From "Nuanced" to Principled: The Lessons of Pastor Rick, and Why and How Obama and the Democrats Should Make Abortion a Voting Issue
For years Democratic candidates have struggled with how to counter Republican stands that paint the world in black and white, readily summarized in brief, evocative phrases (e.g., "life begins at conception," "tax and spend," "cut and run"). A prime example is abortion, which has left Democrats outside the Northeast and Northwest (where candidates can safely proclaim, "I'm pro-choice" and live to talk about it) and national candidates tongue-tied for years.
Barack Obama faced this problem Saturday night at Rick Warren's "Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency." When asked when he believes life begins, he led with a wonderfully disarming comment about the answer to that question being "above my pay grade." But he then proceeded to offer a somewhat rambling, discursive response that I can't readily summarize after having just read the transcript three times. The main thing I remember is that he said he believes in a woman's right to choose and Roe v. Wade. Commentators referred to his response, like many of his responses Saturday night, as "nuanced," a politic way of saying that it showed greater complexity than his Republican opponent's answer but had the usual ring of a Democratic presidential candidate's response to a question about an emotionally charged issue: too intellectual and difficult to grasp its essence.
When asked the same question, John McCain knew what his task was: to convince the far right, and particularly Christian conservatives, that he is one of them. So his answer was crisp and unequivocal: "At the moment of conception. I have a 25-year pro-life record in the Congress and in the Senate. And as president of the United States, I will be a pro-life president and this presidency will have pro-life policies. That's my commitment."
So is the problem, as many apologists on the left would suggest, that progressive positions are just more complex and not easily reduced to sound bites? Yes and no. Sure, it's easier to summarize a Manichean world view than one that posits more than two forces in the world (good and evil) and more than two options in every situation (pro-life vs. pro-death, staying the course vs. surrender, free markets vs. communism). But the problem is not that our ideas are too sophisticated. It's that the way we present those ideas is not sophisticated enough.
Most Americans actually disagree with John McCain on abortion, as they do on most of the issues that separate him and his Democratic rival. Polls show that only 30% of Americans believe all abortions should be illegal, and few support a return to the pre-Roe era. The majority -- including the majority of evangelical Christians, who made up Warren's audience -- think we should find some kind of "middle ground" on abortion. The reason is that most Americans are ambivalent about abortion. Virtually no one -- left, right, or center -- is comfortable with late term abortions except when the mother's life or health is in danger. The idea of aborting an 8-month-old fetus for convenience (something no one would really do, but it makes a great bogey man to push Democrats down slippery slopes) is deeply disturbing to the vast majority of Americans in a way that aborting a 10-week-old fetus is not.
Why? Because the concept of life is what cognitive psychologists call a "fuzzy set" -- a concept that doesn't have clear boundaries. Unconsciously, most people view a newly fertilized embryo as qualitatively different from a late-term fetus because it doesn't seem like a person. But the point at which a fetus seems to us more like a person than not is indeterminate.
Regardless of their conscious beliefs -- that life begins at conception or that life begins when a baby takes its first breath -- most people's feelings follow their unconscious perceptions. That's why early in pregnancy even most evangelical Christians find it morally repugnant to force a rape victim to bear her rapist's child, even though they may consciously believe that the fertilized egg is a life, whereas late in pregnancy most people aren't comfortable with abortion except in exceptional circumstances. In their guts, most people feel that Roe v. Wade got it about as right as we're going to get it -- which is why the vast majority of Americans don't want it overturned -- even if they can't articulate why.
The million dollar question is how to talk about an issue that requires nuance in a way that is succinct, principled, and captures our gut-level sensibilities. If Democrats continue to parry Republican war cries of "baby killer" with emotionally bland or euphemistic phrases like "reproductive health" or continue to couch the debate in terms of life vs. choice, offering ambivalent voters a Hobson's choice, they do indeed have something to worry about.
