Sunday, August 24, 2008
Opinion
Obama and abortion
"Does evil exist?" Pastor Rick Warren asked Barack Obama...
By Jonah Goldberg
"Does evil exist?" Pastor Rick Warren asked Barack Obama during a fascinating forum at Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif. "And if it does, do we ignore it, do we negotiate with it, do we contain it, or do we defeat it?"
Obama the would-be moral philosopher replied, accurately, that evil is everywhere, in Darfur, in our streets, in our own hearts. When asked what America's greatest moral failing was, theological Obama said it was our collective failure to "abide by that basic precept in [the Book of] Matthew that whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me."
For Obama the politician, such scriptural quotations often serve as an all-inclusive writ to impose his religious views on others when it comes to fighting poverty, global warming, racism, etc. But when the question turns to abortion, political Obama insists on a policy of moral agnosticism and political laissez-faire.
At Saddleback, Obama offered the ritualistic support for
Roe v. Wade expected of all Democratic politicians, "not because I'm pro-abortion," but because women "wrestle with these things in profound ways."
In 2003, as chairman of the Illinois Senate Health and Human Services Committee, Obama received a statement from Jill Stanek, a registered nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, Ill. She testified that at her Chicago-area hospital, she'd seen a baby accidentally delivered alive during an abortion and then "taken to the soiled-utility room and left alone to die."
Alas, the abandonment of babies to suffer and die on the modern equivalent of a Spartan cliff did not require confronting evil when Obama saw it. Indeed, Obama turned a blind eye, leading the battle to defeat Illinois' version of the federal Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which would have treated babies living, albeit briefly, outside the womb as, well, babies. He opposed the bill in 2003 (as he had a similar one in 2001), saying it would undermine
Roe v. Wade. But even after Roe-neutral language was included—wording good enough that it won support for the federal version of the bill from abortion-rights stalwart Sen. Barbara Boxer—Obama remained unmoved.
Until this week, Obama denied that he ever took such a position.
Perhaps that theological Obama should wrestle a bit more with political Obama.
SP