Once upon a time, there was a guy named Solomon who had a tough decision to make. I would give the Solomon of the year award to Barack Obama for his negotiations on the abortion plank of the Democratic party platform.
I can’t think of too many things that are more polarizing than abortion. Maybe the Iraq War? It all started in January 1973 when the Supreme Court decided Roe v Wade when only 4 states had abortion on demand. Possibly the abortion debate would be less polarized if the states all got to figure out when to legalize abortion based on when their populations became more accustomed to the idea. Much like gay civil unions are being handled now. Or maybe not since it does seem to boil down to a life and death decision for many people.
Barack Obama took a Democratic party that was even more polarized than US society in general. You have the very pro-choice group who did not want to give an inch on making the platform inclusive. Then you have the very pro-life group that felt like they did not have a voice at all in their party’s platform. For those of you who do not remember Planned Parenthood v Casey, the first real opportunity to overturn Roe v Wade, remember that the Casey in that suit was Bob Casey, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania. (I participated in a huge rally in DC, so it was something that I remember well.) The same year, when Casey wanted to speak about abortion at the 1992 Democratic Convention to give a voice to this point of view, he was rejected. Interestingly enough, although Governor Casey passed away, his equally pro-life son Senator Bob Casey Jr was given a prime speaking slot at this year’s convention.
Obama made sure that everyone had their voices heard and that the best environment for an agreement was put into place. Steve Waldman, editor-in-chief of beliefnet.com called the action this way:
The Obama forces engineered an interesting and potentially important compromise. It moved the platform in the pro-choice direction on a few things in order to get pro-choice forces to agree to a key request from pro-life liberals: language affirming and supporting women who choose to carry the baby to term instead of having an abortion.
The Democrats had always talked about “freedom of choice” but usually spoke only of one choice, having an abortion. Pro-life liberals are convinced that many women have abortions for economic reasons, so providing them with support could actually reduce the number of abortions more than the Republican approach of emphasizing legal restrictions. (That argument summarized here.) The platform provides the outlines of a potential Democratic argument for reducing abortion number while preserving abortion rights.
The compromise tells you a great deal about Obama’s possible governing style. He did not put forth specific language ahead of time. His team worked quietly behind the scenes with different constituencies - pointedly declining to ever have the factions in the room at the same time. The resulting compromise got support from both the pro-life liberals and pro-choicers. Like most such compromises, it can and will be criticized for not gong far enough in either direction
In fact, a few days ago, I was one of the people who accused them of “squandering” an opportunity. Now that I understand how this came down, I’m a bit more impressed with what the Obama campaign did. Once it became clear that the pro-choice forces would not agree to strong language demanding a reduction in the number of abortions — a stand that could cost the Democrats dearly in the fall — the Obama camp was faced with a choice. They could try to roll the pro-choice groups. That would have made a big splash and appealed evangelicals and Catholics, but would have alienated pro-choice groups and splintered the party. Or it could have worked toward a compromise that would gain some modest ground for pro-life forces while getting support from both sides. They chose the latter.
It’s classic Obama, really. Ultra-pragmatic, consensus-buidling, favoring incremental steps in the right direction over broad culture war battles.
Waldman’s “public” Wall Street Journal article with a detailed account of the compromise can be found here: http://blogs.wsj.com/politicalperceptions/2008/08/19/the-real-story-of-the-democrats-abortion-plank/
You can read both the current and previous planks of the Democratic party here in this article at the Washington Post: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/08/13/conservative_dems_hail_party_p.html
Tony Campolo was one of the evangelicals working on the pro-life side of the plank negotiations with various other groups. He recently wrote a blog post about his experiences and why he felt, as a Christian, that he had to strive “to be the ‘leaven’ that permeates both parties with biblically-based judgments and values derived from Christian beliefs”. The whole article is worth a read, but I wanted to pull out this one bit:
These achievements were lauded by Democrats for Life and by the Catholic Alliance for Life. While at the Democratic National Convention, religious leaders of other faith traditions personally thanked me for my efforts. Even leaders of some pro-choice organizations hailed this compromise, claiming that at last they could find some common ground with pro-life advocates.
Purists, on the other hand, have had hard words for me, claiming that I should not have been involved in any way with a political party that is pro-choice. While I understand their desire to settle for nothing less than the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, I nevertheless believe that my decision to work for abortion reduction was a good one.
Consider these questions: If 10 children are drowning in a swimming pool, and you can only save six of them, should you save the six? Or, should you wait until help arrives that can save them all, even if you know that the six you could save will be lost in the meantime?
Douglas Kmiec, a Pepperdine law professor and former Catholic University law school dean who served in both the Reagan and elder Bush administrations, said in a press conference “the plank would help get the abortion debate out of the rut it’s been in, with both sides entrenched in their positions over Roe v. Wade and too little attention given to the task of reducing abortions.”
“While the platform still falls short of the Catholic ideal, we live in this world and we pursue the art of the possible, and if we move to protect even a single life then we’ve done a good thing,” he said. “Anything that recognizes Roe v Wade as legitimate is unacceptable from a Catholic point of view, but we live in the real world. Our faith is not unexposed in our pocket, but rather meant to transform the political process as it exists. This gets us beyond Roe. Roe has turned out to be a legal dead end, and a moral dead end.”
You can read the article that Mr. Kmiec wrote in Catholic Online about the drafting of the plank and how it relates to the Catholic faith here: http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=28865
All of the work by many good people of faith to create a commitment to reduce the number of abortions in America and the willingness to listen by the Obama campaign has Rev. Joel Hunter, Republican and the former president-elect of the Christian Coalition, commenting that the Democrats “could arguably steal the title of the pro life party.”
So, cheers to you Barack Obama. You’ve given us something to work towards that we can all agree on and opened up a place to start the discussions anew.
