I don’t often mention the dispute over abortion.
There is something sickening over the Democratic National Convention turning into an abortion-fest, a celebration of the right to kill one’s own unborn child. It may be a right, but it’s a curious right on which to orchestrate a national convention.
The DNC is turning into an abortion-fest because of Todd Akin’s comments about women who do or do not get pregnant as a result of rape. John Hinderaker (via Instapundit) notes:
The Democrats apparently think they have hit the jackpot with Todd Akin’s moment of stupidity, but I’m not so sure. How, exactly, are they going to take advantage of Akin’s blunder? By talking ceaselessly about abortion.
In order to capitalize politically on Akin, the Democrats are happy to expose the extreme extremism of their party and their leader, who of necessity would allow the killing of even fully viable fetuses late in a pregnancy in order to be consistent with their view of autonomy of decision:
That these rights result in the killing of more female fetuses than male is one of the cruel ironies of a party determined to fight a made-up war on women.
As Rich Lowry points out, Obama was even more extreme in his pre-presidential record, resolutely opposing even the protection of infants born alive after a “failed” abortion:
In the Illinois legislature, he opposed the “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act” three times. The bill recognized babies born after attempted abortions as persons and required doctors to give them care. Obama’s stalwart opposition to the bill came up during the 2008 campaign, and his team responded with a farrago of obfuscation and distortions.The bill was supposedly redundant. Except it wasn’t. Protections for infants who survived abortions were shot through with loopholes, which is why the bill was offered in the first place. (Abortion doctors were leaving infants to die without any care.) The bill was supposedly a threat to abortion rights. Except it wasn’t. Obama opposed a version that stipulated it didn’t affect the legal status of infants still in the womb.
I addressed this issue last February, What don’t you (or didn’t Obama) understand about killing a baby born alive?
It all exposes, as Prof. Glenn Reynolds points out, the most raw aspect of the culture war:
What about pregnancy that results from rape? Akin doesn’t want to confront that this happens, which is why he put forth his dumb rape-doesn’t-cause-pregnancy theory. Pro-choicers, for the most part, don’t want to confront that an abortion that happens after a rape is still just as much an abortion as one that happens because nobody bothered with birth control.I think both sides should own it. Stand in your truth and be straightforward about what you really believe.
I think Democrats are fine with that.
Democrats would rather risk being seen as celebrating death than talk about the economy and Obama’s abysmal record of failure.
Update: John McCormack, Audio: Obama Says “That Fetus or Child” Was “Just Not Coming Out Limp and Dead”
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