reproductive choice

The New York Times' Adam Nagourney has a piece in today's paper claiming that the "the issue of gay marriage may be turning into more of a hindrance than a help" for the Republican Party. 

Citing a recent poll showing that 57 percent of those under the age 40 said they support marriage equality, Nagourney says it suggests to "many Republicans that the potency of the gay-marriage question is on the decline." He then quotes three Republicans, the first being Steve Schmidt, John McCain's senior strategist during his presidential campaign.

Schmidt recently came out in favor of marriage equality, so it is no surprise that he thinks the GOP should re-examine its stance on the issue. But, as Timothy Potter of the Family Research Council put it, Steve Schmidt isn’t exactly speaking for the majority of the party these days:

Steve Schmidt isn’t the head of the GOP. But I don’t doubt that there are others in the GOP establishment who think like him, and I don’t care. The GOP should do what it thinks is best for itself. I don’t think abandoning a third of your base is necessarily a good idea.

The article also contains a quote from Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty:

Asked if he thought, given recent events, that Republicans were making a political mistake in emphasizing gay issues, Mr. Pawlenty, who is 48, responded: “I think it’s an important issue for our conservative voters.” But he notably did not dwell on the subject.

Apparently, because he didn't "dwell" on the topic, that somehow suggests that the party as a whole is undergoing some sort of shift.

Finally, Nagourney quotes Rudy Giuliani of all people, saying that voters are more concerned with issues like the economy and national security and don't really care about social issues right now:

“Right now, people are not concerned about issues like gay marriage because they are concerned about the economy,” Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former Republican mayor of New York, told reporters in Albany after meeting with Republican members of the state Senate, who are opposing legislation to legalize gay marriage.

Mr. Giuliani explained that he opposed gay marriage — while supporting civil unions — but that he did not think it made much sense for Republicans to be harping on the issue if the party had any serious interest in returning to power.

“The Republican party does best organizing itself around economic issues and issues of national security,” said Mr. Giuliani, 64, who ran for president last year and is now thinking about running for governor of New York.

It should be pointed out that Giuliani might not be a particularly good representation of just what the Republican Party thinks about anything, considering that he spent $60 million seeking the GOP nomination last year and dropped out after securing a whopping one delegate. His campaign tanked thanks, in part, to right-wing threats to abandon the GOP should he become the nominee because of his views on the issue of marriage and reproductive choice.

While polls may show that the GOP's anti-gay views are becoming less popular with voters, especially younger voters, there is still a long way to go before the party itself abandons its traditional stance on the issue ... and considering that the Religious Right would rather see the party destroyed than allow that to happen, it's unlikely that any such a massive shift will be happening any time soon.

I have already written too many posts about Concerned Women for America’s Wendy Wright and her involvement with the White House’s Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, both in meetings and on conference calls, noting the disconnect between that Obama administration’s assertion that the efforts are aimed at finding ways to reduce the need for abortion and Wright’s insistence that there is no such need. But since she keeps making this point, I feel it is important to keep hammering away at it.

The latest comes from this WorldNetDaily column by anti-abortion activist Jill Stanek in which she declares there is no need for her side to seek common ground or compromise on the issue because they are winning:

If America is as pro-abortion as the other side likes to say, there is absolutely no reason to "reduce the need for abortion." So don't let them gloss over this point. Stick on it. Solutions can't be determined without understanding the problem. What exactly is the problem with abortion?

If they state the problems are merely financial or inconvenience, they lose, because they alienate the vast unwashed they are trying to woo by denying what the vast unwashed consistently polls it knows: Abortion is the taking of a human life.

If they admit there is a moral problem with abortion, they lose by opening a can of worms with both the public and the abortion industry. The next question obviously is, "What is the moral problem with abortion?" And they never ever want to be pinned into going there.

(And by the way, as CWA President Wendy Wright wrote me, don't use their terminology. "Say 'number' rather than 'need,' because 'need' is subjective, whereas 'number of abortions' is quantifiable," stated Wright.)

…

Always remember, the ones seeking compromise know they are losing, and Obama knows his radical pro-abortion position is a loser.

Ignoring the illogical assertion that the anti-choice position is a winning one, the key here is Wright’s insistence that they never recognize any sort of “need” for abortion, which allows them to push for regulations and restrictions on access to reproductive health services without having to accept the necessity of family planning services and sex ed.

