The Obama Watch
An Abortion Extremist in Moderate Clothing
Obama has a funny way of finding common ground on abortion.
One of President Obama’s frequent refrains is that Americans need to come together on the abortion issue. Unfortunately, he’s done nothing to make that happen.
At his controversial Notre Dame commencement address, Obama talked up drafting “a sensible conscience clause” and ensuring “that all of our health care policies are grounded in clear ethics and sound science, as well as respect for the equality of women.”
It’s an approach close to the one pushed by pro-choice politicians for decades — keep abortion safe, legal, and rare. Let’s look for common ground, they say, and agree to disagree on the rest.
If that’s Obama’s standard, why has he opposed even the most common sense pro-life legislation? From partial-birth abortion bans to parental consent laws, Obama and his pro-choice allies have done their best to block and impede anything and everything pro-life, including the most low-level restrictions.
One of the most glaring examples is a bill in Congress that would require abortionists to give women a chance to see an ultrasound image of their unborn child prior to an abortion. The measure doesn’t compel women to view the image — it simply provides the option.
House liberals, those alleged champions of free choice, have obstructed an up or down vote on the bill. If abortion supporters truly seek common ground with pro-lifers, what better place to start than by giving women more information to make a better educated decision about the fate of their unborn child?
An ultrasound bill would aid Obama’s goal of making abortion less common, since research indicates that women are more likely to choose life when they see an image of their child in the womb. But it’s precisely because the bill would reduce abortions that liberals oppose it. Their goal isn’t to cut down on the number of procedures, and never has been. Rather, it’s to ensure that abortion-on-demand is uninhibited.
That attitude is in contrast to the prevailing viewpoint of the American people. A widely publicized Gallup poll in May found that, for the first time since Gallup started the poll in 1995, a majority of Americans identify as “pro-life.”
Even more damning, a Harris survey from late 2008 found that 88 percent of respondents favored providing women with information on the procedure and alternatives prior to an abortion. Requiring abortionists to make available an ultrasound image would tally with that goal.
For all his speechifying about the importance of science, Obama is an anti-science advocate when it comes to ultrasounds. As a Fox News article suggests, one of the reasons more Americans view themselves as pro-life might be thanks to ultrasound technology, which presents a window into the womb unimaginable when the U.S. Supreme Court concocted a constitutional right to abortion in Roe v. Wade.
In other words, popular opinion is changing thanks to scientific advancement. Specialists today know more than ever about how unborn life develops. Given the opposition of social leftists to any ultrasound bill, it appears they’re wishing these new technologies had never been developed.
If the president wants to extend an olive branch to the other side, what better way than to back legislation that would help women make a better-informed choice? Looking at Obama’s record in the Illinois Senate and, later, United States Senate gives a solid answer. Aside from a few rhetorical bones thrown to pro-lifers, Obama has never made an effort to find concrete common ground on the issue. Just the opposite, in fact.
Even on pro-life bills that a significant majority of Americans support — such as a ban on partial-birth abortion and protections for infants born alive after botched abortions—Obama has sided with the most extreme pro-abortion lawmakers.
If that’s common ground, I’d hate to see the other thing.
About the Author
David N. Bass is a journalist who writes from the Old North State. Follow him on Twitter.
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Appleby| 6.10.09 @ 7:06AM
Obama, in his University Sophomore certainty, believes that he is smarter than everyone and that therefore he is entitled, and he alone, to decide for a woman what *choice* she has and what she should be forced to choose.
How do you expect to reduce the population to *sustainable* levels if you arent allowed to kill as many people, born and unborn, as possible?
There is an obnoxious commercial running up here (ostensibly arguing for the necessity of a real estate broker over your mother in law) showing a busybody MIL hustling her son and daughter in law toward a large stand-alone home that they do not wan to buy. *We want a condo, Mom* says the angry daughter. *I told you before,* says the patronizing MIL, *YOU DONT WANT A CONDO!* She then extols the virtues of the house -- lots of bedrooms, and a French immersion school around the corner. *We dont have children,* says the fuming daughter in law. Through her teeth says the MIL, *I KNOW.*
This is Obamas idea of compromise. When the woman says *I want this baby,* the exasperated Obamination says, *I have already told you, YOU DONT WANT A BABY!*
That is what I hear every time the antichrist opens his mouth.
