{"id":8312,"date":"2012-10-26T19:31:39","date_gmt":"2012-10-27T02:31:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=8312"},"modified":"2012-10-29T19:49:55","modified_gmt":"2012-10-30T02:49:55","slug":"democrats-go-all-in-for-abortion-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/democrats-go-all-in-for-abortion-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"Democrats Go All In for Abortion Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Democrats<\/a>by David Nather –
\nThis was supposed to be an election in which the economy dominated the debate, social issues took a backseat and the culture wars were put on hold.<\/p>\n

Yet in the homestretch of the 2012 campaign<\/a>, abortion politics is coloring races up and down the ticket.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s by design.<\/p>\n

Democrats have gone all in for abortion rights<\/a>, with none of the hedging or defensiveness they\u2019ve shown in recent years \u2014 a subtle but striking repositioning with political consequences that extend far beyond Nov. 6.<\/p>\n

The evidence of it is impossible to miss. The airwaves are choked with messaging about women\u2019s reproductive health. Abortion rights advocates had prime speaking roles at the Democratic convention. Contraception advocate Sandra Fluke is a prominent campaign trail surrogate. Cecile Richards, head of Planned Parenthood, recently introduced President Barack Obama<\/a> at a Virginia campaign rally. <\/p>\n

While Democrats have long supported a woman\u2019s right to choose, this year\u2019s full-throated embrace of abortion rights \u2014 from the president down to the most obscure House candidate \u2014 marks a historic departure that now places the party as firmly and unyieldingly in support of abortion rights as the GOP is in opposition.<\/p>\n

The long-term implications of that shift worry some Democrats \u2014 who long shied away from being the party of \u201cabortion on demand,\u201d in the phrase of their GOP opponents, to avoid alienating voters who favor some restrictions or find it morally troubling. But with the White House and Senate hanging in the balance, Obama and the party have replaced that political caution with a new political calculus \u2014 that it\u2019s the GOP that looks extreme and out of touch, particularly to women voters who will help decide the election.
\nDemocrats point to controversial statements of GOP Senate candidates such as Richard Mourdock of Indiana and Todd Akin of Missouri, and a Republican legislative agenda \u2014 both in statehouses and in Congress \u2014 as the forces driving the heightened focus on abortion rights. They\u2019re especially incensed by the GOP\u2019s fight against the Obama administration\u2019s contraception rule and the drive to defund Planned Parenthood \u2014 putting new issues on the table that, in their view, shouldn\u2019t be controversial.<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

HT: Politico<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by David Nather – This was supposed to be an election in which the economy dominated the debate, social issues took a backseat and the culture wars were put on hold. Yet in the homestretch of the 2012 campaign, abortion politics is coloring races up and down the ticket. And it\u2019s by design. Democrats have … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[72,15,98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leftism","category-moral-issues","category-pro-abortion-democrats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8312","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}