Abortion and Politics

 

A nervous NARAL wants Clinton and Sanders asked about abortion

By Dave Andrusko
NRL News Today had posted several times prior to the comments made by pro-life Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) at last Saturday’s debate and along exactly the same lines he did: why are Republicans always asked about abortion at their debates while Democrats sail through unscathed by any question, soft or tough, at their debates?

If you remember, after stating his own unequivocal pro-life credentials, Rubio said

Here’s what I find outrageous. There has been five Democratic debates. The media has not asked them a single question on abortion and on abortion, the Democrats are extremists.

Well, our benighted opposition at NARAL Pro-Choice America spotted the same discrepancy and (for obviously different reasons) wan pro-abortionists Hillary Clinton and Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders queried. What follows is a little over half of their email and then our comments:

Friend,

The last few Democratic debates have left me astounded.

Reproductive freedom is at serious risk in this country. But still, not a single question about abortion rights has been asked at ANY of the five Democratic debates. Not one.

On Thursday night, PBS NewsHour’s Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff will make up the first all-woman moderating team of any debate. Click here to tell them to ask the candidates a question about how they’ll defend and expand abortion rights in the face of historic challenges to reproductive freedom.

Lately, a lot of people have been asking me why it’s important to have the two Democratic candidates debate abortion, when they both clearly have strong pro-choice voting records.

I can tell you exactly why it matters: Being ‘just’ pro-choice is not enough anymore. Not now, when we face an anti-choice majority in Congress and anti-choice state governments and a field of rabidly anti-choice GOP presidential candidates who are determined to ban abortion.

The voters deserve a chance to watch Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton race to the top on this issue.

This is followed by the usual, usual complaints about the litany of pro-life state laws and a call to end the Hyde Amendment (without using the name of the annual appropriations rider), and a pitch to sign a petition to Ifill and Woodruff asking them to inquire about abortion.
What to say?
Like we have, NARAL is sensing which way the winds are blowing. Clinton and Sanders are fine with telling the troops in a closed setting how pro-abortion they are. Not so much in a more open setting.

But Ifill and Woodruff are reliably pro-abortion. They can be counted on to ask softball questions which allow the candidates to skate around the truth that they are radically pro-abortion, right?
What else? You have to laugh–I’m sorry, you just do–when NARAL says, “The voters deserve a chance to watch Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton race to the top on this issue.” The only race will be to see which one can most craftily smuggle in assurances in language that, like high-pitched dog whistles, only pro-abortionist can hear. Bland assurances about a woman’s right to choose for the unenlightened but promises of pro-abortion militancy to the insiders.
Finally, we are told a hundred times a day and two hundred times on Sunday that being “pro-choice” is a winning position. But it can only prevail if the candidate espousing that position is not flushed out.

“What do you mean [sir or madam]? Tax-payer funding of abortion? Abortions up to well into the third trimester? Abortions of babies capable of experiencing pain? Abortions for teenagers without parental knowledge?”
Then watch them squirm.

Source: NRLC News