Jon B| 3.13.10 @ 6:18AM
Obama's restoring of funds for pregnancy prevention measures in the world's poorest countries reduced abortions by 10's of millions in the next 8 years. Republicans lie about the Mexico City Policy by falsely claiming it funds abortions, etc. It's been illegal for US $'s to fund abortions overseas since 1973, but we DO fund pregnancy prevention measures, emergency field birth kits, etc.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_wrld.htm
1993: Repeal of the funding ban: President Clinton felt that private, foreign organizations should be able to receive USAID funding for that part of their programs that involved pregnancy prevention, even though they used their funds raised elsewhere to finance abortions or to appeal for abortion reform. On 1993-JAN-22, his second day in office, he rescinded the executive order.
2001: Reinstatement of the funding ban: On 2001-JAN-22, during his first day in office, President George W. Bush reinstated the funding ban for family planning programs run by agencies that also provide abortion services out of their own funds. His rationale was somewhat confusing. He wrote to the U.S. Agency for International Development: "It is my conviction that taxpayer funds should not be used to pay for abortions or advocate or actively promote abortion, either here or abroad." But no such funds have ever been granted. Existing legislation prevents foreign grants from being used to fund abortions or provide abortion counseling.
http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0126-05.htm
January 26, 2001: Family planning research groups, such as the Alan Guttmacher Institute, last year said that if US funding levels were restored to the $540 million (from $425 million), the following would happen: Nearly 12 million more couples in developing countries would gain access to modern methods of contraception.
There would be 4.3 million fewer unintended pregnancies, 1.5 million fewer unintended births, 500,000 fewer miscarriages; 2.2 million fewer abortions each year; 8,000 fewer deaths from unsafe abortions, 7,000 fewer deaths from other causes related to pregnancy and 92,000 fewer deaths of infants.
Bush cut funding on 1-22-2001, then cut it some more in 2002, so it was roughly 1/2 or just over $200 million. However, some of it was restored because of his 2003 Africa/Aids program, which he didn't fully fund either. Bush cut aids funding completely in early 2001, and dropped another program in Congress (around $800K more) too. then restarted the program 2 years later promising roughly the same $ amount he prevented in the first place.
Interloper| 6.10.09 @ 7:38AM
Women can seek out ultrasounds of their fetuses on their own if that is something they are interested in doing. Most women seeking abortions already know the basic biology of pregnancy. The proposed legislation is a thinly concealed effort to browbeat women seeking abortions. It should be rejected.
Darin| 6.10.09 @ 8:03AM
Abortion. The termination of a human life without the consent or even knowledge of the individual killed.
Until abortion supporters completely acknowledge this fact, there can be no "common ground."
Jeremiah| 6.10.09 @ 8:10AM
The muslim Joker really fooled you all! What a disgrace, what a sorry excuse for a president! This grinning teleprompted traitor makes me puke!
Prester John| 6.10.09 @ 8:37AM
As the husband of an sonographer with over 30 years of experience who has shared many an ultrasound picture and story with me, I can guarantee you that the pro-abortionists want nothing to do with women seeing their unborn children via an ultrasound, for you see when the mother can see their child sucking its thumb, can make out its fingers and toes, can see its hair waving in the amnioic fluid and that it has its grandfather's nose , more likely than not the mother's attitude towards abortion will change drastically.
And that change in attitude just might hurt Planned Parenthood's bottom line and its campaign contributions to the pro-abortionists in local, state and federal office, and we can't have that now, can we?
M. T. Wallitt| 6.10.09 @ 9:09AM
Interloper, the folks at Planned Parenthood and other abortion mills have been telling women for decades that the baby in the womb, which they dehumanize by calling a "fetus," is nothing more than a blob of tissue. Sonograms prove that is a lie.
Some people who believe that some common ground can be reached say, "If you don't approve of abortion, don't have one." But my not aborting my baby does nothing to save any of the estimated 3,000 who are aborted in America on any given day. I wonder if those same people would have said in 1850, "If you don't approve of slavery, don't own slaves."
The common-ground crowd also seems to do all they can to prevent funding and support for centers that help women facing unplanned pregnancies. Just ask any of those centers in New York state, where the former governor, Spitzer, joined with pro-abortion forces in trying to close them down. If we're all supposed to be about giving women a choice, why try to close down the centers that give them assistance when they choose to let their babies live?
