Drake Democrats

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Thursday, February 17, 2005

Reframing the debate

There's a great post today on NewDonkey entitled Pro-Life Pragmatists and Ideologues that I think is representative of the kind of thinking that needs to be going on among Democrats across this country right now. If we're interested in moving beyond the useless pro-life vs. pro-choice debate and actually taking a position that reflects our values, then we must begin to make some changes in how we deal with these issues.

posted by Anonymous @ 10:17 PM  

1 Comments:

  • At 4:43 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said…

    It's an interesting article they have up. That was one of the things I was really surprised about after Clinton gave her speech on abortion. All of the media outlets seized on how amazing it was that she argued that we should work to drastically cut down on the number of abortions, while keeping it legal. I don't know when everyone decided that Democrats must approve of and want abortions, in addition to keeping it legal. I doubt I know any Democrat who doesn't wish there were less abortions happening in this country. I believe we should keep it legal for cases of rape and incest, and maybe other certain extreme situations, but should constantly work to reduce the need for and practice of most others.

    And this is one of the issues that could really become bi-partisan and actually help people in the country for once, but probably won't happen because it works too well as a wedge issue. If everyone could just accept that Roe v. Wade isn't going to be overturned anytime soon (at least not until one of the liberal-leaning justices die, and hopefully not even then) then both parties could work towards ways to reduce the abortions in America. While some of the underlying social problems will always be difficult to solve (poverty, joblessness, etc.), there are certainly plenty of programs we could work on to reduce teen pregnancy and encourage adoption. But until the national Right to Life group and the Republican Party stop using everything as a cultural wedge issue and start trying to actually improve the situations they so endlessly attack, it's unlikely much will change.

     

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