence that fell over campus audiences in the early 1990s when I raised this issue on my book tours. At such moments, everyone in the hall seemed to feel the uneasy conscience of feminism. Naomi Wolf later bravely tried to address this same subject but seems to have given up in the face of the resistance she encountered.

If Sarah Palin tries to intrude her conservative Christian values into secular government, then she must be opposed and stopped. But she has every right to express her views and to argue for society's acceptance of the high principle of the sanctity of human life. If McCain wins the White House and then drops dead, a President Palin would have the power to appoint conservative judges to the Supreme Court, but she could not control their rulings.

It is nonsensical and counterproductive for Democrats to imagine that pro-life values can be defeated by maliciously destroying their proponents. And it is equally foolish to expect that feminism must for all time be inextricably wed to the pro-choice agenda. There is plenty of room in modern thought for a pro-life feminism -- one in fact that would have far more appeal to third-world cultures where motherhood is still honored and where the Western model of the hard-driving, self-absorbed career woman is less admired.

But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.

I find in Barack Obama someone who seems willing to forego his party's "rigid dogma" on abortion, to the extent he has echoed some of Paglia's language regarding the pro-life movement's legitimate ethical issues regarding abortion. While he is pro-choice, he seems unusually attuned to the suasive power of the unborn being actual human beings. His central argument, with which I disagree but carefully and tentatively, is that the woman carrying a child should have a right of privacy regarding her own choices re having an abortion and that government doesn't belong in the mix. That reasoning is the heart of Roe v Wade, of course.

For me, who's already blogged at length on why the Republicans will never overturn Roe and why I as a pro-lifer am nonetheless compelled to vote for Barack Obama, the issue of abortion remains large on my radar screen. I continue to hope that both camps -- pro-life and pro-choice -- can open their insular worlds up to the other in order to find at least some commonalities. Being pro-life for me means being pro-woman as well. And being pro-woman means that I acknowledge women's singular responsibility, biologically and therefore psychologically / intellectually / emotionally, regarding the unborn. What I hope to find is that the pro-choice movement under an Obama presidency can perhaps find room to re-examine stale doctrines birthed in the 1970s regarding the unborn as mere tissue, and replace those ideas with a far more humanizing, and therefore morally complex and challenging, set of realities regarding the unborn AND women... and men.

For those of us who are pro-life in a wider sense than that meant by the Christian Right and the Republican Party, we need to grapple with the painful realities of voting our consciences. I personally believe that voting for Barack Obama may decrease the actual numbers of abortions, as well as provide wholistic pro-life positions which may be far more attractive to feminists such as myself than are the anti-womanist positions often held (illogically, but historically) by many Catholic and Evangelical pro-lifers.

I realize this will irritate many readers. That is understandable. Each of us feels terrible pain over certain issues, things that become so central to our empathy re suffering and injustice that we tend to base everything else on those issues. In the past, I voted at times as a "single issue" pro-lifer. But history and my own experiences encountering feminism have led me to a place where I often feel sad and torn. It is a place where, with a very small "s" (let's not posture here, Mr. Trott), I do suffer. I think maybe that's where Christians should find themselves more often than they do.

We Americans want resolution, complete and total. But the reality is this: in some of life's deepest things, there is no simple resolution but rather a continuing struggle to find a place where love is expressed in an embracing way toward all parties involved. On this fallen planet, all our hearts ache. Injustice is everywhere, even in the attempts to do justice we humans attempt. Yet hopelessness is not an option. The struggle to love one another as Christ loved us continues. How that looks, whether in an election or at an abortion clinic, is something each human being must take up with that person's Maker.

Pray for me in my struggle to do so. Please.

New "Terrorists" mailer: Republicans ask us to insert head in toilet, swallow

Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what it fears, or be in dread. Isaiah 8:12 NRSV

Last night, I attempted a bit of humor here in posting my list of negative labels the Republicans have attempted to affix on Barack Obama. This morning, out comes a massively distributed Republican Party mailer:


And this morning I'm not laughing.

The flier is a load. And we're being asked to swallow it. Once again, the McCain/Palin folks are going back to the Karl Rove playbook of nasty, baseless, negative campaigning. And let's be honest here. What is being implied? "Terrorists don't care who they hurt" the flier's cover says. And below it, fake newsprint headlines reading "Terrorist. Radical. Friend of Obama" and "Obama Close Ties...Terrorist." Get it?! Obama... TERRORIST! The large airplane reminds us of 9/11... Ah. Obama, Al Queida. No logical connection exists, but this is about effective illogic, vile lies being used to stir up hatred and fear.