If you need further proof that Wright has absolutely no intention of seeking any sort of compromise or consensus on this issue, you need look no further than her assertion that Dawn Johnsen’s nomination to be Assistant Attorney General for the Office of the Legal Counsel must be stopped because of her past work with NARAL:

Wendy Wright, the head of Concerned Women for America, told LifeNews.com that Obama's selection reveals a lot about his pro-abortion views and that Johnsen should be disqualified because of her work with a leading abortion advocacy group.

“NARAL’s obsession with abortion skews its legal positions, blinding it to the Constitution’s equal protection for all human beings," she said. "The fact that Ms. Johnsen worked for NARAL is a huge black mark against her judgment and exposes her bias."

"Americans will not be able to trust that Department of Justice’s legal opinions or Obama’s executive orders comply with the Constitution when the lead person for making that judgment is incapable of treating all human beings with respect," she added.

In essence, Wright is declaring that anyone with whom she disagrees should be barred from working for the government because they have demonstrated that their judgment cannot be trusted by virtue of the fact that they don’t share her right-wing views about reproductive rights..

Good luck finding common ground on with someone who holds this view.

I’ve already written several posts about the meeting last week Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council, and other right-wing groups and Joshua DuBois, head of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, at the White House.

The topic of the meeting was abortion reduction and, as I pointed out repeatedly, there is a key difference between “the need to reduce abortions” and “reducing the need for abortion.”  CWA does not recognize that there is ever a “need” for abortion and is fundamentally opposed to things like family planning and sex ed. CWA’s Wendy Wright has been very clear on their position, saying repeatedly that restrictions and regulation on reproductive choice, coupled with funding for crisis pregnancy centers, are the best ways to reduce abortion. 

Last week, Wright appeared on NPR’s “Tell Me More” where she made this point explicitly, saying there is no such thing as a need for abortion:

There are two phrases that have been used: reducing the number of abortions and reducing the need for abortion. Well, no woman wants an abortion – she has a need, and she thinks the abortion will solve that problem. So what we really need to look at is what are those needs? What is it that she needs help with? Does she need housing? Does she need career support? And providing her needs can help her to make the choice of giving life to her child, which then will result in fewer abortions. So it's important that we look at what are the true needs of women and helping to - helping her with those needs rather than just say, here’s an abortion, end of problem - which is not the end of the problem, it's all just the beginning of many more problems.

The White House’s stated goal is to “reduce the need for abortion,” and working with groups to achieve that is generally only efficient if said groups actually recognize that such a need exists.

We’ve already written a few posts about the upcoming meeting at the White House between Joshua DuBois, head of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and representatives of Concerned Women for America, the Family Research Council, CareNet, and the Christian Medical Association to discuss reproductive choice and related issues.

Today, we learned a little more about how this meeting was arranged and, judging by the remarks made by Wendy Wright of CWA, it’s pretty clear that those who are participating expect this meeting to focus much more on the former than the latter.

Wright explains that it was through her outreach to the White House that the meeting was arranged and that she choose who would attend it with her, saying that when she learned that the administration was committed reducing the need for abortion, she thought “we can help with that, so I contacted the White House and asked for a meeting with the Faith-Based office and invited the other groups to join with me.  We feel that in order for the Obama Administration to be making good policies, to take positions on legislation regarding reducing the need for abortion, they need to have full information, particularly, information on programs and policies that work, that are effective.  And we know what works: putting regulations on abortions; states that have done that see their abortion numbers go down.”

Wright goes on to say that she does not believe that President Obama will attend the meeting, but that they will explain to the administration that pregnancy resource centers are an effective means of reducing abortions and to discuss the “threat to doctors’ and health care workers’ freedom on conscience,” saying that it is vital to protect their “freedom to not do what is wrong”:

On a semi-related note, CWA, FRC, CareNet, and the Christian Medical Association are all part of a new effort called Freedom2Care which is committed to protecting "the federal 'provider conscience' regulation finalized in December 2008 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services" which was "made necessary by a climate of discrimination and pressures directed at healthcare professionals who follow life-affirming ethical standards such as the Hippocratic Oath and the Judeo-Christian Scriptures."

