A campaign promise worth breaking
April 29, 2009
“The Freedom of Choice Act is not my highest legislative priority.”
-President Barack Obama, 4/29/09 press briefing
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Obama’s answer on the abortion issue tonight was a whole lot better than his related policy decisions and his political appointments have been. His words brought to mind Cardinal George’s assessment of the President:
It’s hard to disagree with him because he’ll always tell you he agrees with you. . . Maybe that’s political. I think he sincerely wants to agree with you. You have to say, again and again, ‘No, Mr. President, we don’t agree [on abortion].’ But we can agree on a lot, and we do, and that’s why there is so much hope.
The fact that it is a priority is bad enough.
Any climbdown from his brazen pandering to the abortion lobby is welcome.
I think when a president says in a nationally televised news conference that something –in this case, a bill that has not even been introduced — is not his highest legislative priority, he is not saying it is his second highest, or third highest, or forth highest. He is saying everybody can forget about it.
Considering that prior to the election Obama had mentioned abortion only during his convention speech and then had spoken only of desiring to reduce it, this is not shocking. This won’t change the attitudes of the wolf criers however.
And to be fair, people on the left shouldn’t fall over themselves giving credit here. He has managed to do what Clinton did.
This isn’t surprising to me either. I was always annoyed by the claims in thos emails that got forwarded around. The election results were clearly not a result of a desire for abortion rights, and if he hadn’t have gone to the economy first his popularity would have taken a hit.
That said, he still supports FOCA, and with a super-majority until at least next year it’s still something to worry about.
He is saying everybody can forget about it.
I don’t know about that… It means more like “maybe not now, maybe later or maybe not or maybe not while I’m in office because we won’t have time to get to it”
As I recall, a newly-inaugurated Bill Clinton made a great show of rescinding the pro-life Mexico City policy on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, thereby rubbing dirt into the faces of those who came to DC for the annual March for Life. President Obama, in contrast, waited a couple of days before he rescinded that same pro-life policy. For that small favor, he got accolades from his Catholic supporters who were looking for signs that pro-lifers had misjudged the new administration. From the NARAL/PP perspective, however, the end result was the same: Mexico City was toast.
Obama is a brilliant political strategist. He now comes to get his honorary degree from ND cloaked in the mantle of moderation (“conservatism” is how Commonweal puts it). Yet every policy decision and political appointment he has made that touches on the abortion issue has favored the NARAL/PP position. In the end, he will probably get not just FOCA itself but all of its components enacted with the blessing of a majority of American Catholics.
Mexico City was toast.
ron,
What I don’t get is that if the principle of the Mexico City Policy is sound — that is, if it is tantamount to funding abortion to provide funds to an organization that provides abortion services, even if the organization is forbidden to use those funds for abortion — then George Bush was in no way pro-life, since he signed legislation (which John McCain voted for) providing Planned Parenthood in the United States with about a third of its funding year after year during his entire administration.
If the Mexico City Policy is so important when it comes to funding international organizations, why isn’t the same reasoning applicable where domestic organizations are involved?
Good. Here’s to hoping it attains “not a priority at all” status.
David, what has George Bush got to do with this? I wasn’t even a Bush supporter. (At election time, I wrote in the names of people I could support.) It seems impossible to discuss President Obama without hearing from his devotees that he is the un-Bush.
Meanwhile, you totally ignored my point: I suspect Obama is putting FOCA on hold for now in order to build Catholic support for its most basic provision: Accepting abortion-on-demand as a legitimate and acceptable feature of American life. What Mario Cuomo could not bring about, Barack Obama may well accomplish. Not surprising that Notre Dame is the venue-of-choice for both these pro-choicers.
ron,
It is not necessary to bring Bush into the argument. Perhaps it was even a mistake. But my point remains the same. Except for the lunatic fringe, those who denounce Obama for rescinding the Mexico City Policy seem to be comfortable with the fact that it applied to international organizations a principle that is not applied to domestic ones. It also applied a principle that would deny any government funds to Catholic schools or hospitals if applied consistently. If funding organizations who provide abortion services with funds is to fund abortion, even when those funds are provided and used for services other than abortion, then providing funds to Catholic schools and hospitals for nonreligious aspects of their operations is government funding of religion, which is unconstitutional. I have never heard Catholics argue that Catholic hospitals should not receive federal money, and in fact the “anti-aborts” argue that threatening the loss of federal funds to Catholic hospitals who refuse to perform abortions would be “forcing” Catholics to perform abortions.