Inside, just to drill the message home...


Forgive all the exclamation points which follow, as I'm a bit peeved this morning...

First starts the whining over Obama actually wanting to talk to terrorists instead of blowing their countries to hell! "Barack Obama Thinks Terrorists Need a Good Talking to." OH MY GAWD! He might actually favor diplomacy over attacking nations without provocation! So if diplomats are terrorists, as opposed to bomb-wielding nations, I'm left wondering what, in light of that definition, Al Queida would be called. Using this Republican pretzel logic, Perhaps Osama bin Laden deserves the Nobel Peace Prize!

"Barack Obama. Not Who You Think He Is." screams the banner along the bottom edge of this masterpiece of McCarthyite defecation. Well, I know who Barack Obama is. He's an American, he's a Christian, and he's a man who has spent his entire life in a disciplined effort to become a positive, unifying leader. His story (as evidenced in his two books) should (and I pray will be) an enduring part of our national legacy. Liars are fryers, baby.

I also know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, who John McCain, Sarah Palin, and the Republicans are. They are desperate people who are going to use the politics of fear and hate to attempt to win. This is frustrating, and scarey. Why? Because it worked in the past two elections. And despite Obama's current lead in the polls, I for one am not at all convinced that lead will hold up.

I have two messages for readers of this puny little BlueChristian blog.

One: This is short and sweet. Anyone who supports Barack Obama's candidacy for President needs to respond to this attack immediately by donating money to Obama's campaign. If you are really ticked at this, the Obama folks have a page just for us so we can make a specific, powerful statement. I'm going to do so today. I hope you will as well.

Two: Evangelical readers currently supporting John McCain and (perhaps even more enthusiastically) Sarah Palin. Can you step back for a moment and ask yourself why you would support a campaign capable of flinging this kind of hate-mongering poop? Can you ask yourself about your own theology -- and here I'm thinking about loving one's neighbor and loving one's God vs. embracing end times narratives from Hal Lindsay, Tim LaHaye, and such? The Republicans are counting on you as their base! That's the narrative here. They want you to be frightened of an American leader, a fellow Christian.

Let's get right down to it: they want you to believe Barack Obama is a closet Muslim terrorist. Well, do you? Honestly? You've seen him in the debates. Do you think he is anti-American? Do you think he is part of some massive conspiracy? Well, if you do, go ahead and vote for the Republicans. But if you sense they are lying about Barack, why would you trust them? We've been lied to for eight years. Here is a man with whom we may not agree on everything, but who has made repeated and thoughtful overtures to Evangelicals despite being slapped down in most of those efforts.

Who are we Evangelicals? That's what I'd like to know. I know who Barack is, and I know who the Republicans are... I've had years and years to watch them scream about abortion, then get into office and appoint pro-abortion justices. Go figure. I've seen them create a narrow litmus test set of issues (abortion and same-sex marriage) from which we are told to make every political decision. That day is over, people. Jesus cared about a LOT more than that. Read Matthew 25. Read the prophets, who along with immorality condemn Sodom and Gommorah for their mistreatment of the poor.

Evangelicals can no longer afford to believe the Republican version of reality. It ignores massive injustices outside that neat and small list of "family values." Affordable housing in my neighborhood is a "family value"... one ignored by the Republicans. And what about all the single parents -- most of them women -- who are more vulnerable than ever in this terrible economic recession we're experiencing? The Republicans say "pro-life," yet assault the poor repeatedly by stripping away programs offering rural and inner-city families hope.

No. No more. Evangelicals, are you willing to remain tools in the hands of hate mongers? We always seem to be on the wrong side of these things. From the days of slavery and lynchings, where entire huge denominations supported slavery (on what they called "biblical" grounds) to today, when those same huge denominations support the oppression and marginalization of women by men -- using the very same bible verses they used in the slave days -- we remain reactionary instead of biblically revolutionary. Where is that third way?

Barack Obama will not be the solution to all of this. Far from it. He's one man. And at times we may even find ourselves having to play the role of prophet against a man we voted for. That is the strange and salty role Christians are supposed to play. But hating is as unchristian as it gets. And the Republican Party's willingness to be hateful, to lie openly over and over again in hopes that their vicious assault on Barack Obama will give them the White House, should be a prime reason we stop being the "Republican base."

Base has another definition: "stresses the ignoble and may suggest cruelty, treachery, greed, or grossness." That, to me, sounds applicable to the Republican Party's treatment of Barack Obama. Can we, as the people of God, the Bride of Christ, continue to be part of that "base" (in both senses of the word) political crowd?

