Change looses era of extremes

The News Virginian
Published: October 29, 2008

Support of abortion is the vow Democrats keep when forsaking all others. For the opposition party, the issue is a charm carried in a pocket, an assurance grasped when needed but otherwise forgotten. Only Reagan’s presidency was more conservative than Clinton’s in the post-Kennedy era, but while the man from Hope betrayed liberal ideals as though married to them, his fidelity to the abortion lobby never wavered. Now comes the man from Chicago.

Barack Obama appeared Tuesday in routine ethereal splendor at the JMU Convocation Center in Harrisonburg, where he rifled through a mental library of soaring rhetoric and dispensed pieces like Halloween candy: “In one week, it will be hope over fear, change over status quo.” In the reflexive manner of a patient tapped on the knee, the crowd roared. Knees don’t ask why, and neither do some Obama supporters.

Among the changes Obama would bring is the Freedom of Choice Act, legislation that would sweep aside abortion restrictions, such as those requiring parental consent, while likely leading to increased federal funding for the procedure. Asked during August’s Saddleback Forum to identify the point at which life begins, Obama declared the question “above my pay grade.” But specificity does not elude on the subject of the most far-reaching abortion legislation in American history: “The first thing I’d do as president,” Obama said last year at a Planned Parenthood gathering, “is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.”

Though Obama ducks tough votes the way boxing great Muhammad Ali slipped jabs, his fealty to abortion groups has been like that of a serf to a lord. This was most prominently evinced by his opposition as an Illinois state senator to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which would have accorded legal rights to babies who showed “signs of life” after an abortion. A nurse prompted the bill after sharing publicly her mortification over being ordered by a doctor to dispose of an infant who initially survived an abortion.

Obama, whose cool melts in the heat of unpleasant truths, charged that the National Right to Life Committee lied when it accused him of “supporting infanticide,” citing his no votes on Born Alive. He contended that he would have supported the bill had it contained Roe vs. Wade protections similar to those included in a federal bill signed by President Bush. In fact, Obama voted in committee against state legislation almost identical to the federal law.

It is common for leftists to accuse Republicans of being beholden to the religious right on the subject of abortion. This is true to an extent. Republicans court that group’s votes. But their loyalty frays upon entry into office. Half of six justices appointed to the Supreme Court by Reagan and President George H.W. Bush tilted toward Roe. Under Bush the 43rd, who has appointed constructionist justices, federal money for Planned Parenthood has increased.

As Christians drift from single-issue voting habits – or so pollsters tell us – Democrats clutch single-issue loyalty, a trend Obama figures to break only by venturing deeper into socialism than Clinton dreamed. Regarding abortion, the extremism of which Republicans and their base long have been accused fits Democrats like the neatly tailored suits worn by the future messiah-in-chief.

Inimitable conservative columnist George F. Will once opined that a president could neither save legalized abortion nor end it, that even a right-leaning Supreme Court might be unwilling to overturn Roe because of its ingrained status in American culture. Perhaps all of this is correct. But Obama appears not only bent on saving Roe but on shattering reasonable restrictions, which many Americans support.

Recognizing this, Obama brushes aside accountability for his record, though he can be expected as president to further it. This disturbs us on both counts. Obama’s actions as president on the issue of abortion could prove to be the first among measures reaching extremes without precedent.