Candidates have well-defined positions on issue of abortion
BY NAT HENTOFF, NEWSPAPER ENTERPRISE ASSOCIATION, from the Canton Repository Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey is a pro-lifer and a loyal Democrat. He assures us that Barack Obama — his caring, charismatic leader — will find "common ground" on abortion in the fiercely fought closing weeks of the presidential campaign. But Obama will need to be a magician to create that calming ceasefire.
Anita Dunn, senior adviser to the Obama campaign, told the New York Sun on Aug. 29: "Senator McCain has a more radical anti-choice position than even George W. Bush, and we're going to make sure that voters across the country understand that."
Stripped out of the Democratic Party platform is an assurance we used to hear that abortion should be "safe, legal and rare."
However, in an attempt to reach pro-life Democrats, the platform includes: "The Democratic Party also strongly supports a woman's decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre- and post-natal health care ... and caring adoption programs."
UNQUESTIONABLE SUPPORT
But in stronger language than previous Democratic platforms, Obama's party "strongly and unequivocally" supports Roe v. Wade and pledges to oppose any efforts to "weaken or undermine it."
Moreover, Obama is a co-sponsor of the Freedom of Choice Act that, contrary to a Supreme Court decision, will make partial-birth abortion — a prelude to instant infanticide — legal again. Obama and his party also oppose the Hyde Amendment, which bars taxpayers' dollars to pay for abortions.
So, while the Democratic Party platform permits a woman to carry a child to term, it strictly removes any and all impediments to abortion. Indeed, its standard-bearer, while in the Illinois state Legislature, voted to block a bill requiring the doctor performing an abortion to notify at least one parent before proceeding on a girl of minor age from another state.
STRONG GOP PLATFORM
The equally uncompromising Republican platform affirms that "the unborn child has a fundamental right to life that cannot be infringed."
It goes further, bringing back a pledge to add "a human life amendment to the Constitution," and it supports legislation to make the 14th Amendment's "equal protection of the laws" apply to unborn children (and conceivably to a baby born alive after a botched abortion).
John McCain, while heralding a strong pro-life voting record, does make exceptions for abortions in cases of rape, incest and saving the mother's life.
Sarah Palin does not except rape and incest. McCain has even pledged that, in nominating justices for the Supreme Court, their views on abortion would not be "a litmus test" for his decisions to propose them.
In the past, McCain urged that those three exceptions to abortion be included in the party platform, but not when he spoke in St. Paul. He told Glamour magazine that he "had not gotten into the platform discussions."
JUDICIAL CHOICES
Indeed, Phil Burress, head of Citizens for Community Values in Ohio, one of six Christian conservative activists in that state who met with McCain in June, says in The New York Times on Sept. 3:
"For me this election is primarily about the next Supreme Court appointments. ... John McCain, unlike most politicians, will not be bullied, threatened, paid off or pressured into changing his position" concerning Supreme Court appointments.
But has McCain now changed his position? Palin is unshakably pro-life, Sen. Joe Biden has "100 percent ratings from Planned Parenthood," according to The Nation (Nov. 26, 2007).
And, of course, Planned Parenthood is ardently supporting Obama. An Aug. 25 editorial, "Planned Parenthood targets blacks," in The Washington Times notes that one-third of all abortions performed by Planned Parenthood in 2007 were on blacks and a majority of its clinics "are in minority neighborhoods."
No matter who is elected president, this war will not cease.
Nat Hentoff is a nationally renowned authority on the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights.
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