February 5, 2009

Sorry, Mr. Rookie President: No Middle Ground on Abortion

Richardson. Geithner. Daschle. Killefer.

Hypocrisy on high thermostats and lobbyist waivers. Defections on the decadent stimulus. Pushback on defense cutbacks. A rollover on rendition. Even fusses over a fouled-up swearing-in and pre-recorded music.

This seemed a lot more fun on the campaign trail, eh, Mr. President?

At the risk of piling on, allow me to predict yet another future toe stub for the Politician Formerly Known as The One: Abortion.

A couple columns back, I spanked the spanking new chief executive for sticking a finger into conservatives’ eyes by reversing – one day after the Roe v. Wade anniversary – the so-called Mexico City rule barring funds for international organizations offering abortions. Turns out the president thought he was being sensitive to pro-lifers by waiting a day!

Yeah, sensitive . . . like a root canal.

Obama even tried hap-hap-happy talk. “I have no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate,” he maintained. “I have directed my staff to reach out to those on all sides of this issue to achieve the goal of reducing unintended pregnancies.”

Ah, the hallowed middle ground – reducing “unintended pregnancies.” Or so Young Mr. Obama – just four years removed from the Illinois State Senate – imagines.

Rookie.

You’ll soon learn, sir, that no middle ground exists on abortion. To understand why, consider what even the pro-abortion folks have to say about it.

A favored Clintonian mantra was to make abortion “safe, legal and rare.” Hillary Clinton has called abortion a “tragedy.” Even those famed “middle grounders” at NARAL Pro-Choice America acknowledge that “it's critical to promote policies that . . . make abortion less necessary.”
 

Hmmm. Why should America’s most protected right be “rare,” a “tragedy,” or “less necessary?” Because even its most committed proponents are acknowledging that it’s wrong. And there is no middle ground on wrong.

Let’s try out this formulation: “Slavery should be safe, legal and rare.” (Which, substituting “geographically restricted” for “rare,” was essentially national policy for some fourscore and seven years.) In admitting abortion’s ugliness, pro-choicers are hoist on their own canard.

Nevertheless, right-to-lifers have been colored as hypocrites for failing to bite on the “unintended pregnancies” bait. Actually, they are smart enough to recognize that it’s a head fake meant to take their eyes off the main objective of – to borrow a favored phrase from control-freak liberals – “zero tolerance” for wrong behavior.

Plus, pro-lifers can see through the rhetorical smokescreen to the hard-and-fast policy reality. The Dems boldly removed the “rare” part of the “safe/legal” formulation from their 2008 platform. The president is stuffing the upper echelons of justice with abortion absolutists, including NARAL’s former legal director who has allegedly said that “there is no father and no child, just a fetus.” (There’s middle ground for you.)

And another 13½-sized Obama shoe remains to drop – his pledge to sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA), which would ban virtually any state restrictions on abortion, including the sensitive act of pulling a full-term baby partway out, jamming a needle into its skull and sucking its brains out.

Why do I suspect that the next show of sensitivity and “outreach” to pro-lifers movement will occur as the Presidential Pen emerges to sign FOCA?

If camouflaging ugly actions with hearts and flowers is Sleek Barry’s abortion strategy, allow me to advise that in a fresh Gallup poll, nearly 60 percent of Americans turned thumbs down on his Mexico City order  making it the most unpopular move to date in the brief but exceedingly bumpy O-ministration.

Something to think about in these lonely-at-the-top times, Mr. President. And always happy to help.