Suspense Surrounds Obama Team's Abortion Plan
By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
The White House is moving from listening to policymaking mode on its plan to "reduce the need for abortion" and for a "common ground" approach around related reproductive issues, like reducing unwanted pregnancy. The administration expects to roll the plan out as early as this summer.
For Obama's faith-based office staff members—who are partnering with the White House Council on Women and Girls on the project—devising the plan on reproductive issues appears to be the top priority. It's also so sensitive that it's the one part of the faith-based office's mission that's being handled entirely by White House staff.
All other aspects of the faith-based office's mission—reducing poverty, promoting responsible fatherhood, facilitating interfaith dialogue—are being led by the outside Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. The council's various task forces will issue recommendations later this year.
But the White House curtain-raising on its plan around abortion is expected to come first. It will be a huge moment for the administration. My God & Country column from the most recent U.S. News Weekly explores the process behind developing the plan and the anxiety among abortion-rights supporters and opponents as they await word on its release.
Here's the top:
As a member of President Obama's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, Nancy Ratzan clearly believes that faith has a role in government. But that doesn't mean she's comfortable with the role the White House's faith-based office is playing in devising Obama's policies on abortion and other reproductive issues. "I have real concerns about understanding those issues from a faith perspective as opposed to a scientific and individual rights perspective," says Ratzan, who is president of the National Council of Jewish Women and a supporter of abortion rights. "You're creating the possibility that the religious views of some are going to be imposed on others."
Over the last month or so, the Obama administration has met with Ratzan and dozens of other activists on both sides of the abortion issue as it seeks what it calls "common ground" on thorny reproductive issues, including its goal of reducing demand for abortion. Now, as the White House begins drawing up a policy plan, advocates on both sides are jittery. "I'm in a trust but verify mode," says Richard Land, who heads public policy for the Southern Baptist Convention, which opposes abortion rights. "I've seen some signs that they are eagerly seeking common ground and other signs that they're not."
The administration is expected to announce its plan as early as this summer, according to those involved in the process. Whether those proposed policies can satisfy the president's pro-abortion rights base while also winning over more conservative religious groups is the biggest test yet for Obama's vow to be a peacemaker in the nation's culture wars.
When Obama rolled out the revamped White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in February, he tasked it with exploring how to "support women and children, address teenage pregnancy, and reduce the need for abortion." Crafting policy around those goals has been a joint project of the faith-based office and the new White House Council on Women and Girls. Both report to Obama's domestic policy adviser, Melody Barnes, who has led some meetings with outside groups.
Those sessions have included representatives from organizations as politically far apart as the pro-abortion rights Planned Parenthood and the evangelical Concerned Women for America, which vigorously opposes such rights. The White House asked those and other groups for policy proposals in four areas: reducing unwanted pregnancy, increasing access to adoption, supporting maternal health, and reducing demand for abortion. "There were definitely areas of disagreement," Kristen Day, who runs an antiabortion group called Democrats for Life, says in describing a recent White House meeting. "But for the most part, people were respectful and were doing more listening than debating."
Tags: abortion | Barack Obama | religion
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Response to Abortion Plan
Dear Jennifer:
I agree that abortion should be part of the human-rights issue. And so, you must agree that the baby within any woman's body is HUMAM. Science tells us that every human is totally unique as the DNA forms a new human life.
Some activists call for the removal of land mines that maim the children of war torn countries. Some activists decry the pain and suffering of fur bearing animals.
Other activists demand the "right of choice". The right to choose the end of another human's life.
Contraception, and Choice, and Poverty, and Common Ground are all red herrings.
The issue is HUMAN RIGHTS for all, no matter how weak and defenseless or under represented by our political system.
get your info straight!
To say that teens act irresponsibly and have sex "no matter what you say or do" paints teens incorrectly. Everyone who wants to has sex!! And the teen pregnancy rate has dropped considerably in the last few years. The percentage of abortions obtained by teens under 18 is only 7%! That is the same percentage as women over 35. So stop talking about this as though it's a teen problem.
Another statistic that for some reason is not well known is that fewer than 1% of pregnancies end in adoption. Regardless of how much more acceptable carrying a pregnancy and then giving it up becomes, most women do not want to go that route. And for good reason! They fear everything from not being able to give up the baby after carrying it for nine months to the baby suffering from having spent its prenatal life in an environment that was preparing itself for loss, therefore not emotionally connected. Many think that babies sense this. Adoption is a fine thing for those women who choose it, but it is not for everyone and there are very good reasons why so few women do.
Women are never going to accept being told by others what they "ought" to do when an unintended pregnancy occurs. The woman herself is the one to evaluate her situation, her health, her finances, her support and decide what is best. Women are moral creatures who carefully assess their own situations before choosing either to continue the pregnancy or not. Sadness and grief are often an outcome just as they can be with divorce or other losses in life.
Abortion and Common Ground
Abortion is a human rights issue: simply put, human beings at a very early stage of life are killed legally in this country. That is what abortion does -- it ends a human life -- and no matter what euphemisms are used to describe it, that is what makes compromise impossible. A pregnant woman who does not want to be pregnant should be helped in every way possible not only to carry her child to term, but to put her life back in order after that child is born, whether that involves abortion, or grants to support her child, etc., etc. But to say that one human life is expendable because its existence will thwart some aspect of another's life (her/his mother's)is to treat that life as "property," just as black people were treated during slavery.
That is what makes compromise impossible on the core issue: a human life in jeopardy, one that our Constitution says has a "right to life, etc." And for those who think that birth control is the answer: 1) most medicines and many procedures to accomplish birth control prevent the pregnance by actually ending the child's life; 2) birth control involves using the woman as "property" as well, e.g., here you are my dear,I want to have sex with you now and don't respect you enough to wait for a better time, so just pour these chemicals into your body so that I can have my way with you and not suffer any consequences -- only you will suffer the consequences! How is that respecting women?
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