Robert Mandraccia MD | 6.10.09 @ 9:10AM
I am always amazed at how the liberal media quickly reports on deaths in war zones, of men and women who VOLUNTEERED to go there. But nary a mention of the 3000 deaths PER DAY at the hands of the abortion crowd. Wonder how many of those so-called mothers are anti-war??50 million dead and still counting and the NY Times has front page coverage of Iraq death tolls!!
Louis Jenkins| 6.10.09 @ 9:12AM
Common ground on the abortion issue? Human life is just that, and death is just that too. Who is being brow beaten? The mother or the unborn? Public funds assist in a majority of abortions, why should it not pay for an ultrasound? Abortion is an "effective medical procedure" and you can be assured it will receive instant approval under the Obamacare plan. Well, almost effective. A plastic bag can suffice when the aborted fetus doesn't immediately expire, but it's cost effective too. There may be issues that have common ground. Abortion is not one of them. If abortion is such a common ground issue, then let's discuss sterilization of 'useless eaters'. It has a lot of common ground too.
Jerry| 6.10.09 @ 9:36AM
They sometimes go in laughing, they often come out crying; if anything, they are browbeaten INTO the abortion. "It's just a lump of tissue", "This is just a simple procedure", "Take these pills and your 'problem' will be solved", etc. Those who promote 'choice' are concerned with only the 'proper' choice, and their opposition to ANY such non-compulsory measures is, at best, a thinly concealed effort to ensure that women abort their children. Besides, they still have the remainder of the nine months to 'solve their problem'. Is an informed 'choice' really that threatening?!
JerseyJ| 6.10.09 @ 9:56AM
Interloper - "... The proposed legislation is a thinly concealed effort to browbeat women seeking abortions... "
From which they need the protection of the ever helpful and always reasonable pro-deathies? I think not.
If it truly is a "choice" then shouldn't it be an informed one? Surely you have no objection to providing information helpful in making a "choice". If you're scared that women are only getting pro-life information, perhaps you should counter by giving more information about the other "choice" that's available. After all, the more information the better right? Every vivid detail of the procedure. Perhaps that will help balance things since libbies always feel the need for their own version of equity.
You speak volumes when you say "women seeking abortions" and not "women seeking to make a choice". You've predisposed all women faced with a "choice" to choosing abortion over life. This is a prime example of libbie-logic and it's wrong. As the "choice" becomes more informed it becomes clear that it really isn't a "choice" at all, it's human life.
On a side note, your statement "Women can seek out ultrasounds of their fetuses on their own if that is something they are interested in doing" won't be valid much longer once we get the socialized health-care rationing of Mr. ObaMarx.
KyMouse| 6.10.09 @ 11:50AM
I've recommended to a lot of pro-abortion people that they visit www.yourdevelopingbaby.com, and click on the "peek inside the book" tab to see the incredible sonograms of babies stretching, yawning and even "boxing" in the womb. The 3-D sonograms are especially amazing.
The point about encouraging women to look at the sonograms of their babies isn't to make them more distressed or frightened, but to give them one last chance to choose life for their babies before the abortionist starts to work. The temporary angst of the mother is miniscule compared to what her baby will lose forever. And for many women, making that terrible, irrevocable choice to kill their baby is something from which they themselves never recover.
ds80| 6.10.09 @ 1:08PM
Interloper: "Women can seek out ultrasounds of their fetuses on their own if that is something they are interested in doing. "
Using your argument: women seeking an abortion can pay for it and all related services themselves, and not have federal or state funding of Planned Parenthood, etc. ... but I'm assure the ProDEATH crowd wouldn't agree to that.
Answer these question if you have the courage:
* how many babies is it OK to kill?
* what "choice" is given to the innocent, defenseless baby?
The intellectual dishonesty of pro-"choice" proponents is not even "thinly concealed". It is glaring and starkly patent.
Pat| 6.10.09 @ 1:08PM
"Geez, we've killed an awful lot of babies" - maybe that realization is driving the poll numbers or maybe Americans are just tired of hearing the more gruesome details of the abortion industry. Who knows? But as the most prolific child killers in history, we're not about to change current practices.
And there are a number of reasons why we won't change. Men don't have abortions, it's a woman's choice remember, so why bother to poll the males? We will also need abortions for medical research purposes. Embryonic stem cell research can't provide a universal stem cell cure, cures must be tailored to the specific patient, immune system rejections require it. You can't do ESC like a blood bank where volunteers give blood which can be used for patients at some future date, and even with blood there is a question of what your blood type is before the transfusion. Embryonic stem cells are far more complicated and will require one or several abortions to determine if the stem cells will actually be accepted by your body. The embryos will be carried by hosts and then aborted to check the compatability with your immune system at different stages of embryonic development. Embryonic stem cells can easily kill you so no medical practitioners or scientists are currently volunteering to be guinea pigs, they know better. With research abortions, a custom fit is much safer and more likely to occur.