While we're at it, let's re-post this video CWA put out just before the election called "Operation: Rally The Church" in which Wright explained that if Christians didn't vote, "liberals who mock Christians, support abortion on demand and same-sex marriage, and would prefer that America be weak in the world community" would ruin this country, warning that if "citizens ... who love God don't vote, then the people who will be ruling over us in government will continue the slaughter of unborn babies, weaken marriage, and silence those who love God," thus making it imperative for Christians to go to the polls because all those who have died defending this country are putting "their hope in you ... to keep this a country worth living and dying for":

Since setting of a firestorm last week with his heretical comments about homosexuality and reproductive choice, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele is trying to withstand the onslaught of criticism by calling off all television appearances and hunkering down to focus on the nuts and bolts of running the RNC (which, among other things, apparently includes redecorating his office to include a Bowflex.).

But that doesn’t mean that outrage has subsided and, if anything, the criticism appears to be mounting.

Concerned Women for America is blasting him for his “woefully misinformed view of the homosexual lifestyle” while the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins says that if Steele and the GOP are trying to create a “big tent” for the party, they are going to find out it’s nothing but a “empty big tent [if they] keep doing what they're doing."

Matt Barber of the Liberty Council has likewise weighed in, complaining that Steele "sounded like he was on the payroll of Planned Parenthood":

I am starting to wonder whether Michael Steele is on the payroll of the RNC or whether he's on the payroll of the [Democratic National Committee], because that sounds like something that Howard Dean or any spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign or the radical homosexual lobby would have said.

While many on the Right have been harshly critical of Steele, few have gone so far as to openly call for his resignation, as Star Parker has done in her latest column:

From what I see, the Republican National Committee representatives who picked Michael Steele as their new chairman made a mistake. I think Steele ought to step aside … This is not a time when we can muddle through with a leader who is not sure who he is, who is not clear about the principles of his party, and who is not consumed with the importance of the cultural war that we now confront. Mr. Obama certainly knows his own values with clarity and knows exactly what his objectives are … The Republican Party needs a chairman who wants to fight this fight. It seems pretty clear that Michael Steele is not that man.

For its part, the American Family Association is conducting a survey of its activists to see if they think that, in light of remarks, Steele should resign as Chairman of the Republican National Committee” and the results are not looking too good for him considering that nearly 95% of the respondents want to see him step down:

Yes, Michael Steele should resign as Chairman of the Republican National Committee.       78,578

No, Michael Steele should not resign as Chairman of the Republican National Committee.   5,011

It is probably safe to assume that Michael Steele's days as Chairman of the Republican National Committee are numbered now that this new interview from GQ is making the rounds in which he says that he believes that gay people can’t choose to be straight, that women have a right to reproductive choice, and that states should make their own decisions regarding these issues:

Let’s talk about gay marriage. What’s your position?

Well, my position is, hey, look, I have been, um, supportive of a lot of my friends who are gay in some of the core things that they believe are important to them. You know, the ability to be able to share in the information of your partner, to have the ability to—particularly in times of crisis—to manage their affairs and to help them through that as others—you know, as family members or others—would be able to do. I just draw the line at the gay marriage. And that’s not antigay, no. Heck no! It’s just that, you know, from my faith tradition and upbringing, I believe that marriage—that institution, the sanctity of it—is reserved for a man and a woman. That’s just my view. And I’m not gonna jump up and down and beat people upside the head about it, and tell gays that they’re wrong for wanting to aspire to that, and all of that craziness. That’s why I believe that the states should have an opportunity to address that issue.

...

Do you think homosexuality is a choice?

Oh, no. I don’t think I’ve ever really subscribed to that view, that you can turn it on and off like a water tap. Um, you know, I think that there’s a whole lot that goes into the makeup of an individual that, uh, you just can’t simply say, oh, like, “Tomorrow morning I’m gonna stop being gay.” It’s like saying, “Tomorrow morning I’m gonna stop being black.”

So your feeling would be that people are born one way or another.

I mean, I think that’s the prevailing view at this point, and I know that there’s some out there who think that you can absolutely make that choice. And maybe some people have. I don’t know, I can’t say. Until we can give a definitive answer one way or the other, I think we should respect that.

...

How much of your pro-life stance, for you, is informed not just by your Catholic faith but by the fact that you were adopted?

Oh, a lot. Absolutely. I see the power of life in that—I mean, and the power of choice! The thing to keep in mind about it… Uh, you know, I think as a country we get off on these misguided conversations that throw around terms that really misrepresent truth.

Explain that.

