Obama’s pro-abortion base “livid”
The headline of an October 18 New York Daily News piece caught my eye…
The relevant excerpt…
But increasingly, noisy factions on the party’s most liberal flank… who Obama courted last year – are incensed that their causes have taken a backseat to the White House’s all-out push on health care reform.
Case in point? Pro-choice activists, who right now are livid that the leading health care bills winding through Congress don’t include federal funding for poor women to get abortions.
“The advocates of choice are starting to get disillusioned with President Obama,” said UCLA law professor Adam Winkler.
Winkler was lobbying on Capitol Hill with Planned Parenthood recently and was dismayed to be told by a key Democratic congressman that the Obama White House isn’t pushing for abortion services in the bill. The reason? It would drive away prospective Republican and conservative Democratic votes.
“For the pro-choice community, it’s going to be Barack Obama’s ‘no new taxes,'” Winkler predicted. Conservatives famously cried betrayal after President George H.W. Bush reneged on his 1988 read-my-lips campaign pledge not to raise taxes….
White House special adviser Valerie Jarrett was dispatched to NY Wednesday to tell NARAL Pro-Choice America that the President remains committed to protecting women’s reproductive rights.
The well-heeled crowd inside applauded Jarrett politely. But outside, the highest-ranking woman in the White House was met by protesters chanting, “Valerie Jarrett, do your job! Defend abortion rights for all!”
Jarrett gave her speech at NARAL’s 18th annual National Power of Choice Luncheon, and here’s why NARAL got that 8-minute crumb, according to Ben Smith at Politico:
That’s a White House reward for, among other things, basically keeping their objections to possible abortion restrictions in health care legislation to themselves. As The Nation reported a while ago, abortion rights advocates – like foes – had some serious objections, and would have liked to see, for instance, public plan proposals explicitly include abortion funding.
But that was politically unrealistic, and the groups – like many other dogs that haven’t barked in this debate – have publicly fallen in line.
I found Jarrett’s speech verrrry interesting:
First I noted the crowd was way subdued in its response. And it seemed to me Jarrett was uncomfortable, hence her opening freudianeque comment that cracked me up: “And I’m delighted to have shown up here today.” “Shown up”? Haha. “Hey, at least I showed up.”
Then I thought this comment by Jarrett was odd, as in why the need to reassure?
President Obama has been pro-choice throughout his career. As a state senator, as a U.S. senator, and today as the president of the United States he remains firmly pro-choice.
What, in case anyone was worried?
Finally, when Jarrett broached the healthcare debate, she noticeably omitted mention of abortion coverage. In fact, she didn’t mention the A-word once – in a speech to the nation’s leading abortion advocacy organization. Here was Jarrett’s only mention:
Now I know that there have been questions about how the bill is working its way through Congress and what impact it will have on a woman’s right to choose. The answer is: Nothing in these bills, and nothing the president will sign, would change existing policies or – or – erode the choices that women have today.
In other words, the abortion industry is now concerned about more than ensconcing abortion in nationalized healthcare, it is now worried about losing ground.
The tone of Jarrett’s speech was a far cry from Obama’s 2007 speech to Planned Parenthood, when he said abortion coverage would be “at the center and at the heart” of nationalized healthcare:
Here was another interesting headline in an October 18 piece HuffPo piece recapping the NARAL luncheon:
From that article:
After the luncheon, I asked [NARAL president Nancy] Keenan whether she was worried. “The complacency concerns me,” she said. “It’s like, ‘Oh we’re safe. We can take a breather.’ The fact is the other side never takes a breather.”
Darn right.
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
The proabortion movement is not losing steam. It is losing-period.
You’re right on that one, Nancy Keenan!
We will not take a breather until ‘no more children die, no more women cry’. At this moment at 211 abortion mills in American and abroad, we who are part of 40 Days for Life are praying for an end to this horrible injustice.