Will Americans sanction research abortions in order to have miracle cures from stem cells - yes, in a heartbeat. We'll even develop an entire mythology designed by the media, the govt. and Hollywood to rationalize why such practices aren't necessarily wrong.
As the Boomers age, the loss of 50 million aborted Americans is becoming a generational curse. Who will pay for their retirements, those golden years of retirement leisure they believe they were promised? Too late it has become obvious that abortion wasn't an issue which only affected the mother and her medical team, the abortions in the past not only killed the unborn, it will likely kill the old as well when not enough Americans are generating the wealth to sustain their medical costs and their monthly welfare payments from Social Security.
Griff| 6.10.09 @ 1:14PM
The death of Dr. Tiller? Consider it a very, very late-term abortion.
Denise| 6.10.09 @ 4:04PM
Interloper: Had I been "browbeaten" decades ago, I would now be the mother of two children instead of one. I do not know one woman who has had an abortion - no matter how recently or how long ago - who does not rue the day she had the abortion, and who does not know she killed her own child. There are many things for which one can make amends. Abortion is not one of them.
Nick| 6.10.09 @ 5:38PM
Denise,
I offer my prayers for you and your children.
It is the witness of victims such as yourself that will eventually end abortion in society. Just like Christianity ended it centuries ago.
Remember, God forgives all, just ask Him.
God Bless!
Deacon Righteous| 6.10.09 @ 5:57PM
Abortion is a sin. Since it involves the murder of children, it is one of the gravest of offenses one could commit.
Those who condone it with their votes are condoning evil...In fact, they are participating in it.
Come judgment day, all those who have had abortions, who openly support abortions, and who condone it with their votes will be asked to explain their votes to God...And he will have NO patience for their idiotic rationalizations.
Hopefully, the fate of those who have performed abortions, like the late, unlamented Dr. Tiller will be equal to his crimes...Perhaps Dante's vision was correct...Perhaps he (Tiller) nd those like him will be pulled apart, limb-from-limb, for eternity...Or eternally have scissors shoved into the backs of their skulls as their brains are siphoned out into an Ehrlenmeyer flask...
Kind of gives you a shiver, doesn't it?
Gill O’Teen ✝✡| 6.10.09 @ 8:26PM
We all saw the lunacy of the left last summer when Sarah Palin was picked to be john-boy’s veep. Turned out she had exercised her freedom of choice, but, my goodness, she chose to let her baby live. So the only possible conclusion is that ‘choice’ is simple liberal linguistic sleight-of-hand and is a synonym for ‘kill-the-baby’. How else can their reaction to Governor Palin’s ‘choice’ be explained?
Killer Tiller became a multi-millionaire by executing about 60,000 babies. That pretty much says it all right there. Yet the loony lefties scream and holler that terrorists just might have been forced to endure some fleeting discomfort. Meanwhile, late-term abortionists are becoming wealthy sucking the brains out of the freshly punctured skulls of otherwise viable children.
Stephen | 6.10.09 @ 11:22PM
We kill our young and call this heinous act,"freedom of choice."
See the victims slaughtered by abortion at:
http://www.AbortionNo.org.
JB| 6.11.09 @ 12:23AM
A truly weird country, the US of A, where 'most everyone thinks it right to kill adults (I think you call it "execution") but shock horror at the death of a barely sentient (or pre-sentient) blob of cells (I said it!!) that has no hopes or dreams to be disappointed, and has no family or friends to weep for it (well, few anyway) and which, most importantly of all, will not suffer at the thought, expectation, fear of death. What comes through of course is the religious bigotry of it all. Those who claim to be Xtian determined to believe in the right to life of the unborn - cf the born - and of course now persuading themselves that Obama is a Moslem and somehow forgetting that Moslems are just as anti-abortion as they are. What a strange, distorting lens through which you (you know who you are) see the world. I know, not all everyone over there suffers from this religio-conservative insanity, but so many do. Weird.
