 | |  |  | | | | | | | | | | | | |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
| |
| Author |
Message |
blackvault
Site Admin
Joined: Sep 10, 2001
Posts: 3623
Location: USA
|
 Posted: Fri Jul 11, 2008 4:03 am Post subject: Obama walks the abortion minefield |
 |
|
| |
For the past week, some activists in the abortion rights community have been trying to figure out why Barack Obama, a Democrat praised for his strong defense of reproductive rights, appeared to be turning soft.
Those who work on the front lines of the abortion debate couldn’t quite believe what they were hearing: Obama, in an interview with a Christian magazine, seemed to reject a mental health exception to the ban on late-term abortions. They feared that Obama, like Democrat John Kerry in 2004, was adopting a view favored by abortion opponents to appeal to conservatives.
After days of examining his initial comments and a subsequent clarification that he supports a mental health exception — as long as the woman suffers a diagnosed illness and is not just “feeling blue” — some activists are satisfied, while others are far from it or just plain confused.
“That kind of statement really feeds into the wingnut argument that women have abortions because they are frivolous about that decision, because we are having a bad hair day,” Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, said in an interview Wednesday. “There seems to be an information gap there.”
The confusion comes at a politically sensitive juncture for Obama, as he attempts to build credibility and a comfort level with women voters and institutional advocacy groups, including some that supported Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. The timing exacerbated the concerns of these groups, some of which are still awaiting a personal meeting with the presumptive Democratic nominee: It followed a major push by Obama to court religious voters who hold positions at odds with these advocacy groups.
“The e-mails were just going back and forth,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority Foundation. “What worries people is that this has come in a two-week period where there has been a reach out to evangelical voters. In doing that, there must be a reach out to women voters.”
Obama has an “excellent” voting record on abortion rights, Smeal said, so “his statements lend some confusion where there shouldn’t be any.”
As he faces criticism from some on the left, Obama is also taking hits from the right over abortion. The Christian Defense Coalition began running print ads this week calling Obama “the abortion president.” And Republican John McCain, an opponent of abortion rights, took a dig at Obama during an Ohio town hall meeting on Wednesday, criticizing his vote against a ban on late-term abortion as an Illinois state senator.
The reaction to Obama’s statement revealed a divide in the abortion rights community, one that closely tracks the allegiances formed during the Democratic Party’s protracted primary election fight. While NOW and the Feminist Majority voiced concern over Obama's abortion remarks, two of the largest organizations dedicated to reproductive rights took a different tack and backed up Obama.
NARAL Pro-Choice America, which endorsed Obama in early May, issued a statement of support after Relevant magazine published the interview last week, saying he was a strong supporter of Roe v. Wade and his views were consistent with the landmark ruling establishing the right to an abortion. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund, which stayed neutral in the primary, announced its formal support of Obama on Tuesday.
Kate Michelman, a prominent women’s rights advocate who endorsed Obama in February, said Obama was not softening his long-standing support of Roe, but rather articulating his understanding that abortions in the second and third trimesters should be rare and necessitated by serious health issues.
“He was very deliberately speaking to those people who over the past 35 years have made the case that the exception to protect women’s health is a big loophole through which women can leap when they are feeling blue,” said Michelman, who headed NARAL for nearly 20 years until 2004. “Obama was making it clear that he doesn’t believe that is what women do and what the law allows.”
He clarified his position well, she said, making the flap "much ado about nothing.”
The dustup began with the magazine interview in which Obama said he supported the ban on late-term abortions if there is a “strict, well-defined exception for the health of the mother.” But he went on to draw a distinction between physical and mental health, voicing support for the former and not the latter.
“Now, I don’t think that ‘mental distress’ qualifies as health of the mother,” Obama said. “I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term.”
With that statement, Obama appeared to be putting himself at odds with long-standing case law establishing that medical judgments about the need for an abortion could include physical, emotional and psychological health factors.
The reaction among one of his core constituencies was swift and negative, and Obama quickly moved to clarify his position, saying he always supported health exceptions to the late-term abortion ban — but only for clinically diagnosed conditions and not simply mental distress.
“In the past, there has been some fear on the part of people who, not only people who are anti-abortion, but people who may be in the middle, that that means that if a woman just doesn’t feel good, then that is an exception,” Obama told reporters traveling with him over the Fourth of July weekend. “That’s never been the case. I don’t think that is how it has been interpreted.”
His point, he said, was that the health exception can be defined rigorously.
“It can be defined through physical health. It can be defined by serious, clinical, mental health diseases. It is not just a matter of feeling blue,” Obama said. “I don’t think that’s how pro-choice folks have interpreted it. I don’t think that’s how the courts have interpreted it and I think that’s important to emphasize and understand.”
Rachel Laser, director of the culture program at Third Way, a progressive strategy group, said Obama appeared to be looking for common ground. Kerry tried the same in 2004, but was criticized for muddling his message.
“Obama is attempting to navigate the most treacherous waters in the abortion debate, and he’s doing it well,” said Laser, former counsel at the National Women’s Law Center. “He’s made clear that he understands the moral complexity of the issue, and his clarifying statement on the health exception gets it as close to right as is possible. It’s remarkable that he’s even attempting to articulate what the health exception should be — most politicians wouldn’t have the courage or the level of knowledge to try.”
The heads of some women’s advocacy groups view his comments through a more skeptical lens. It sounded as if he was parsing what constituted a mental health exception while playing into opposition arguments about why women seek late-term abortions, those advocates said.
