DITHERING:

Kerry and Abortion (Dotty Lynch, Douglas Kiker, Beth Lester, Clothilde Ewing, Dan Furman and Nathaniel Franks, 6/03/04, CBS News)

John Kerry is getting drawn further and further into the complicated politics of abortion, exactly where he does not want to be in the swing-voter-obsessed year. As the Washington Post reports, "Sen. John F. Kerry is getting pulled, sometimes reluctantly, into the national debate over abortion as result of recent court action, church politics and some pressure from Democrats outside of his campaign."

Kerry is being forced to deal with the issue as the result of both outside events and steps of his own a confluence of events. In the "outside events" category, Roman Catholic leaders have recently warned that politicians who disagree with church doctrine (i.e. who are pro-choice) should not receive Holy Communion and a federal court recently ruled on the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act.

On his own, Kerry waded into the dilemma in May when he told the Associated Press, "I will not appoint somebody with a 5-4 court who's about to undo Roe v. Wade…But that doesn't mean that if that's not the balance of the court, I wouldn't be prepared ultimately to appoint somebody to some court who has a different point of view." While Kerry did back away from those comments, they certainly did nothing to quiet the issue.

The result seems to be irritation on both sides of the pro-choice/pro-life debate. The Catholic leadership is clearly unhappy enough to instruct priests not to give Communion. And in the pro-choice camp, one of its leaders, Gloria Feldt of Planned Parenthood, told the AP on Wednesday, "I think John Kerry understands viscerally reproductive rights as being related to women's human rights globally…But he's got to come up with some better language to talk about it, and I think he's being poorly advised, poorly served by some of his advisers at the moment."

If you don't know where you stand it's hard to make one.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 3, 2004 3:20 PM