Ron,
As you state, you have suspicions about the President, particularly around intangibles like social attitudes. I don’t really find enough meat there to give you a response.
But as for David’s comment, he even understates Bush’s support for abortion funding. It would seem Bush was responsible for the greatest expansion of government abortion funding ever. Yet MCP opponents are silent on this. Why?
I share Katerina’s sentiment. Obama is unlikely to spend precious political capital on FOCA. My read is that he is dispositionally a conciliator. Have you ever heard a Catholic prochoice politician distance himself from prochoice rhetoric the way Obama did last night? I haven’t.
There is a marvelous passage in “The Audacity of Hope” that says a great deal on his perspective on abortion. He recounts an email he received from a consistent ethic of life physician working at the University of Chicago. This physician was anguished by a statement on Obama’s senatorial campaign website which promised to fight “right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman’s right to choose”. After congratulating Obama on winning the Democratic Party nomination for the Senate, he went on to say:
“I also sense that you are a fair-minded person with a high regard for reason. Whatever your convictions, if you truly believe that those who oppose abortion are all ideologues driven by perverse desires to inflict suffering upon women, then you, in my judgment, are not fair-minded. I do not ask at this point that you oppose abortion, only that you speak about this issue in fair-minded words.”
“The next day”, Obama writes, “I circulated the email to my staff and had the language on my website changed to state in clear but simple terms my prochoice position. And that night, before I went to bed, I said a prayer of my own that I might extend the same presumption of good faith to others that the doctor had extended to me.”
As an Obama supporter who, on balance, supports the Notre Dame invitation, I am feeling quite estranged. I am convinced that Obama is far more understanding of prolife sensibilities than many of his supporters. A meme is in play here: deploring critics of Obama and the university while relishing “l’affaire Notre Dame” as an opportunity to display a sneering stance toward prolifers as if they alone had a lock on hypocrisy.
The takeaway for me has little to do with abortion, or Obama for that matter. It has to do with a failure of imagination and a reluctance to grant the presumption of good will. We are a harder people than I had imagined and the polarization seems ever more extreme.
I await evidence that the culture warriors on both sides of the Notre Dame controversy are capable of displaying the same grace Obama and the physician extended to each other.
It would seem Bush was responsible for the greatest expansion of government abortion funding ever. Yet MCP opponents are silent on this. Why?
Perhaps because Bush is not the President any more. Remember: Your man won. And he won because he is very, very “slick” – so much so that Bill Clinton seems like Joe Biden by comparison. Obama has created an image of himself as a great conciliator, and many Americans–including Mike McG–have accepted that image as reality. When he then rescinds pro-life policies and appoints abortion extremists to high office, we are told that critics of his choices are being ungenerous and attributing evil motives to this broad-minded leader. Believe me, this guy will get FOCA–and he’ll have Catholics begging to kiss the hand that held the pen he uses to sign it.
Perhaps because Bush is not the President any more.
OK. Why were they silent while he was President?
OK. Why were they silent while he was President?
If I promised to spit on President Bush the next time we secretly meet to plot more torture in the Middle East, would you stop accusing every pro-life Catholic you meet of being a toady for his administration and talk instead about what President Obama and his sycophant Catholic followers are doing to discredit the authoritative teachings of our Church on the responsibility of public officials to protect human life?
Ron,
You are a little difficult to discuss President Obama with, as your criticism tends to be intangibles, speculations, the President’s influence over the evolution of social attitudes, his slickness, images, etc.
But I will say this, opposition to the Mexico City Policy is not the authoritive teaching of any church I belong to.
Kurt, what does your church have to say about the responsibility of public officials to protect human life from the moment of conception? Mine speaks to it in section 2273 of the Catechism:
“The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority. These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin. Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being’s right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death.”