But that isn't how Democrats should talk about abortion. The pollster Stan Greenberg and I recently completed the first draft of one of the most wide-ranging progressive messaging projects of which I am aware, using a sample of 10,000 to study 10 different ways of talking about 9 issues, from wedge issues (e.g., abortion, guns, gays, immigration) to national security and taxes (where Democrats have traditionally similarly been on the run) to the economy (where Democrats hold an advantage). We found that progressives can win the abortion debate by 15 to 20 points seven different ways against a strong "pro-life" message much like the one McCain offered Saturday night, and they can win in some very unlikely parts of the country. When progressives speak honestly to voters' ambivalence and make their principles clear and emotionally compelling, Americans tend to prefer honesty and nuance to oversimplification. The answer doesn't lie in "dumbing down" our messages. It lies in ratcheting up their emotional intelligence. On some issues it took us several tries in focus groups and online dial-tests to find the words that conveyed what we were trying to express without triggering some other meaning we hadn't intended, but by the time we had completed the latest round of testing, we had multiple messages that beat well-branded conservative messages by 8 to 30 points on every issue.
The language of "choice" is not, in fact, the most compelling way to engage most Americans on abortion. It doesn't resonate with most voters in the center, and it activates negative stereotypes about feminism and promiscuity (and, not surprisingly, it polls particularly poorly with men, who have conflicting feelings about both). It was the right language in the 1960s, when women's right to control their own bodies was emblematic of their struggle for equality, but that was 40 years ago, and as meanings change, so should messages. It is a particularly weak appeal to an evangelical Christian audience, for whom it begs the question, "Whose choice matters most, God's or a (mortal) woman's?"
Obama wasn't going to win over the majority of Warren's parishioners, but he could have spoken to them in their own language while winning the hearts and minds of the majority who were listening on television. He might have begun by acknowledging the obvious, that he knew he wasn't going to convince most of Pastor Rick's flock, but that he was nonetheless one of them, with a comment like, "Well, I knew at some point I was going to be in there with the lions. I know many of you won't agree with me, but I hope my answer at least leaves you with as much respect for me and my beliefs as I have for you and yours." He could then have continued, once again drawing them in while addressing concerns about him that had been raised in recent weeks, "The Bible says that pride is a sin, and I'd be showing more pride than even John McCain thinks I have, with those celebrity and Moses ads, if I told you that I know with certainty when life begins. I wish I did, because then this would be an easy question. But here's where I stand":
No one truly knows what's in the mind of God, and I just don't like the idea of government telling a woman or couple when they should or shouldn't start their family based on somebody else's interpretation of Scripture. We need to find the common ground on abortion, reflecting our shared moral beliefs, not the beliefs that divide us. We are all united in the belief that we should do everything we can to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, teen pregnancies, and abortions, starting with instilling in our children both the values and the knowledge to make good choices. And we all agree that abortion shouldn't be used as a form of birth control and shouldn't be an option late in pregnancy except when the mother's life or health is in danger. I could go on and talk about how misguided I think our currently policies are that deny access to birth control to women and teenagers in our inner cities, which does nothing but perpetuate the cycle of poverty, stop young people from getting an education and fulfilling their God-given potential, and make it more likely that they'll have children before they're ready to be good parents. But the main point I want to make is that in this country, we don't force one person to live by another person's faith. This should be a personal and moral issue, not a political one.
This is a variation of one of the messages we tested, although it is considerably longer than those messages, which we kept to about 45 seconds. I revised it here to fit both the audience and the central narrative of Obama's campaign (the theme of focusing on what unites and not what divides us).
I'm not claiming that this is the best or only narrative Obama could have offered on abortion. Central to Obama's appeal is his genuineness, and the only messages he should offer voters are those that fit his values and style. But this way of talking about abortion has several features that render it a strong, principled message. It isn't hard to come away with the central theme, because it's offered in both the opening sentence and at the end: That as long as we do not all share the same religious beliefs, the government has no business forcing one person to live by another person's faith. It speaks to religious freedom and government intrusion, two themes usually associated with narratives on the right but that should be central to a progressive narrative on abortion. It recognizes, as Obama did in his actual answer, that this is a moral issue, and it builds on common ground, emphasizing themes like reducing teen pregnancies and instilling values that are shared by both the left and right and hence are likely to be compelling to people in the center. And it re-enfranchises males by reminding men that they have a stake in this, too: that although ultimately the decision to abort or not to abort resides with the mother, women usually make these decisions together with their husbands or boyfriends, and that a woman or couple, not the government, should make these kinds of intensely personal decisions.