3daysoff | 6.11.09 @ 7:25AM
I've recommended to a lot of pro-abortion people that they visit www.yourdevelopingbaby.com
June11| 6.11.09 @ 8:54AM
Pro-Life and Abortion: a Christian abuse problem all over again
Pro-Lifers should be forced to look at abortion the way Catholics were forced to look at the symptoms of sexual abuse. Symptoms were not the main problem to be solved but a sign of a deeper issue. Symptoms of the victims of priest sexual abuse include but are not limited to: suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, and social withdraw. Women, who are abused - sexually, psychologically, and emotionally - exhibit similar behaviors and often turn to abortion.
Pro-Lifers are ignoring the abuse of women the same way Catholics ignored the abuse of children by priests. The Church never wanted to admit or investigate that there was an underlying abuse problem. Pro-Lifers don’t want to admit or investigate an underlying problem either. Pro-Lifers need to admit something is wrong in society the same way Catholics had to admit something was wrong in their church.
Also, Catholics blamed the children for the symptoms of abuse. It was double abuse. Pro-Lifers do the same. They blame women for exhibiting symptoms of abuse. If Pro-Lifers really want to be Pro-Life, they need to help stop the abuse just like the Catholic Church helped stop the abuse. Then and only then will abortions will be reduced and eventually stop.
In the meantime, when I think of a Pro-Lifer I think of them as a person who would turn their back on abuse in the Church and create an environment in which normally healthy children turn to suicide. People are turning their back on abuse toward women and normally healthy women are turning to abortion.
Making abortion illegal won’t solve the problem. Women will only turn to back-street abortion providers in the same way abused Christian children found ways to commit suicide.
KyMouse| 6.11.09 @ 11:30AM
June 11, I'm not sure what "abuse" you're talking about, concerning abortion. I will point out that abortion is used to hide the crime of incest -- the father of the incest victim coerces her into aborting his baby, thus getting rid of the evidence of the crime. That is indeed abuse -- of both the mother and the baby.
Many mothers who abort their babies turn toward alcohol or drugs for comfort, and some punish themselves with injury or suicide. I think women (and babies) deserve better than abortion -- don't you?
M. T. Wallitt| 6.11.09 @ 11:45AM
Speaking of abuse, June 11, did you know that a 2001 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association said that pregnant women are more likely to be victims of homicide than to die of any other cause? In a related report, 64% of women surveyed said that they were pressured by others to abort their babies, and 40% said that abuse and relationship problems were the reason they felt pressured to abort. So much for freedom of choice!
And concerning back-alley abortions, did you know that the federal government had records of only 39 maternal deaths from abortion in 1972, the year before Roe v. Wade? More than 350 women have died at the hands of abortionists since then -- to read about two of them, Google "Lou Ann Herron" and "Synthia Dennard." Synthia's abortionist was supposed to "tie her tubes" after aborting her baby, but he cut out a piece of an artery instead.
Many pro-lifers support states' rights to execute criminals because they understand that people who choose to commit murder are different from innocent babies in the womb. Babies are aborted without recourse to legal defense or legal appeal; inmates on death row often have access to decades of appeals. Killers choose to kill; babies never choose to be aborted.
JRS| 6.11.09 @ 8:28PM
I'll start off w/ a positive regarding the Comrade in Chief. I do agree that our main goal has to be reducing the number of abortions and open to all suggestions in doing that, including adoption, birth control, etc... I also will admit while it is a great talking point for many conservative politicians, unfortunately for too many that is all it is. In that regard, many conservative politicians are all too similar to Obama (i.e. opportunists who in the end only care about being reelected -- hey the only good politician is....). To truely reduce and eventually eliminate this true travesty is to get sincere about the problem, put in good judges (not happening any time soon), work with sincere liberals who actually want to reduce the problems, as well as continue to fight for tougher laws. Finally, for anyone who thinks abortion is no big problem, they might want to actually look at the numbers. According to AGI statistics from accessed at www.nrlc.org, there were 1.2 million abortions in 2005. While this only represents 1.2/300=0.4% of the population, if you figure there are approximately 51 million women between the ages of 15 and 40 (call it a proxy for child bearing women), we multiply 25 (39-15) * 1.2 / 51 = 59%. That means statistically, a woman has a 59% chance of an abortion over her lifetime. Obviously these statistics are skewed by the woman who has had 5, but these numbers should be frightening none the less.
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digg » Blog Archive » Roundup: Operation Rescue President Wants to Purchase Tiller’s links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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Steynian 363 « Free Canuckistan! links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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