By Larry Jones
“The Democratic Party strongly and unequivocally supports Roe v. Wade (the 1973 Supreme Court ruling granting women a constitutional right to abortion and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abortion.”
From the 2008 Platform of the Democratic Party
President Barack Obama was highlighted during his campaign last year in a way that made him appear to be almost separate from the Democratic Party. Nevertheless, he supported the party’s Platform, including the words above on abortion.
Obama has repeatedly stated that he is pro-choice, but that he would like to seek common ground with evangelical and Catholic anti-choice/anti-abortion groups by working together to reduce the number of abortions. But the truth is that such a compromise is morally impossible. If you cling to the "faith based" deception that abortion is murder, as religious conservatives do, how can you compromise with those who understand that a fetus is not human until it’s born?
Moral Fence Sitting
This moral fence-sitting has led Obama to bring into his administration those who are antithetical to his own stated pro-choice position. One of the most notable of such persons is anti-abortion anti-birth control Alexia Kelley whom he appointed to lead the Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships (OFBNP) at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
She will oversee a multi-million dollar budget for various faith-based health-related programs, including abuse treatment, mental health services, HIV prevention, and, alarmingly, family planning.
Her appointment whipped up a storm of controversy among pro and anti-abortion groups, but in the mainstream media it went almost completely under the radar. A number of good online articles have dug into what this selection will mean (see list at the end of this article.)
Kelley came to Obama’s regime from the Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG), where she was a co-founder and past executive director. In a 2006 voters’ guide, CACG stated that Catholics need to “end affronts to human life such as poverty, abortion, torture and war.” To equate torture and war with abortion could be dismissed as crazy talk if it weren’t so damnably dangerous. Just to make their position clear CACG has stated that “[W]e support full legal protections for unborn children, as a requirement of justice and as a matter of essential human rights."
Evangelical Pandering and Political Payoff
The bottom line of Kelly’s appointment by Obama is, on the one hand, another attempt to cozy up to Catholics and evangelicals he wants to be part of his electoral base, and on the other hand, political payoff for her work of organizing and religious outreach for the Democratic Party.
Kelley is not only anti-abortion, she is also anti-contraception, even for married couples. The problem for her and the Obama faith-based outreach is that most Americans, as well as most Catholics, favor a woman’s right to choose and contraception for those who are sexually active. As Frances Kissling blogged on RH Reality Check, “The HHS budget for family-planning services grants to faith-based and community groups is more than $20 million. Can pro-family-planning religious groups expect a fair deal from a director who believes that birth control, even for married couples, is immoral?”
On the issue of comprehensive sex education CACG says this:
[A]bstinence until marriage is the sexual ideal promoted by the Catholic Church. We believe that Catholic teaching has valuable lessons to offer our instant-gratification culture … [but] research supports a comprehensive approach that includes providing accurate information about contraception and abstinence as complementary, not competing, strategies.
So CACG argues in favor of abstinence plus education about contraception for those who are sexually active, which is paradoxical since Kelley herself is against birth control, including within marriage!
Who are we Going to Turn To?
An exhaustive study by Catholics for Choice entitled “The Trouble with Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good” concludes that Kelley’s Catholics Alliance seeks to move the Democratic Party away from its historic support for abortion rights. Its Conclusion section states that: “CACG is willing to trade the pro-woman, pro choice heritage of the Democratic Party for the mirage of Catholic voters so cowed that they will not vote Democratic. But the 2008 election proved this is only a mirage.” But (and it’s a big BUT) now the commander in chief of the Democratic Party is bringing the enemies of women’s rights directly into his ruling regime.
So, once again, we see yet another reason why not to expect Obama’s regime, or the judicial system, or the Congress to lead us out of the proto-fascist direction in which we are headed. It’s in our hands.
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Some Resources:
Obama’s Faithful Flock, Sara Posner, The Nation 7/15/09, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090803/posner
Alexia Kelley: Obama’s Poor Choice for “Common Ground” Post at HHS, Frances Kissling, RHReality Check 6/9/09, http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090803/posner
The Trouble with Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, Catholics for Choice, 2009, http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/pubs/libraries/documents/TheTroublewithCACG.pdf
A New Faith and Politics fight: Religious Progressives vs. the Religious Left, Dan Gilgoff, U.S. News and World Report, 3/31/09, http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/pubs/libraries/documents/TheTroublewithCACG.pdf
Measuring Media: Faith-Based Initiative, Pew Research Center 8/12/09, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1310/different-media-coverage-faith-based-initiative-bush-obama
Alexia Kelley, Wikipedia 2009, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexia_Kelley
The Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, no date, http://www.hhs.gov/fbci/