Of all the public policy issues debated in this country, [tag]abortion[\/tag] is by far the trickiest. There’s just not much room for compromise. If you believe a fertilized egg is a full-fledged human being with all the rights therein, abortion is murder. If you don’t, a government-imposed ban on the procedure takes away a woman’s civil right and allows the state to regulate the most personal of choices.<\/p>\n
The New York Times has a good feature<\/a> today on Democrats’ efforts to walk a fine middle line — starting in [tag]Pennsylvania[\/tag].<\/p>\n As the Democratic Party tries to inch its way toward a new, less polarized politics of abortion, seeking some common ground between supporters and opponents of abortion rights, there is no better case study than the Pennsylvania Senate race.<\/p>\n Many supporters of abortion rights — sometimes grudgingly, sometimes led more by their minds than by their hearts — are lining up behind Bob [tag]Casey[\/tag] Jr., a Democratic contender for the Senate who opposes abortion rights. The invitation to a recent Casey event in Philadelphia, raising money for his campaign to unseat Senator Rick [tag]Santorum[\/tag], a Republican, perhaps captured the mood. “Pragmatic Progressive Women for Casey,” it declared.<\/p>\n The nine Democratic women in the Senate, including some of the strongest advocates of abortion rights, recently signed a letter of support that struck a similar note, describing Mr. Casey’s election as “critical to our efforts of regaining the majority in the U.S. Senate.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Dems have already shown greater tolerance for dissent on this issue than Republicans — the party did, after all, make Harry Reid the Senate Minority Leader — but actively going out and recruiting a Dem who opposes abortion rights, in part because<\/i> he opposes abortion rights, was rather unique. And not an altogether welcome development in some pro-choice circles.<\/p>\n Simultaneously, many Senate Dems are pushing<\/a> the [tag]Prevention First Act[\/tag]<\/a>, which seeks to reduce abortions by reducing unwanted pregnancies.<\/p>\n Are all of these efforts worthwhile? Can they work as an effective electoral strategy? Will anti-choice voters give Dems another look, or will [tag]pro-choice[\/tag] voters start to stay home? Or both?<\/p>\n If Dems are fundamentally a pro-choice party, do these efforts represent an unwelcome vacillation on a key party principle? Or is this a pragmatic effort to “expand the tent” while keeping our standards in tact?<\/p>\n And as for Pennsylvania, can replacing one anti-choice senator with another be a pro-choice victory?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Of all the public policy issues debated in this country, [tag]abortion[\/tag] is by far the trickiest. There’s just not much room for compromise. If you believe a fertilized egg is a full-fledged human being with all the rights therein, abortion is murder. If you don’t, a government-imposed ban on the procedure takes away a woman’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7216","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=7216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7216\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}