And we have saved over 300 babies from abortion, helped many clinic workers leave this awful profession and forced clinics to cut down their hours due to lack of business.
This is the beginning of the end of abortion in America.
I don’t think that pro-choice will lose steam until there’s a trigger of some sort. I’m not sure what. But I think that it needs to be something that galvanizes human rights activists around the world, and even those who support human rights but don’t campaign like activists. I think that pro-choice (a horribly inaccurate term) won’t be over until more pro-life advocates from all walks of life (Christians, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, Jews, Hispanic, African, Anglo, Native American, Asian, rich, poor, American, Briton, et cetera) come together to protest on behalf of peace.
I think also that all human rights activists will have to come together, those who support women’s rights and children’s rights and work to end world hunger, in order for the pro-choice movement to lose steam.
So I think that, in the meantime, we ought to keep an eye out for something triggering, like a modern Uncle Tom’s Cabin, if you would; and in the meantime keep supporting human rights: children’s rights, women’s rights, peace, all sorts of things.
:)
Barry is rapidly becoming a lame duck already and not even a year into his 4 year term. He’s got big majority in both houses, yet can’t get anything passed.
Next year when conservatives take over Congress he will be the biggest lamest duck ever.
Note I said conservatives, not Republicans.
He can blame it all on President Bush and Fox news.
True, but he’s also closer to creating a new (and worse) health problem.
Chris,
I edited your comment. Sorry. The commenter you were responding to has been banned and still persists. The mods try to catch the comments and delete them.
I do worry though that bigots will get their way and end up with abortion in the bill. I’m personally okay with universal health care- so long as the politicians actually read what’s in the bill, pass it slowly (as in, they’re going way too fast with this bill), and pass it in pieces so that each American has a chance to see, piece by piece, what exactly is in it and what will be covered. Right now, it’s too big. And if it doesn’t work given the massive size of our country, at least we’ll know quickly if it doesn’t work out and have a simple solution to a relatively small faction of the bill instead of having to undo the entire bill.
But, right now I’m more concerned with bigots like N.A.R.A.L. They don’t seem to understand that women won’t need abortions if they get health care and therefore it’s stupid to kvetch about abortion not being in the bill.
Or wait. Maybe they only support one choice…
Jarrett mentions pregnancy as a pre-existing condition. This is a problem that should be addressed to insurance companies, not one that would require a nationalized healthcare system to overcome. We don’t need nationalized healthcare to fix any of the medical system problems. Just a little common sense. Now where can we find some???
Her speech is pretty underwhelming. She sounded like she was addressing the local PTA. (No offense to PTA members.) Was it maybe a White House plan to keep this speech out of the news to avoid the abortion debate, but at the same time attempt to appease NARAL? Strange.
Posted by: carla at October 21, 2009 12:21 PM
“The proabortion movement is not losing steam. It is losing-period.”
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Point of informamtion. Point of information.
(Imagine Barney Fife or Gomer Pyle shouting, Citizuns arehyest, citizun arehyest!)
The Dead Babies R Us crowd are not ‘losing’, they are LOST and they have been ‘lost’ a long, long time.
They don’t where they came from.
They don’t where they are.
And they don’t know where they are going.
yor bro ken
Posted by: Vannah at October 21, 2009 12:47 PM
“I don’t think that pro-choice will lose steam until there’s a trigger of some sort.”
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Vannah,
You are confusing steam with hot air.
yor bro ken
Truly delusional Womb War Hags. Sorry, but they are what they are.
Such sorry Karma. Such a sorry legacy. Such need of pity and mercy. Poor things. Such an intellectual insult. So dang delusional. The health care reform is nothing short of a MEDICAL DATA GRAB. Abortion is a blog of cells, like nasal mucus. They thrive b/c their deceit is believed UNTIL it is TOO LATE!
What? The Libs expect Obama to fulfill his promise to them??
AS per SNL skit, he’s fulfilled “jack” and “squat” in his 9 months in office…and he’s”just getting started”.