Unity and change no match for Roe v. Wade

not yet | self

[lonewolf-pa]

Change, hope and unity have been compelling bywords for the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama.

Unity has sounded especially appealing to a nation separated into red and blue states and divided along social and cultural lines. And it has sounded especially attractive coming from a man with widely acknowledged political and oratorical skills.

It is fair then to ask what Sen. Obama might do as President to defuse what is perhaps the nation’s most polarizing social issue – Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling of 1973 that legalized abortion throughout the United States.

As a constitutional law expert, Sen. Obama is surely aware that opponents of abortion on demand are not alone in criticizing the Court’s landmark decision. Some abortion-rights supporters have also argued that Roe v. Wade is a flawed and overreaching judicial decision with little basis in the constitution.

As someone who calls frequently for an end to divisiveness, Sen. Obama must realize that Roe v. Wade is by its very nature divisive. By sweeping aside laws in all 50 states with one ruling, Roe moved control over abortion from the legislative system to the judicial system, out of the hands of elected representatives and into the hands of appointed judges. In the process, Roe has disenfranchised voters, limiting their ability to have any meaningful influence on one of the most controversial issues of the day.

In effect, the Supreme Court has told voters that they cannot be trusted to deal wisely, through their representatives, with major issues of life and morality. This misguided paternalism has had a deeply polarizing effect. Instead of meeting to work out compromises, the two sides of the abortion debate confront each other at marches and political rallies. Instead of appealing to the court of public opinion, the two sides must stake their resources on the election of the President, who alone has the power to appoint justices to the court that has claimed final authority to arbitrate all issues related to abortion.

It did not have to be this way. In most European countries where it is allowed, abortion was legalized by a vote of the people or their representatives. And before 1973, abortion had been legalized to one extent or another by the legislatures in several U.S. states, including New York and California.

If Sen. Obama wished to make good on his bold promise of change and healing, he would call publicly for the repeal of Roe v. Wade. Such a move would not ban abortion; it would merely return to the citizens of each state their constitutionally ensured power to regulate it. It would signal the senator's confidence in representative government and in the wisdom of an involved citizenry. And it would herald the "transformational" nature of an Obama presidency that Gen. Colin Powell predicted when he endorsed the Senator last weekend.

But Sen. Obama's record and recent statements offer little hope for a change in the status quo should he be elected President.

Indeed, Sen. Obama is one of the nation's most steadfast supporters of abortion rights and of Roe v. Wade. Last year he promised Planned Parenthood that he would on his first day as President sign the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA). The bill, which Obama co-sponsored as a U.S. Senator, would overturn all federal and state laws that "interfere" with abortion access before "viability." The National Organization for Women has said that FOCA would "sweep away hundreds of anti-abortion laws."

In 2001 and 2002, as a state senator in Illinois, Sen. Obama voted against a bill that would have granted, to babies born alive after failed late-term abortions, the same legal rights and access to health care enjoyed by all other newborn infants. In explaining his vote, Sen. Obama said the bill would have undermined Roe v. Wade. But a bill with virtually identical language passed unanimously in the U.S. Senate.

On Oct. 15, in his debate with Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, Sen. Obama reiterated his opposition to allowing the people's will to prevail on issues related to abortion. A constitutional "right to privacy," he said, should no more be subject to state referendums than should First Amendment rights. But First Amendment freedoms of religion, speech, press and assembly, he failed to note, are explicitly named in the Constitution. The rights to privacy and unrestricted abortion are not.

In his ardor for Roe v. Wade, Sen. Obama refuses to see that democratic government works most effectively, and most in harmony with citizens, when it is most easily accessed by those citizens. Were he able to grasp this, there would be cause for hope.

[muawiyah]

Obama simply wants dead babies. The worship of Saturn requires them.