Granted that NOW and others have held this position for a while, but it wasn’t enough of a priority to put it in the platform until now. There has been language about health care and poverty alleviation in the platform, obviously, but never related specifically to abortion or to the right to support in childbearing.

I don’t want to overstate the case here — the platform’s embrace of the violence of abortion is awful. But the platform is better for the work of pro-life Democrats than it otherwise would have been. It has more support for women and more emphasis on nonviolent alternatives to abortion.

Obama comes across to me as someone who is fair-minded enough to respect that people of good will differ with his abortion stance, but who nonetheless hasn’t thought hard enough about the arguments against abortion to *really* get why they differ. I think that’s why his statement about the “moral difficulties and gravity” of abortion is so muddy. I don’t know that he could sit down and relate the most compelling pro-life arguments, in the language that a pro-lifer would use. Actually, that’s another question I’d like to ask him.

Obama doesn’t sound condescending and contemptuous to my ears, at least. A lot of prochoicers really do feel not personally qualified to answer the question “When does life begin?” That’s why they feel they should not “impose” their views on the matter on other people, especially pregnant women in horrible difficulties.

Prolifers often misread this as an evasive and in the case of politicians particularly, a cynical tactic, but for many prochoicers, including Obama in all likelihood, this is their heartfelt stance and we need to recognize and respect the valid ethical impulse behind it.

Not wanting to order other people around, especially their sexual and reproductive lives is a basically good impulse…it’s just that the legal and ethical paradigms of imposing and submitting to authority are not very good ones for dealing with abortion, which is a matter of taking life, often out of desperate circumstances.

It really, really frosts me when prochoicers assume “those antichoicers don’t care about anyone after they’re born.” because that is such a blatant and paranoid misreading of the aspirations that many prolfiers, including moi and all present company, i trust, struggle to live by.

well, i think this is one of those points on which prolifers similarly misread prochoicers, with the same unfortunate consequences of misunderstanding and alienation….

and the more prolifers and prochoicers misunderstand and alienate one another, the less both “sides” can join together and cooperate on shared reproductive justice concerns.

that is, the less we will be able to alleviate the root causes of abortion—which in the end matters more to the fates of women and children, unborn and born, than whether and to what extent abortion is legal/illegal.

“NOW supports the right of women to have children, including appropriate pre-natal care and quality child care. We oppose government efforts to limit or discourage childbearing, such as family caps and involuntary sterilization.”

This was NOW’s position before the new language was added to the Democratic platform, so to ascribe the milder language in the platform as an attempt to moderate between pro-choice and pro-life forces doesn’t hold water.

Obama’s “above my pay grade” quip demonstrates his refusal to actually engage pro-life arguments. I don’t think he realizes how condescending and contemptuous he seems to pro-lifers.