Democrats and Abortion

I came across a great article on abortion and democrats on msnbc.com today. You can read it here

The article critiques Senator Obama and Representative Pelosi specifically, and the Democratic Party in general about the way in which they discuss the issue of abortion.

As I’ve said before, the abortion issue is my only major disagreement with the Democratic Party. On the whole I agree with most of this article. It seems that in our current political climate one party has to be pro choice and one has to be pro life. Since the republicans are pro life, that leaves the pro choice position to the democrats. Because of this, democratic politicians have to be very careful how they talk about abortion, which often leads to nonsensical comments about the rights of the unborn.

Recently, the democrats have done a better job with the abortion issue than they have in the past. I for one would like to see politicians from both parties work together on programs that are likely to reduce the number of abortions. Women choose abortion because at the time, it seems like their best option. So if we can find out why women feel abortion is their best option, we can also find out ways to make carrying the baby to term a better option for these women. As long as this is done in such a way to not limit the ability of a woman to get an abortion if that is what she wants, there should be no reason for democrats not to get onboard. Of course this means that republicans must be willing to work on ways to reduce abortions, without making it more difficult for women to get them.

I think this is a much more practical approach to reducing abortions than the narrowly focused pro-life goal of overturning Roe vs. Wade. First of all, I don’t think it is likely to be overturned in the foreseeable future, so in my opinion it’s best to try to reduce abortions in other ways. Secondly, If Roe was overturned tomorrow; all the pro-choice groups would immediately get to work on reinstating it. And of course just because something is illegal doesn’t mean people refrain from doing it. In almost every culture, women have passed on ways to end a pregnancy. Abortion isn’t new, the legality of it is.

Sorry for such a heavy post, I just thought it was a great article.