“A lot of women still feel torn about their loyalty to Hillary,” said Clare Giesen, executive director of the National Women’s Political Caucus, which had endorsed Clinton. “At this point, they are still a little suspect of him and they are just not ready to join the bandwagon. Why would he sort of bring up the abortion issue and parse out late-term abortions when he already has issues with women’s groups?”
Gandy and Smeal said they would like further clarification from Obama, and they are waiting to hear from him personally with a meeting similar to those held with leaders of other major Democratic constituency groups.
“Women are very upset,” Gandy said. “But they are still waiting and giving him the benefit of the doubt.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11654.html |
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
| Author |
Message |
Jaack
B.V. Info Seeker
Joined: Feb 20, 2008
Posts: 2400
Location: Google Earth
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 2:35 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| |
John,
I appreciate you pointing this stuff out, but this is nothing new for the left. every campaign since the newspaper monopolies started have been pro-left and have in totality disregarded the concessions [lies they have to tell] their candidate must make for specific groups.
Do you or does anyone actually believe Obama is pro-Israel because he spoke at the Jewish convention???
That's why most Right candidates do not speak to certian groups. The leftist media holds the Right candidates to their speeches, and a Right candidate will tell the group his/her message. Unlike the leftist who will say what they think the group wishes to hear.
Then later in the campaign, on TV when someone brings up the differences or the facts of this and that about Obama. The leftist media will state, "Oh that was covered in the XXXXX paper, and there was no public support or story so it was dropped. The public doesn't care"
Well if you, one, anyone actually disects ow media stories are grown, they never happen off one story. It took the leftist media 6-7months to get Billdo's numbers back after the Lewinsky story.
It's been this way for at least 60 years, and will now be 61. |
|
_________________
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." - JFK |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Author |
Message |
rob61872
B.V. Info-a-holic
Joined: Oct 10, 2001
Posts: 13667
Location: With JRZGRL
|
| Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 10:25 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| |
| Jaack wrote: |
John,
I appreciate you pointing this stuff out, but this is nothing new for the left. every campaign since the newspaper monopolies started have been pro-left and have in totality disregarded the concessions [lies they have to tell] their candidate must make for specific groups.
Do you or does anyone actually believe Obama is pro-Israel because he spoke at the Jewish convention???
That's why most Right candidates do not speak to certian groups. The leftist media holds the Right candidates to their speeches, and a Right candidate will tell the group his/her message. Unlike the leftist who will say what they think the group wishes to hear.
Then later in the campaign, on TV when someone brings up the differences or the facts of this and that about Obama. The leftist media will state, "Oh that was covered in the XXXXX paper, and there was no public support or story so it was dropped. The public doesn't care"
Well if you, one, anyone actually disects ow media stories are grown, they never happen off one story. It took the leftist media 6-7months to get Billdo's numbers back after the Lewinsky story.
It's been this way for at least 60 years, and will now be 61. |
Timely criticism of Obama, considering that McCain, just a couple of days before you made that post, spoke at the NCLR covention, which is widely viewed as a far left, racist hispanic organization.
I do recall McCain sponsoring an amnesty bill just a year or 2 ago, and most recently went on national tv and said he doesn't support it. Wait, that never happened, it's just my imagination.
And for record, the right denied that there was a right wing conspiracy to take down Clinton, the right correctly believes that the vast majority of the mainstream media is leftist... Therefore, it stands to reason that it was the leftist media that broke the Lewinsky story, the Whitewater story, the Gennifer Flowers story, the Paula Jones story, and every other big embarrassing thing that man did while running for or serving in office. The leftist media didn't build his numbers back up at anytime in his presidency, the leftist media are the ones that made him leave office the disgraced man he is. |
|
_________________
"You can't trust freedom when it's not in your hands, and everybody's fighting for their promised land" |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Author |
Message |
Jaack
B.V. Info Seeker
Joined: Feb 20, 2008
Posts: 2400
Location: Google Earth
|
| Posted: Wed Jul 23, 2008 12:18 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| |
| rob61872 wrote: |
Timely criticism of Obama, considering that McCain, just a couple of days before you made that post, spoke at the NCLR covention, which is widely viewed as a far left, racist hispanic organization.
I do recall McCain sponsoring an amnesty bill just a year or 2 ago, and most recently went on national tv and said he doesn't support it. Wait, that never happened, it's just my imagination.
And for record, the right denied that there was a right wing conspiracy to take down Clinton, the right correctly believes that the vast majority of the mainstream media is leftist... Therefore, it stands to reason that it was the leftist media that broke the Lewinsky story, the Whitewater story, the Gennifer Flowers story, the Paula Jones story, and every other big embarrassing thing that man did while running for or serving in office. The leftist media didn't build his numbers back up at anytime in his presidency, the leftist media are the ones that made him leave office the disgraced man he is. |
Oh the leftist medis had to finally get on mission. All those stories were around for a while before they grew so large the "Leftist" media had to finally report on it some. Did you not notice how they then after a few weeks switched to VERY pro Clinton Reporting? And kept at it till they changed the national narrative?
McLame is a total racist idiot with the mexicant's I have no problem admitting that whatsoever. The man is a complete and total loon on that issue. The mexicant groups from la raza on down are complete parasites on the boils that is leftist America and we need to lance the boils and possibly have them surgically removed using all soy based medicine. |
|
_________________
"Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty." - JFK |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
| | | | | | | |
| |
blocks-left.jpg
blocks-left.jpg
blocks-left.jpg
|  |
Online Stats: 