I of course have my own answer, but what matters is your answer.

Uh-Oh! Reviewing Sarah Palin's "Pro-life" Position in Light of Couric Interview

I'm a bit ashamed of myself that I didn't catch this in the now-infamous Katie Couric interviews with Sarah Palin. We all heard the gaffs and soundbites... but what about some of the more substantial answers Gov. Palin did come up with?

Beliefnet's Steve Waldman suggests something startling: "Amidst Her Dodging, Sarah Palin Contradicts the Republican Platform on Abortion."

Waldman notes, in a number of cases during the fairly lengthy exchange on abortion between Couric and Palin, that the Governor seemed to actually hold a pro-choice position!

For instance, Couric asks: "If a 15-year-old is raped by her father, you believe it should be illegal for her to get an abortion. Why?" Gov. Palin does not answer the "why" but she does offer this as her punchline: "I would counsel to choose life." The unavoidable conclusion one would reach there is that Palin supports choice, but counsels that choice be for life.

But there's more. Gov. Palin continues:

"I would like to see a culture of life in this country. But I would also like to see taking it one step further. Not just saying I am pro-life, and I want fewer and fewer abortions in this country. But I want, then, those women who find themselves in circumstances that are absolutely less than ideal, for them to be supported for adoptions to be made easier. For more support given to foster parents and adoptive families. That is my personal opinion on this."

I would note this sounds stunningly similar to Barack Obama! There is not one mention of legislating abortion out of existence, of overturning Roe v Wade, and in fact her language -- "I want fewer and fewer abortions in this country" -- sounds almost word for word like Barack Obama (except with less finesse). Consider these comments by Obama, made April 13, 2008 at Messiah College. He is responding to a question on finding any common ground between pro-choice and pro-life polarities:

"I absolutely think we can find common ground. And it requires a couple of things. It requires us to acknowledge that..

1. There is a moral dimension to abortion, which I think that all too often those of us who are pro-choice have not talked about or tried to tamp down. I think that's a mistake because I think all of us understand that it is a wrenching choice for anybody to think about.

2. People of good will can exist on both sides. That nobody wishes to be placed in a circumstance where they are even confronted with the choice of abortion. How we determine what's right at that moment, I think, people of good will can differ.

And if we can acknowledge that much, then we can certainly agree on the fact that we should be doing everything we can to avoid unwanted pregnancies that might even lead somebody to consider having an abortion." [italics added]

Back to Couric's interview with Sarah Palin:

Couric: So you want more support so women have more options, or girls have more options. But you also think it should be illegal, that there should be no punishment if a woman does break the law...

Palin: I would like to see more women given more support so that those of us who say, "You know, a culture of life is what we believe." Is best ... for human kind, you know, to respect the sanctity of every human life. And to understand ... that we live in a pretty messed up world sometimes.

When you consider what's going on in this world. The most promising and good ingredients in this world ... is a child. The hope that a child brings. And just understanding that. Being near and dear to my heart. I want to do all that I can to reduce the number abortions.

And to usher in that culture of life. And in my respect for the other side of this issue, I have not spoken with one woman who do, may disagree with me on, when abortions could or should be allowed, not one woman has disagreed, as we sit down and rationally talk about ... the common goal we have, and that is to see fewer and fewer abortions. And to provide more and more women support in this world.

Palin again seems to echo a Democratic understanding of the abortion issue rather than supporting the Republican Platform here. Gov. Palin keeps referencing a "culture of life," but remains within a paradigm of choice. That is, a culture where all involved seek to have more support for women and fewer and fewer abortions. Again, this sounds quite similar to Barack Obama.

Couric isn't done yet:

Couric: But, ideally, you think it should be illegal ...

Palin: If you ...

Couric: ...for a girl who was raped or the victim of incest to get an abortion?

Palin: I'm saying that, personally, I would counsel the person to choose life, despite horrific, horrific circumstances that this person would find themselves in."

Waldman once again notes that again Palin is reiterating a pro-choice position here. I would suggest, for further clarification, that very few pro-choicers think abortion is a "good" choice -- rather, most would readily call it a "bad" choice, a last resort which (to them) might be necessary but is not frivolous nor painless (physically or psychologically) to the mother making such a choice. There is nothing in Palin's responses to Couric to contradict that sort of pro-choice reasoning.

The interview continues:

And, um, if you're asking, though, kind of foundationally here, should anyone end up in jail for having an ... abortion, absolutely not. That's nothing I would ever support.