I would be remiss not to conclude with one final thought. The impact of a message doesn't reside solely in the words, metaphors, imagery, frames, or neural networks it triggers or fails to trigger. The messenger, the delivery, and the nonverbal communication are equally important. This year Democrats have chosen a messenger who is a tremendously gifted orator. But Obama has not been able to translate what he can do on the stump to debates or interviews. In contrast to McCain, who had clearly been coached to speak to his audience, to use personal examples, and to stay focused throughout on his primary goal--to convince doubters on the right that he is one of them -- Obama too rarely spoke to his audience, too rarely connected with personal stories, and did not seem to have come into the evening with a game plan of what he wanted to accomplish.
None of that should have happened after over 20 debates and hundreds of television appearances, and none of it would have happened after the second or third Democratic debate if Democrats understood the importance of narratives and nonverbal cues. Republican presidential candidates have outperformed their Democratic counterparts for most of the last 40 years in message, and they have outperformed them in delivery. The reason is simple: They have understood the value of both. Whether or not McCain had a little help outside the cone of silence Saturday night when he sauntered into the church in time to have heard half the questions, there is no question that he had the benefit of superb coaching on both his verbal and nonverbal messages. The Obama team needs to take the cue. If someone with the appropriate expertise hasn't spent a few days with Obama watching the tapes of his prior debate performances and giving him feedback on what voters are picking up between his words, there's no better way he could spend the week of the Republican Convention.
Drew Westen, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Emory University, founder of Westen Strategies, and author of "The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation," recently released in paperback with a new postscript on the 2008 election.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
I'm wondering how the extreme pro life faction would feel if they were personally responsible
for supporting the mother and child, to make sure neither of them would ever suffer from want
or neglect, that these children would be provided decent housing, food, health care and a decent
education and job training.
Who will pay for the child with serious health issues and protect the mother from the cost
of raising a disabled child?
If we grant the right to life, how do we make sure there is also quality of life for the mother
and the child?
Your comment "If we grant the right to life.." says it all.
You are either God, the great and powerful Oz, or a typically selfish narcissist that believes your life is more important than others.
Your total self-absorption is also indicted by the fact that you have not noticed the hundreds of homes, foundations and agencies that are run by "the extreme pro life faction" that service those mothers and children in every way that you mention.
There is a caring, loving world out there...get involved.
The great and powerful OgreDaddy would lay down his life for his own 3 children.
Even so, this does not give me the right to force my personal beliefs on others.
There is, of course, only one underpinning issue in the abortion discussion: when does human life begin? Whether a fetus is alive is not the question. Many things are alive; think, fungus spores and bacteria, but few are afforded the protection of the law for their survival. Whether the fetus is human life is another thing altogether.
If we look for the answer in faith-based arguments, we find ourselves all over the place. Some religions would have human life beginning at conception and others, not until the child is born and breathing on its own. Some even would extend the argument of “potential life” to include the semen that “spills to the ground;” as provided in Genesis 38:6-9.
Since the religious “moral compass” is notoriously inconsistent, we might reasonably look to the traditional law for guidance. English common law has long held that a fetus only becomes a human life when it attains an “independent circulation.” First stated in 1842 in Regina v. Milborough Trilloe, Reports of Hereford, the concept has been reaffirmed as recently as the year 2000 by the case, United States, Appellee v. Sharon Y. Nelson, Crim. App. No. 97-1978, USCA.
So for almost 200 years, the common law has provided us with relatively clear guidance in a manner that generations of Americans could understand and follow. We began the century with this definition of human life and perhaps we would be well served to stay with this tried and tested rule.
In 1972, the National Organization for Women (NOW) expelled all its pro-life members in order to stifle dissent on the abortion issue. These pro-life feminists went on to form their own organization, Feminists For Life.
In “Feminism and Abortion: The Great Inconsistency” (The New Zealand Listener, January 7, 1978), Daphne de Jong responded to the pro-abortion argument that the unborn child is merely part of its mother and not a separate individual human being endowed with human rights:
“Until this century, the laws of both Britain and America made women a ‘part of’ their husbands.
“’By marriage, the husband and wife are one person in law...our law in general considers man and wife one person.’ (Blackstone’s Commentaries, 1768)
“The one person was, of course, the husband, who exerted absolute power over his wife and her property. She had no existence and therefore no protection under the law. The only thing a husband could not do was kill her.
