In an earlier post I noted that the Obama campaign left something out of its new pro-abortion rights radio ads that started running last week in key states-its ostensible commitment (it’s in the platform) to “reducing abortion.” In his appearance yesterday on ABC’s “This Week,” Obama, talked about reducing abortion.
I take this as how Obama himself will aim to talk about abortion through Election Day. Whether his ads will reflect the points he made on This Week or embrace a hard-line abortion rights stance-we’ll see. (Will his campaign talk one way in San Francisco and another in Scranton?) Meanwhile, read again the first part of the first sentence in the first of the two quoted paragraphs: “I do know that abortion is moral issue. . . .” That’s a sentiment some (few as they are) pro-life Democrats said they tried to get included in the platform. They thought they might succeed, since both Obama and Hillary Clinton had said on the campaign trail that abortion is a moral issue. But the pro-abortion rights advocates said no. Why? According to one of the platform committee pro-lifers, the abortion rights advocates “thought that what we were trying to do was to make a negative judgment or condemnation of a woman’s decision to have an abortion.” Wonder what Obama thinks about that. Maybe Stephanopoulos or some other Sunday talker will ask.