The choice issue cuts two ways. You can choose life, or you can choose abortion. You know, my mother chose life. So, you know, I think the power of the argument of choice boils down to stating a case for one or the other.

Are you saying you think women have the right to choose abortion?

Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice.

You do?

Yeah. Absolutely.

Okay, but if you overturn Roe v. Wade, how do women have the choice you just said they should have?

The states should make that choice. That’s what the choice is. The individual choice rests in the states. Let them decide.

Do pro-choicers have a place in the Republican Party?

Absolutely!

The interesting thing about this is that his statements are not really all that different from the positions he defended in the interview he gave to CNS News back in December. Though not as open about these things as he was in GQ, it was clear in the CNS interview that Steele did not ascribe to the GOP's hard-line stances on gays and choice but would support them because they were in the Republican Party Platform.  As I wrote at the time in response to Ken Blackwell's explanation of why he backed Steele:

Steele's embrace of these principles is anything but "authentic" - it is entirely opportunistic. Of all the candidates running for RNC Chairman, Steele is the one most likely "abandon the values and priorities" Blackwell cites because, as Steele freely admits, he doesn't actually agree with them.

Steele's views were well-known before his election as Chairman for the RNC, but given all the criticism he's come under recently, it seems quite likely that this latest dust-up will be enough to topple him from the position he's held for less than two months.

In fact, Ben Smith reports that Steele is already backtracking but it looks like it is too little too late as right-wing activists have already begun piling on:

"I think it is very troubling for a public figure, of either party, particularly one who presents himself as pro-life, to describe the abortion issue as being a matter of 'individual choice,'" That is language straight out of Planned Parenthood's messaging playbook," said Charmaine Yoest, the president and CEO of Americans United for Life Action, who said she hadn't heard from the RNC. "There are millions of pro-life Americans, Republican and Democrat, who are looking for leadership on the life issue and they will find Mr. Steele's comments disturbing and demoralizing."

Another anti-abortion activist and sharp critic of President Barack Obama on the subject, Jill Stanek, was even blunter.

"Michael Steele has just unmistakably proclaimed himself to be pro-choice," she said in an email. "You thought he was 'embattled' last week over his Limbaugh comment? Ha. He has now stepped both feet into it."

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins emails, "I expressed my concerns to the chairman earlier this week about previous statements that were very similar in nature. He assured me as chairman his views did not matter and that he would be upholding and promoting the Party platform, which is very clear on these issues. It is very difficult to reconcile the GQ interview with the chairman's pledge."

This is a Richard Cizik territory, and we all know how that turned out.

Kathryn Joyce, author of “Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement,” has a good piece up on “Religion Dispatches” on the effort by anti-choice activists to convince Americans that reproductive freedom is actually a plot to commit genocide against minorities:

Lately, however, antiabortion groups don’t simply seize the mantle of abolitionism, but argue directly that abortion is a concerted attack on people of color. Black and brown populations are, according to the new rhetoric, allegedly targeted for aggressive population control by abortion providers who deliberately place clinics in inner-city, low-income neighborhoods, resulting in higher rates of abortion among Latina and black women in the United States compared to white women.

[A]ntiabortion activists continue to claim that providers are targeting black and Latino populations, and have leafleted inner-city neighborhoods with denunciations of “Klan Parenthood,” juxtaposing images of lynchings and aborted fetuses with the slogan “lynching is for amateurs.” The argument’s popularity is climbing, spurring numerous rallies, publications and organizations devoted to spreading word of abortion providers’ supposedly racist motives. Indeed, Rep. Franks, the lead sponsor of the Susan B. Anthony bill, said he was inspired by a Washington, DC abortion clinic protest last April that denounced the “black genocide” of abortion.

Among the most prominent names in the movement are Day Gardner, of the National Black Pro-Life Union; Rev. Clenard Childress and Johnny Hunter of the group Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN, at the website Black Genocide.org); and Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King. King, the media darling of the bunch, addressed the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 38th Annual Legislative Convention this summer, arguing that “fully 1/4 of the black population of the US has gone missing” due to abortion.

This is something we’ve mentioned several times before and Joyce does a good job of explaining how this message was developed and who is pushing it, so be sure to read the whole thing.

In yesterday's Right Wing Leftovers, I mentioned that both Phyllis Schlafly and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison are scheduled to speak at the Denton County [Texas] Republican Party's annual Lincoln-Reagan dinner in a week or so.