“The earliest feminist battles were fought against the legal chattel status of women. Many feminists were among those who overturned the U.S. Supreme Court decision of 1857, that a black slave was ‘property’ and not entitled to the protection of the Constitution.
“Feminism totally rejected the concept of ownership in regard to human beings. Yet when the Court ruled in 1973 that the fetus was the property of its mother, and not entitled to the protection of the Constitution, ‘liberated’ women danced in the streets.”
A living adult woman who is said to "belong" to her her husband as chattel is a slave. Saying a human can be chained to a bed for 9 months while a fetus develops is another form of female slavery. The fetus is given more rights under this theory than is the woman. Under current law, the state cannot prohibit abortion during the first 6 months, but can ban it for the last 3 because it is assumed the fetus could live on its own as a separate being at 7 months.
If a fetus is a human, then the woman who exercises and miscarries must be charged with manslaughter -- negligently bringing about the death of a another person.
Even if the fetus was a human, there is no legal theory under which one human can be forced to allow another human to live off of its organs. Imagine if men could carry fetuses, but a man chose not to. Could the state imprison him, hook the fetus up to his lungs, kidney, liver to allow the fetus to feed off the host for 9 months?
There is no legal theory to support the entire anti-abortion argument. It's all religious, and starts with anti-abortion, inevitably next goes to anti-birth control, and finally arrives back again with women having no rights over their own bodies or their own lives.
>The majority -- including the majority of evangelical Christians, who made up Warren's audience -- think we should find some kind of "middle ground" on abortion.<
Someone should explain to them (and keep on explaining until it sinks in) that pro-choice IS the middle ground. No one is "pro-abortion," which is why you never seen folks picketing outside of ob/gyn clinics, shouting "Don't have children you can't or won't take care of--have an abortion instead!" Pro-choice (as opposed to anti-choice, not pro-life--when abortion is illegal, WOMEN DIE) allows women to decide when they believe life begins, rather than holding them prisoners to someone else's moral concepts. It allows them sovereignty over their own bodies and beliefs, which is a basic human, not potential-human, right.
People are born with certain abilities and rights, impulses, urges, needs. People are born with the ability to think, to imagine, to want, to take in information and make decisions. They are born with the urge and impulse to eat, drink, sleep, defecate, and have sex and reproduce. The thinking part means they can figure out how they get pregnant. The decision part means they can decide to try to do something to prevent pregnancy (primitive women inserted stones) or to end a pregnancy ( such as by drinking certain potions which allegedly induce abortion).
The federal government was given very limited authority when it was created: to create and maintain roads and a postal system; oversee inter-state commerce; provide protection for the nation. Not a peep in the whole constitution about any authority given to the federal government to control our bodies or persons, or our health care, or our reproductive decisions, or our sex lives.
The constitution states (article IX) that any rights not specifically given to the federal government remain with the citizens. The government has no right to prohibit abortion. It's unfortunate that nobody pays much attention to the constitution these days.
Well, that's not entirely accurate, because if you look at a little more than just that one amendment....
section 8, Clause 18:
"To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof. "
and, unfortunately, the 10th amendment, the one right after your 9th.
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
So yeah, basically either the federal government, or the states could prohibit abortion. That's what power left to the states and citizens means, that the citizens, through their elected represtatives could create laws that ban abortion.
And in fact many did, until the supreme court magically created a previously non-existant right to privacy out of thin air in Roe V. Wade.
All rights which belonged to people at the time the government was set up remained with the people. The government only has the authority and rights that the citizens gave to it. The federal government was given the right to create and maintain roads, etc. The state governments were given authority over such matters as education. But no constitution gave any government the authority to prohibit women from using birth control or having abortions.
The states have tried to create laws saying that a fetus is a human being and the state can intervene to take control of the fetus and the female, to protect the fetus. (Do we count the fetus in the census or in deciding how many representatives a state gets?) These laws are absurd on their face, since they do not include any legal basis for imprisoning a woman to force her to be a host to another for the benefit of the other.