Funding Planned Parenthood’s effort to promote abortion world-wide is not explicitly mentioned, but I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to think that would not be in line with this.
ron,
Let me put it in its simplest terms, leaving out presidents. Why is it an outrage to fund some of International Planned Parenthood’s non-abortion services, but apparently not an outrage to fund non-abortion services of Planned Parenthood in the United States? I know, of course, that many pro-lifers hate Planned Parenthood and would like to see it get no government funds. But almost every pro-life comment I have heard about the rescinding of the Mexico City Policy has said the US government is now funding abortions overseas. Why aren’t they saying the US government is funding abortions at home?
The answer, I will suggest, is that people in general accept the idea that funding one thing an organization does is not equal to funding everything it does. They accept it when it comes to funding Planned Parenthood in the United States, and they accept it when it comes “faith based initiatives” and government funding for Catholic (and other religious) schools and hospitals.
. . . the authoritative teachings of our Church on the responsibility of public officials to protect human life
Exactly what are those teachings, and more importantly, how authoritative are they? The Church’s teachings on abortion are very ancient and very authoritative. How old, and how authoritative, are the teachings of the church on the obligations of an American president?
Kurt:
How would one proceed if s/he believes that advocacy for legal restrictions on abortion is an essential (necessary but not sufficient) component of a faith response to abortion…and yet attempts at conversation are routinely discredited due to the past bad behavior of a movement that shares the same advocacy position?
Ron:
How would one proceed if s/he believed that significant legal restrictions on abortion are categorically infeasible in the current environment and that, in fact, continued focus on that track effectively derails progress that could be made on other tracks?
Kurt:
How would one proceed if s/he believes that advocacy for legal restrictions on abortion is an essential (necessary but not sufficient) component of a faith response to abortion…and yet attempts at conversation are routinely discredited due to the past bad behavior of a movement that shares the same advocacy position?
Preface your attempt at conversation by stating your support or opposition to a specific legislative proposal currently under consideration. Avoid at all costs dwelling on the moral status of (or the appropriateness of social interaction with) persons who are “mixed bags” according to the principles of your faith. Use reason and logic rather than threats of sacramental denial. Accept the reality that the legislative process is complex and that reasonable and sincere people can disagree as to tactics, means, and the principles of law.
In summary, focus on the issue, not on personalities. Those are my thoughts, anyway.
Kurt: Helpful. Moves us forward. Thanks, Mike McG…
I think it’s helpful to see who is cheering the loudest over the abortion-related decisions of the Obama administration. A gushy tribute to Obama’s 100 days on the NARAL website is echoed in the apologetic comments found here on Vox Nova and on the Commonweal/America blogs. Obama’s Catholic groupies clearly agree with NARAL president Nancy Keenan that where baby-butchering is concerned, “Americans are tired of the antagonistic politics of the past.”
When Obama signs FOCA, I’m sure you’ll tell us that doesn’t matter either, and besides, he said he really agonized over it, and besides, Bush was a very bad man who never sounded half that good. By then, maybe almost everybody in America will agree with you . . . except the dead babies, but then, dead babies are losers, just like pro-life Catholics.
Ron, it grieves me to read this for several reasons.
First of all, you are right to say that in the last analysis it IS about the unborn lives extinguished.
Secondly, because I hear the deep frustration of one who feels that his most profound beliefs are the subject of ridicule. Sadly, that does happen regularly in comboxes of all persuasions. It sometimes seems that they are the perfect venue for mockery. One don’t have to look the person mocked in the face.
Finally, as a weary fellow veteran of seamless garment advocacy, I believe your rhetoric feeds right into the hands of those who would dismiss your core beliefs out of hand. It is no betrayal of the unborn to distinguish between a moral judgment on abortion and a legal response. It is no betrayal to adknowledge that the matter of legal proscription is complicated.
Obama’s Catholic groupies clearly agree with NARAL president Nancy Keenan that where baby-butchering is concerned, “Americans are tired of the antagonistic politics of the past.”
I agree with Nancy Keenan that regarding abortion policy, the bulk of the American public is tired of the antagonistic politics of the past. She is politically wise to see this tiredness and maneuver her organization to take advantage of public opinion.
Having said that, I am well aware of the fact that if Nancy Keenan said “I think it is going to rain tomorrow.” and I said I agreed with her, there are those who would be getting by excommunication papers in order before nightfall.