I thought that seemed odd because hard-line Religious Right leaders, like Rick Scarborough, are currently livid that Hutchison is planning on challenging current Republican Governor Rick Perry because they see her as insufficiently right-wing, primarily on reproductive choice issues. But I couldn't find anything from Schlafly or the Eagle Forum going after Hutchison on this, so I didn't mention it. 

But now I see that Matt Lewis at Townhall is reporting that Texas Eagle Forum president Cathie Adams has teamed up with David Barton to undermine Hutchison's primary bid:

Pro-life Activists in Texas, including Texas Eagle Forum President and RNC Committeewoman Cathie Adams and WallBuilders Founder and President David Barton, are also weighing in on the issue by pointing the differences between Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

An email recently distributed by the two says: “Senator Hutchinson served for many years as an Honorary Advisory Board Member of the WISH List, whose mission is to raise money to identify, train, and elect pro-abortion Republican women at all levels of Government.”

And an accompanying flier notes that, “Governor Perry has always been active in the pro-life movement," and that "Senator Hutchinson supports legal abortion until viability and has called for the removal or weakening of the pro-life plank of the Republican party.”

The biting part is that the flier compares and contrasts John Cornyn and Rick Perry's conservative records versus Kay Bailey Hutchinson -- who is closely compared to President Barack Obama.

That ought to make for some interesting conversation at the Lincoln-Reagan Dinner, since Schlafly just happens to be the national head of the Eagle Forum, who's state affiliate is now attacking Hutchison by comparing her to Barack Obama. 

On a related note, Lewis also linked to this video Rick Scarborough released last month blasting Hutchison for daring to run for Governor and demanding that she return all the donations she received for her Senate campaign:

MSNBC has a longish article on how Religious Right leaders are planning on dealing with soon-to-be President Barack Obama.  The article contains a claim from Richard Land that Barack Obama chose Rick Warren explicitly to appeal to evangelicals and that his religious affairs director even called Land personally to make that point clear:

Land says he received a call from Obama's religious affairs director, Joshua DuBois, after Warren had been chosen. "Dubois told me that this was very intentionally done and that he, the president-elect, was the originator of the idea. He wanted to send the signal that you can disagree with him on some issues but still have a place with him at the table and work together on other issues of agreement.”

Overall, the article reports, right-wing leaders are taking a "wait and see" attitude toward Obama, though they are fully prepared to swing into action the moment he tries to advance the progressive agenda, especially when it comes to reproductive choice:

John Hagee, the San Antonio based televangelist and founder of Christians United for Israel, says he is respecting the wishes of the American people and their choice of Obama. "Sen. Barack Obama is our president-elect, and we are commanded to pray for him. We must pray that God will give him the wisdom of Solomon to lead America through our present crisis," he said.

Hagee was last in the spotlight after the McCain campaign sought his endorsement, only to later publicly reject it after Catholic leaders, among others, expressed outrage and accused Hagee of waging a war against the Catholic church.

Yet even Hagee's own words hint at the prospect of a future showdown. "Our respect and prayers do not prevent us from continuing to speak out and speak out strongly when we disagree on Biblical issues with the president. Like all other Americans, we evangelicals must continue to be engaged in the democratic process even after Election Day."

Hagee isn’t alone in foreshadowing that the new president will encounter some rough stretches when it comes to social conservatives and evangelicals in the days ahead.

Jay Sekulow, a constitutional lawyer with the American Center for Law and Justice and ardent advocate of conservative and evangelical causes, puts it far more bluntly: "I wouldn't call it fear and loathing. I think it's a realization that things are going to be different and significantly different."

...

Obama’s pro-choice position remains a nearly insurmountable obstacle for some evangelicals, such as Chuck Colson who said he responded “with joy that we have elected our first African-American president.”

Colson, the former Nixon aide who went to prison for his role in Watergate, now leads Prison Fellowship, a Christian ministry that supports prisoners and their families. “I pray for him every day, ever since he was elected. I want him to succeed. I like a lot of his cabinet picks,” he said.

“But do I consider him an evangelical? No. If he's comfortable with his faith, I wouldn't challenge him on it. But I have reservations about how serious a Christian he is and not treat life as sacred. The Bible is unequivocal about it."

Jay Sekulow predicts that any forward movement on Obama’s part to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) as he’s pledged to do will “cause a revolt in the evangelical community."