Now I have been repeatedly attacked on here because I have disagreed on an orthodoxy position on abortion.
Let me start this out with some background. I am an operative, I work in politics, politics is what pays the bills for me. I am a Democrat, period. I only ever worked for Democrats, and I have never even voted for a Republican. I have mostly worked for pro-choice Democrats but have worked for a few pro-life Democrats. I am pro-choice.
The point of this diary is to get at why we are really losing the debate on abortion. When you read through the posts about how dare people support Casey, pro-criminalization, its my baby how dare you tell me what to do. There is something missing, responsibility. Ultimately, abortion is not a good thing, it is a terrible choice someone is put in, and while the fetus might not be viable, it eventually will be. None of this is addressed, its all about me, me, me, and the sneaking perception that abortion is really about birth control. And in the end, it reinforces a negative stereotype about the Party. We are a Party without responsibility.
I have been repeating numbers, that unfortunately I have no way to post. Anyone with SPSS or SAS and the exit poll raw data can confirm though.
Pro-Life Democratic Women - 22% voted for Bush (7% of the total Democratic Women's vote)
Pro-Choice Republican Women - 8% voted for Kerry (3% of the total Republican Women's vote)
Which means we are either not talking about it the right way, or the issue isn't salient enough, but I think it would be difficult to have a more anti-choice Republican candidate for President.
The Party has successfully marginalized itself on an issue that it could grab ground on, by moving the abortion debate to responsibility and a real effort to reduce abortions. This failure has lead to parental notification, partial birth abortion ban, forcing Doctors to talk about the pain to the fetus, and 24 hour waiting periods, which we can all agree do absolutely nothing to stop abortions. The point is that the chief opponents of abortion rights are extremists on issues like birthcontrol. If the Democratic Party pushed adoption, increased birth control, better sex ed and responsible parenthood, while keeping abortion safe, rare and legal as a major platform of the Party, we expand. The issue of eliminating abortions through responsibility not banning, is a winner and will win the Party lots of ground while putting the anti-choice movement on the defensive.