by David Shane

Created on: June 18, 2008

On the issue of abortion, Obama's past actions make his attitude clear. He has received a 100% rating from the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, and a 0% rating from National Right to Life. But the issue is not one he highlights on his website. When it is brought up in debates, he seems to want to sidestep the controversy around abortion and instead move the discussion to reducing unwanted pregnancies. From what he has said on the issue, I believe his stance on abortion is inconsistent and wrong.

For one thing, he doesn't seem to understand that much of the prolife side sees this as a debate about personhood. At the Democratic Compassion Forum in April of this year, Obama acknowledged that there was a "moral dimension to abortion," but also said that "we can find common ground" between the prochoice and prolife positions. If you believe that at some point the fetus becomes a person as worthy of protection as any other, then once that happens, abortion is wrong. If you think the fetus is just a collection of cells at that point, then you probably have no problem aborting it. Either that three month old fetus is a person or it isn't - there is no happy, agree to disagree middle ground here.

It would seem, then, that when personhood begins is an important question. You could get an answer from your religion, as much of the prolife side does. If not there, you could look to medical science. At the same forum mentioned above, Obama was asked if he thought life begins at conception. Questions about "life" can be hard to answer, but I still think Obama gave a horrible answer when he first acknowledged the difficulty with the term "life begins," but then said that he didn't know, and that "potential life" had a "moral weight to it" that needed to be considered. If this is not a question we know the answer to, we should be erring on the side of caution that insures we are protecting life. As the ratings Obama has received show, he does just the opposite.

In fact, Obama takes his support of abortion even further than many of his allies. According to National Right to Life, he cosponsored a bill to legalize partial birth abortion, and has even opposed bills meant to protect babies that survived abortion attempts. Even on the issue of partial birth abortion, he doesn't seem to understand how deadly important the issue is. At a primary debate in South Carolina he was asked about a recent related court decision. He said that he trusted women to make the decision for themselves, and asked a question. "Can we move past some of the debates around which we disagree and can we start talking about the things we agree on?" No we can't Senator Obama, not on an issue like this.

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