Did Palin mean just the mothers who abort, or also the doctors? In light of her apparent inability to communicate clearly on many topics, she may have meant the former. But one is left with what at best is an ambiguous response. I'm left wondering if these responses are yet further evidence of a disingenuousness on the part of the Republican candidates. In short, I think the blurring of pro-life vs. pro-choice positions is being done intentionally by Gov. Palin here, for reasons entirely having to do with polling numbers and the McCain campaign's desire to draw in more women voters... many of whom are pro-choice.

But here, in an exchange over the "morning after" pill, is where Gov. Palin does in fact overtly contradict the Republican Party platform on abortion. It takes Couric three tries to get an answer to her very simple question, but she does finally get it:

Couric: Some people have credited the morning-after pill as for decreasing the number of abortions. How do you feel about the morning after pill?

Palin: Well ...I'm all for contraception. And I'm all for any preventative measures that are legal and safe and should be taken. But, Katie, again and we can go round and round about the abortion issue, but I am one to seek a culture of life. I am one to believe that life starts at the moment of conception. And I would like to see ...

Couric: And so you don't believe in the morning-after pill.

Palin: I would like to see fewer and fewer abortions in this world. And, again, I haven't spoken with anyone who disagrees with my position on that.

Couric: I'm sorry. I just want to ask you again. Do you not support or do you condone or condemn the morning after pill?

Palin: Personally, and this is isn't McCain-Palin policy ...

Couric: That's OK. I'm just asking you.

Palin: But, personally, I would not choose to participate in that kind of contraception. It ...

Couric: Do you think it should be illegal?

Palin: I don't think that it should necessarily be illegal.

So, for all my fellow pro-lifers out there that feel so compelled to vote McCain/Palin due to the pro-life issue, I hope this is one more reason to reconsider that concept. And again, I thank Mr. Waldman for drawing my attention to this interview.

Getting Personal: Why this Pro-lifer is voting for Barack Obama, Part 1

A good friend sat in my room, agonizing over his indecision regarding the Presidential race. "I loath what the Republicans have done in these past eight years," he said. "And I don't expect different from McCain and Palin. BUT..."

I knew what he was going to say. But what about abortion?

Since 1977, when I began writing for Cornerstone magazine (it ceased publication in 2003 after reaching an audience which peaked at well over 200,000 readers), I wrote what probably numbered in the dozens of articles supporting the pro-life cause. Some of those articles I now regard as overly simplistic, even shrill. But most of them I'd stand by today. I do believe that human life begins at conception -- a scientific fact which apart from all rhetoric really isn't debatable -- and I also believe that Roe v. Wade was the worst Supreme Court decision of my lifetime.

But I also remember being part of a writing staff rooted in intentional Christian community (Jesus People USA), and being both participant and fascinated observer as we together educated ourselves on the history (herstory) of women. Early on, we'd written shrill attacks on feminism, quoting Phyllis Schlafly and other far-right sources. But we began reading the feminists in their own words as well, rather than through the eyes of hostile interpreters. This led us to a more nuanced view, especially as we faced the reality of women's dehumanization throughout most of world history.

Yet we remained pro-life, even as we widened our view of it. Being pro-life had to include the mother, her well-being, her need of economic aid, housing, parental training, support from the church and even (more controversially) the government. Pro-lifers who ignored these factors, focusing solely on the unborn child, were to us the pro-life movement's worst nightmare. Yet even those who did include these things left me personally increasingly restless.

Why? Because I noticed there an underlying theological assumption. Assumed was that women were to be guided by men (I'm soft pedaling my own feminism here by not stating it as strongly as I felt and feel it), to be "covered" by men in marriage and in church, to not usurp alleged "roles" which only (it was said) men should fulfill. Obligatory bible passages were cited. Obligatory interpretations (which I later discovered to be highly dubious) were overlayed onto these verses, and any women suggesting that the Bible was a feminist book with a feminist message were immediately marginalized. (This is still going on -- the Southern Baptist Convention's all-out assault on women preachers, teachers, and missionaries, serves as the most draconian large-scale example.)

I found my sensibilities unable to engage anymore with the old paradigms I'd been taught. I remained fully convinced of the Bible's authority and power. But I no longer was convinced that the usual interpretations of Paul and others were correct. Ephesians 5 was just one startlingly egalitarian passage which had been pretzel-twisted into a hierarchical tract. Once I was exposed to egalitarian/mutuality theology -- some on my own, and much through my discovery of Christians for Biblical Equality [*], I found myself able to reconsider all sorts of things.

