Wall Street Journal | Naomi Schaefer Riley | Aug. 20, 2008
“Above my pay grade.” Those words rang in the ears of Gene Taylor, a middle-age member of Saddleback Church I interviewed after the worship service on Sunday morning. He was referring to the answer offered by Barack Obama when Pastor Rick Warren asked him at what point in its development a baby gets “human rights.”
“In this country,” Mr. Taylor told me, “there is no higher pay grade than the president.” Which is true at least metaphorically. Mr. Taylor added, “I thought I was going to be supporting John McCain. Now I’m sure of it.”
Mr. Obama’s flip-sounding response did not go over well with the evangelicals in the audience of Saturday night’s presidential forum. After a week in which the Democrats have been renegotiating their abortion platform, Mr. Obama was supposed to provide a voice of clarity, and above all moderation, for the party. His middle-of-the-road views were supposed to appeal to independent-minded Catholics and evangelicals who agreed with Democrats on some issues, but couldn’t pull the lever for him if he was too radical on abortion.
It didn’t work out that way. Add Mr. Obama’s recent admission that during his time in the Illinois legislature he voted against a law protecting babies who survive an abortion procedure, and it seems as if the Democrats have accomplished the impossible: They have moved to the left on abortion.
On the party’s platform, the Democrats dropped the words “safe, legal and rare,” the phrase used most famously by both Bill and Hillary Clinton to signal moderation on the issue. The Democrats also added the modifier “unequivocally” to strengthen their support for abortion rights. As if there were any doubt about the message that these changes send to the party’s radical factions, here is feminist Linda Hirshman celebrating in a piece for Slate: “With the release of the new platform, the emancipation of women may once again become a legitimate political position.”
Some conservative Democrats and a few leaders on the religious left have cited other shifts, such as the inclusion of access to “family planning services” and “age-appropriate sex education” in the platform, as evidence that the party is softening its stance. But phrases like “sex education” and “family planning,” especially when uttered by government officials, rarely warm the hearts of conservative, religious Americans.
To be sure, not all Christians are alarmed. The platform says that the party “strongly supports a woman’s decision to have a child by ensuring access to and availability of programs for pre-and postnatal health care, parenting skills, income support and caring adoption programs.” According to Rev. Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners (a network of liberal Christians), this is evidence that “there’s a common ground possible here.” He said, in a conference call of religious leaders last week, “It’s never been as explicitly stated that the Democratic Party supports a woman’s decision to have their child, and offers her practical support to have her child. It’s an historic step forward.” But no one should mistake Rev. Wallis’s views for those of most Catholics or the evangelical community.
If Democrats had wanted to “make room” for pro-lifers, they could have. One proposal for the platform was a statement of “conscience” — that is, language noting that people of good conscience can disagree on abortion. This was rejected by the platform writers.
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It is my contention that if one does not believe that at the point of conception, the fetus is living human child, deserving of protection and the right to be born, one cannot call himself a Christian.
This contradicts the Christology of the Church, which proclaims Christ fully God, fully Man, Two Natures, without confusion, in One Person from the point of conception. Therefore to deny the fetus the status of humanity until some later point in gestation would be stating that there was a time when Jesus was not divine, thus making that person a Docetist. If a Docetist, then a heretic. If a heretic, not a Christian.
DavidS, I agree, but I’d take it one step further. If a person is not able or willing to recognized the fundamental humanity of the children in the womb, and take steps to protect that life as the law requires in any other instance of human life, then they have turned their backs on their own humanity.
Moving left is the pro-abortionist’s only option as the cultural consensus shifts against abortion. Pro-abortionists must deny the intrinsic value of the unborn child in order to provide moral cover for all the other arguments that ostensibly justify abortion.
The denial is a necessary presupposition for any pro-abortion argument. It’s understood of course that any definition of life reaches up towards God as Nancy Pelosi revealed in her ill-fated trek into theology last week. No one, apart from ideological pro-abortionists (who don’t really listen to the arguments anyway), really believes anymore that abortion is about a “woman’s right to choose” but neither are they willing to affirm the intrinsic value of the unborn child because it undermines the moral ground of their arguments. The necessary presupposition is eroding, in other words.
The only way then, if the pro-abortionist wants to hold onto abortion, is left-ward. Move right, and he would have to embrace the intrinsic value of the unborn child, and thus admit that abortion is a heinous act against a human being.
Wallis and crew, as usual, are a dollar short and a day late. If he had been more active in Democratic circles regarding abortion a few years ago, he’d have more credibility. Now that the consensus has shifted, we finally see him. He still won’t directly challenge his compatriots however, unlike Alveda King.