Barack Obama Takes a Subtle but Deadly Approach to Advocating Abortion

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Feb 28, 2008   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Barack Obama Takes a Subtle But Deadly Approach to Advocating Abortion Email this article
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by Laura Echevarria
February 28
, 2008

LifeNews.com Note: Laura Echevarria is a LifeNews.com opinion columnist. She is the former Director of Media Relations and a spokesperson for the National Right to Life Committee and has been a radio announcer, freelance writer active in local politics.

Subtle: elusive, clever, insidious (Webster’s II, New Riverside University Dictionary).

Barack Obama is garnering a great deal of praise both from Democrats and Republicans. Democrats love him because he is one of them—a “pro-choice” liberal to the core. Some Republicans like him because he seems reasonable, nice and not so liberal—at least not according to his many campaign speeches.

But Mr. Obama’s speeches, while well-written and energetic, are full of subtleties. His positions can be difficult to nail down. Sentences are full of obscure, veiled references to his beliefs. A like-minded audience knows what he means while an audience comprised of people with a different set of beliefs will read into his statements whatever they want. The language he uses is fluid and loose (and let’s not forget—full of hope) but his beliefs are not.

In July of last year, Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton along with Elizabeth Edwards, wife of then-candidate John Edwards, spoke before activists of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. Mr. Obama’s speech at that event was also full of euphemisms and carefully worded phrases but it was still the most explicit he has been on the issue of abortion and what his plans would be—should he become president.

In his speech, he decried the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the federal ban on the gruesome abortion procedure known as partial-birth abortion:

[T]here’s a lot at stake in this election, especially for our daughters. To appreciate that all you have to do is review the recent decisions handed down by the Supreme Court of the United States. For the first time in Gonzales versus Carhart, the Supreme Court held—upheld a federal ban on abortions with criminal penalties for doctors. For the first time, the Court’s endorsed an abortion restriction without an exception for women’s health. The decision presumed that the health of women is best protected by the Court—not by doctors and not by the woman herself. That presumption is wrong.

Some people argue that the federal ban on abortion was just an isolated effort aimed at one medical procedure—that it’s not part of a concerted effort to roll back the hard-won rights of American women. That presumption is also wrong.

What claptrap.

Nowhere in his speech is there any concern over the unborn child who is stabbed in the back of the neck while her head remains inside her mother. Nowhere is shock expressed that her brains are then suctioned out with a suction machine. Nowhere is there any concern over that child’s pain or death As he panders before a pro-abortion, largely female audience, his concern is over whether banning the procedure encroaches on women’s rights.

What of the little girls who have been killed using this heinous procedure? What of their equal rights?

Barack Obama’s answer is to promote abortion on demand. He would sign the Freedom of Choice Act and appoint justices to the Supreme Court who can “empathize”:

[T]he first thing I’d do as president is, is sign the Freedom of Choice Act . . I taught Constitutional Law for ten years and I have to say after reading this latest decision and the series of decisions that the Supreme Court has been putting forward that I find it baffling. . . ..

I also think it’s important to understand that there’s nothing wrong in voting against nominees who don’t appear to share a broader vision of what the Constitution is about. . . ..

Justice Roberts said he saw himself just as an umpire but the issues that come before the Court are not sport, they’re life and death. And we need somebody who’s got the heart—the empathy—to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old—and that’s the criteria by which I’ll be selecting my judges.

Can you see how subtle? Obama’s use of the phrase “a broader vision of what the Constitution is about” is his way of saying that the Constitution is a living document with nuances and penumbras outside of what the Founders wrote. Mr. Obama would appoint justices who would “find” these nuances in the Constitution.

Pay attention, very close attention, to what Barack Obama says. There is no doubt about it, Mr. Obama, if elected president, would veto any pro-life protective legislation. He would turn back the clock on well known, pro-life U.S. policies such as Mexico City Policy, which prevents taxpayer money from going to groups that perform or promote abortion oversees. He would sign the Freedom of Choice Act that would entrench Roe v. Wade into U.S. law.

He’s a practiced speaker who knows what to say and when. His speeches are eloquent, elusive, clever and subtle.

Subtle as a snake.