{"id":3874,"date":"2005-03-31T13:19:50","date_gmt":"2005-03-31T18:19:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3874.html"},"modified":"2005-03-31T13:19:50","modified_gmt":"2005-03-31T18:19:50","slug":"prevention-first-act-is-a-political-winner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/prevention-first-act-is-a-political-winner\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Prevention First Act’ is a political winner"},"content":{"rendered":"

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who opposes abortion rights, seemed to have crafted the perfect line for wavering Dems a couple of months ago — focus on prevention. He unveiled the Prevention First Act (S. 20), which aims to reduce the number of abortions by focusing on reducing unwanted pregnancies. NARAL, hardly Reid’s natural ally on choice-related issues, embraced the measure<\/a> immediately and encouraged anti-abortion activists to join them in this effort.<\/p>\n

So far, it hasn’t quite worked out. The Family Research Council, for example, called Reid’s bill “unacceptable<\/a>.” Tony Perkins, FRC’s president, said he’d support reducing unwanted pregnancies, so long as it doesn’t include contraceptives, family-planning programs, or comprehensive education on sexual health. (He apparently studied at the George W. Bush School of Compromise.)<\/p>\n

But, as Matthew Yglesias noted<\/a> today, Dems shouldn’t read right-wing opposition as a sign of a poor policy. Reid’s approach is a political winner.<\/p>\n

In case you were wondering whether the Prevention First Amendment gambit is a good political strategy, you really ought to take a look at the other Democracy Corps polling analysis<\/a> (pdf), which sort of buries the lede on this one. It’s all about white Catholic public opinion and it reveals, inter alia, that if a candidate “Believes in a woman’s right to choose but believes all sides should come together around common goal of preventing and reducing # of abortions, with more sex ed, including abstinence, access to contraception and more adoption,” an overwhelming 74 percent of white Catholics will be more likely to vote for him. <\/p>\n

The net 52-point advantage thereby gained is way, way, way bigger than the edge obtained by a Democrat who “is pro-life on abortion” (+24), “is Catholic and pro-life on abortion” (a smaller +20, oddly), or “is Catholic and pro-choice on abortion” (+3). The bad news is that the increasingly all-abortion, all-the-time outlook of America’s bishops does real damage. Episcopal condemnation for abortion rights votes is a net 16-point losing proposition. Still, the big message here is that the prevention first approach, though dismissed by pro-life activists as a kind of fraud, is a very potent political strategy and not something Democrats should drop after the initial flurry of activity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s very<\/i> encouraging data. The next move should be a re-emphasis on this bill on the Hill. Right now, including Reid, the Prevention First Act has 23 co-sponsors<\/a> — but no Republicans. It’d be great to see the rest of the Dems sign on and then get to work on Specter, Snowe, Collins, and Chafee.<\/p>\n

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: There’s one side of the political divide offering serious proposals to reduce abortions in this country — and it’s not the Republicans. Something for “values voters” to consider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who opposes abortion rights, seemed to have crafted the perfect line for wavering Dems a couple of months ago — focus on prevention. He unveiled the Prevention First Act (S. 20), which aims to reduce the number of abortions by focusing on reducing unwanted pregnancies. NARAL, hardly Reid’s natural […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3874\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}