DON'T LOOK AT ME, I JUST WORKED THE OVENS... (via Kein Whited)

The Real Story of the Democrats’ Abortion Plank (Steven Waldman, 8/19/08, Wall Street Journal)

The Obama campaign made a crucial decision – not to have the abortion rights and antiabortion forces meet. “It was a cordial harmonious process in which neither side talked directly to each other,” said Michael Yaki, the platform director who worked on crafting the abortion plank. During July he held about a dozen face-to-face meetings with groups in a conference room at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington but always made sure that pro-life and pro-choice sides were not scheduled back-to-back lest they bump into each other.

On the evangelical side, the key players were the Rev. Joel Hunter of Northland Church, the Rev. Tony Campolo, a progressive evangelical who was on the Democrats’ platform committee, and the Rev. Jim Wallis, leader of Sojourners. Each was politically progressive in other ways but firmly anti-abortion. Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good were the leading Catholic advocacy groups for the pro-life position.

On the pro-choice side, the key players represented the National Abortion Rights Action League, Planned Parenthood, Emily’s List and the National Organization for Women.

At no point did the pro-lifers push hard for legal restrictions on abortions, including partial birth abortions. But they did push for clear language casting the Democratic Party as supporting a reduction in the number of abortions and not merely a reduction in the “need” for abortion. [...]

The pro-choice forces had two concerns. First, they feared that calling for reducing the number of abortions could lead to more legal restrictions on abortion. The pro-life progressives, Ms. Laser and the Obama campaign had to convince the pro-choice leaders that they could embrace abortion reduction without it eroding legal rights. “There’s been this fear factor that somehow looking for common ground will mean the demise of abortion rights. There was an intense fear of the slippery slope,” Ms. Laser says.

Their second fear was that the language would somehow stigmatize women who had abortions – “that it’s a morally wrong decision,” Ms. Laser says.

Mr. Yaki viewed this as the landmine that could blow up the discussions. He decided to avoid moralistic language, including any direct statement that the party wanted to reduce the number of abortions. “We deliberately steered the language from having any morality put into it because it would have been difficult to agree on the definition of morality – Biblical, societal, individual. Once you go down that path, the ability to reach a compromise would have been limited.”

Instead, he tried to craft the plank so “either side could put their own moral gloss on the language.”

Sort of like saying you don't want to place any restrictions on the Holocaust, just take actions so that the Germans don't "need" to kill Jews and gypsies...and, by the way, none of this should be taken as a moral judgment on genocide..

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 20, 2008 1:06 PM