Selling Obama as a Pro-Life Candidate
by Deal Hudson - October 2, 2008
Reprinted with permission.
Just when this presidential election could not get any stranger, David Brody reports the launching of a "Pro-Life Pro-Obama" Web site. When is the "John McCain, Pacifist" Web site going to show up?
The effort to sell Obama as a pro-life candidate is being spearheaded by a group called the Matthew 25 Network, a PAC created by former Democratic political operative Mara Vanderslice. Vanderslice was director of religious outreach for the Kerry campaign in 2004 but was "silenced" when Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, publicized her connection with various far-left political groups.
Window readers might also remember the Matthew 25 organization from my story on the "non-partisan" convention in Philadelphia rallying Catholics to political involvement. The Matthew 25 booth featured a prominent picture of Obama along with words from Matthew 25:38, "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat," made to look like they belonged to Obama, not Jesus.
The "Pro-Life Pro-Obama" Web site confirms what I wrote yesterday: Doug Kmiec has become the Catholic outreach of the Obama campaign. The first thing you notice when the site opens is a prominent "Welcome from Doug Kmiec."
Kmiec's message is the one we have been hearing from Obama's Catholics since the beginning of the campaign – that overturning Roe v. Wade is not an effective way to reduce abortions:
But after 35 years, a new approach is needed. Too many unborn lives are being lost as we wait for judges to get it right. Barack Obama's strengthening of support for prenatal care, health care, maternity leave, and adoption will make the difference. Studies confirm it.
Doug Johnson, legislative director of National Right to Life, has already written a devastating critique of Obama's abortion reduction promises. But even Kmiec's claims about Obama's concern for prenatal care don't comport with the facts. Steve Ertelt at LifeNews reported two days ago that Obama voted against an amendment extending a health care program to cover prenatal care.
This vote came in the midst of a congressional debate over the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The defeat of SCHIP was taken up by pro-Obama Catholic groups like Catholics United to accuse various Republicans, including John McCain, of not being pro-life.
Obama supported SCHIP but opposed adding an amendment that would have, arguably, made it into an explicitly pro-life legislation.
Now that Kmiec has become the poster-boy for Obama's Catholic efforts, his claims on behalf of his candidate grow ever larger. Apart from anchoring the "Pro-Life Pro-Obama" Web site, Kmiec is quoted from an interview with John Allen:
Conceding that Obama does not have "a perfect Catholic position on abortion," Kmiec, nonetheless, insisted that voting for the Democrat is "not inconsistent with the teaching of the church."
No, Obama's position on abortion is not perfect; it's exactly contrary to the teaching of the Catholic Church. The candidate Kmiec is touting as pro-life is the most extreme pro-abortion presidential nominee in the history of American politics.
The "Pro-Life Pro-Obama" Web site represents not only increasingly hyperbolic claims for the Democratic candidate, but also a joining together of Catholic and Protestant efforts in support of the Obama campaign. The collaboration of Protestant Vanderslice with Catholic Kmiec reveals the intimate and active cooperation of Obama surrogates with outside groups such as the Matthew 25 PAC. Their determination to sell Obama to pro-life voters is admirable, while being completely ludicrous.
Deal W. Hudson is the director of the Morley Institute, and is the former publisher of CRISIS Magazine, a Catholic monthly published in Washington, DC. His articles and comments have been published in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, Washington Times, Los Angeles Times, National Review, Richmond Times-Dispatch, The Village Voice, Roll Call, National Journal, The Economist, and by the Associated Press. He appears regularly on television shows such as NBC Nightly News, One-on One with John McLaughlin, C-Span's Washington Journal, News Talk, NET's Capitol Watch, The Beltway Boys, The Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on PBS, and radio programs such as "All Things Considered" on National Public Radio. He was associate professor of Philosophy at Fordham University from 1989 to 1995 and was a visiting professor at New York University for five years. He taught for nine years at Mercer University in Atlanta, where he was chair of the philosophy department. He has published many reviews and articles as well as four books: Understanding Maritain: Philosopher and Friend (Mercer, 1988); The Future of Thomism (Notre Dame, 1992); Sigrid Undset On Saints and Sinners (Ignatius, 1994); and Happiness and the Limits of Satisfaction (Rowman & Littlefield, 1996). His autobiography, An American Conversion (Crossroad, 2003), is available from Amazon.com.
