At Notre Dame, President Obama eloquently preached the value of dialogue – the country’s need, he said, of setting aside divisiveness and finding common ground, particularly on abortion.
The White House says its own abortion policy will seek the “common ground” approach, but another recent story reveals a more realistic picture of the process: a falling out along the same line that Obama seeks to bridge, as pro-abortion groups resist initiatives to support pregnant women in order to dissuade them from abortion.
U.S. News and World Report writer Dan Gilgoff describes the issue at hand as one of packaging – whether the White House’s plan should manifest itself in one bill made up of two components (“preventing unwanted pregnancies and reducing the need for abortion”) or be divided into separate bills. (An earlier article from the Wall Street Journal also echoed this debate).
Gilgoff mentions the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops as one of the major players opposed to including provisions for increased funding for contraception or “comprehensive sex education” in a reproductive health bill – both of which would fall under a focus on pregnancy prevention.
USCCB spokesperson Deirdre McQuade is quoted as saying, “We welcome the opportunity to seek common ground with this administration. … But issues of pregnancy prevention are much more divisive and would only slow down much-needed assistance to pregnant women.”
The U.S. bishops have already shown their support for the Pregnant Women Support Act, legislation that would ensure health care for pregnant women, provide pregnancy and parenting classes at maternity homes and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to unborn children and their mothers.
Gilgoff includes a telling quote from a director of the D.C.-based Third Way think tank, which touts “a governing agenda to end the culture wars.”
“For the pro-choice community, that bill has lots of incendiary language and coercive policy,” said the director of Third Way’s culture program. “There’s … a fear that support-only would be defined as the new common ground. For the pro-choice side, the most important part of common ground is pregnancy prevention.”
Such a mentality is astonishing and indicative of the pro-abortion movement. “A fear” that supporting struggling, pregnant women would become “the new common ground”? The implication that handing out condoms and emergency contraception is more important than ensuring health care for both mothers and their unborn children? Where is this coming from – the groups that claim to put women’s rights first?
Relying on contraception to “fix” the problem of abortion is, on the moral level, against Catholic teachings and many others' sensibilities, and on the practical level, a band-aid fix to a deep-seated problem.
Whether or not lawmakers and lobbyists agree is one thing, but offering health care and material support to pregnant women and their children should be a no-brainer. To deny that much defies common sense and walks away from any semblance of common ground.
-- Elizabeth Ela, Headline Bistro editor