Nor was I alone. While the early Jesus movement, from which Jesus People USA (JPUSA) drew much of its beginning theology, did emphasize male authority, JPUSA differed in one respect. We did have women in leadership roles and, perhaps influenced by the charismatic movement, had no issues with women in the pulpit. One of our own pastors was female. In marriage, our journey was slower but became more and more egalitarian just as my own journey had.

This impacts my view of abortion. It can't help but do so. I compare it to a revolution in my thinking which happened since my teen years, when I became fascinated with black history in America. I read everything from Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice to Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, and as I did so, also began reading more deeply in the surrounding history of slavery, lynchings, racist pseudo-science (such as phrenology) and the like. I even began examining my own mental furniture, discovering links between the erotic and blackness which proved one thing -- I was not untouched by racially-based symbolisms myself.

But more than anything, I realized the gulf between reading about being black -- no matter the amount of empathy -- and actually being black. This was also true of my maleness in light of the historical and contemporary realities of being female. I could, in a limited sense, come alongside an indvidual who was either black, female, or both. But I could not in the deepest existential sense know what it is like to be them.

Yet, I must do the best I know how to try, even as I confess ahead of time my almost certain failure.

This is where the pro-life issue becomes one of the most painful issues for me. And, with this part one as a lengthy prologue of sorts, or background if you will, I will next offer my much less existential reasons for backing Barack Obama (an avowed supporter of Roe v. Wade) in this upcoming election.



* Christians for Biblical Equality should not be perceived to have any opinions on the Presidential race, nor about my opinions here in the larger sense of things. They're part of my history as I thought (and continue thinking) through these issues.

First Democratic Debate Shows Candidate Strength

There have rarely been as many strong candidates for one party's presidential nomination as the Democrats have this election cycle. The MSNBC-broadcast debate between (alphabetically) Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, Chris Dodd, John Edwards, Mike Gravel, Dennis Kusinich, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson. Sure, the names that lead the pack, Clinton, Obama, and maybe Edwards, look to be building their lead as opposed to the rest of the field. But what surprised me -- aside from the fantastic entertainment value of Mike Gravel (and he did say some true stuff regarding "politics as usual") -- was how unified the field was. It will be interesting to see how that unity does as the campaign wears on, considering that (after all) the candidates are trying to defeat one another while not being so mean about it that they leave potential Dem voters sick of the whole thing.

For this bluechristian, I found the big plus to be their relentless focus on Bush's stubborn, ill-advised, and lethal (for Americans and Iraqis) policies in Iraq and the so-called "war on terror."

The big minus? It is unavoidable, of course, but the chest-thumping by everyone (except Kucinich and Gravel) about how they'd be so willing to be manly men about pursing lethal means in response to any "terrorism" on American soil. Even my man Obama's worst moment was the one where he, too, joined the overall fray to be sufficiently warlike to achieve manhood. I groan.

My second beef? The Dems on abortion sound like a broken record. Once again, a complete lack of imagination on their part collectively. Heck, as Feminists for Life observed recently, a technological advance that allowed a pregnant woman to very early on become "unpregnant" yet also created an artificial womb-like environment to safegard the human fetus in question would completely reshape the abortion controversy. Pro-lifers -- the ones at least that, like their pro-choice counterparts, are without imagination -- would probably refuse to recognize the fact, much as many among them also fail to realize the fact of global warming. But pro-choicers, those who (quite properly!) often also promote solar energy, wind power, and other alternatives to the nasty petroleum / carbon nexus, seem completely unable to leave their "womens' choice equals legalized infanticide" box. Come on, people! As I say, a complete failure of imagination.

My third beef? This was provoked by MSNBC's commentators blabbing after the debate. I am SICK of hearing how Hillary Clinton comes off "sharply" in comparison to the other (MALE!) candidates. We have a serious double-standard here, folks. If she was a man, who would call her "sharp"? No one. What sexist idiocy. She has to play along of course, and the MSNBC commentators graded her performance sufficiently behaved "until near the end." Look, if someone wants to compare Obama's ease, communication skills, and overall "presence" to Hillary, fair enough. I think he is a magnificent orator as well as very fast on his feet. Hillary is also quick, but without that startling -- even to someone who as a Chicagoan is somewhat used to him -- Obama articulation. But lay off the sexism. Really.

It's early. And we'll soon get a look at the Republican crew, who I suspect will take a page from the Democratic playbook to target the Dems instead of one another...

barack obama, Democratic Presidential debate, hillary clinton, evangelical liberal, blue christian, Jon Trott