The broader effect of these laws is that if a woman had racy sex with her husband and miscarried, they would both be charged with negligent homicide. Most of us are not insane enough to think the government can stick its hands up into women's reproductive systems and forbid them from doing what they like, at least in the early stages before a fetus can survive outside the womb.
Oh, did I mention that supreme court justices are not elected by the citizens?
I am a husband who loves his wife, I am a father who loves his two daughters, I am a son who loves his mother, I am a son in law who loves his mother in law, I am a brother in law who loves his sisters in law, I am an uncle who loves his nieces and I am a man who has female friends whom I admire and respect. As a man I cannot and will not make any decision regarding your personal health and body, I respectfully ask the same from you. See how simple it is.
when is the thing in your wife's belly your child versus a part of her body that she has 100% control over?
When are my testicles something my wife can make a decision about?
How about this as a simple talking point:
Criminalizing abortion won't end it. It will make criminals out of the women so desperate to end an unwanted pregnancy that they will risk jail, mutilation and even death. Women's bodies will be pressed into an involutary servitude contradicting the 13th Amendment and could only have access to any reproductive self-determination through and "underground railroad," not unlike that which conveyed runaway slaves to freedom.
Keeping abortion legal keeps it safe; keeps its procedures and providers regulated for the safety of the women.
"The reverence of each and every human life has been the keystone of Western medicine... it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous, whether intra- or extra-uterine. The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not put forth under socially impeccable auspices."
---Editorial,
Journal of the California State Medical Association
September 1970
In one anti-abortion pamphlet, Dr. Jean Garton states that religion did not discover when human life begins, the biologists did. In her book, Who Broke the Baby?, Dr. Garton compares discrimination against the human unborn to other forms of discrimination:
"...At one time in our history American Indians were not legal persons because we did not grant them the protection of our Constitution. Thus we were able to take by force anything which belonged to them.
"Usually what we wanted was their land, so we denied them the right to property. Next in our national list of non-persons were black slaves, declared to be chattel and property of their masters as a result of the Dred Scott decision of 1857...In 1973, another group of human beings was added to the non-person list: the unborn."
Scientific fact, because an editorial declares it so???
Try this on for size: If life begins at conception, does not death begin at conception also? And if that is the case, is abortion taking a life or confirming a death? At what point can you be said to be killing a living human being? Can you also at that point be said to be killing a dead human being? At what point does this abstraction move from the sublime to the ridiculous?
This is a purely metaphysical question, and of all the answers I have heard, I personally find the notion that life begins when the sperm enters the egg to be ridiculous. That begs the definition of life. Does it begin when the cell divides the first time? The second? The hundredth? When the heart starts beating? When the child takes the first breath? I think ObamaNextPresident had the best analogy I have ever heard, comments from the peanut gallery notwithstanding. Life is a process, not an instantaneous event. It was an ambush question, sort of like "Senator McCain, have you stopped beating your wife?" would be. Who are you to force your judgments on everyone else?
More atrocities have been committed in the name of God and children than any other cause.
If conservatives think life begins at conception then shouldn't an unborn "child" conceived by a so-called illegal immigrant be given citizen rights and should preclude the "mother" from being deported because you would be deporting an American citizen still inside her? According to their logic, all the unborn conceived on U. S. soil should be deemed U.S. citizens no matter where they eventually emerge from the womb.
No don't go confusing them with sound logic.
They are both illegal aliens. Good enough for you?
On a personal level, all forms of legalized murder are abhorrent to most of us. Being against abortion is fine -- don't have one. If you're also against executing the wrongly convicted and killing non-combatants, your philosophy is consistent. But that's not the point. Politically, the "pro-life" side wants to use government power to force women to give birth. Some also favor banning all contraception. In frontier days, when the state had a stake in increasing population and white men held all the power, that might have seemed defensible; now it is not.
Men are hardwired to want to control women's fertility, to be sure the baby is theirs. Look around at the pickets of abortion clinics: often they are all men. What's missing? THE WOMAN'S LIFE!
Mr Westen makes a great point here that the the issue of abortion in this country is being used as a tool to polarize voters on religious moral behavior which in my view has no place in a government forum. This issue in itself that Mr Westen has explored here should made one thing very clear that the issues of state and church need to be kept at great distances. You can debate all the factors that encompass the reason the choice is made to have or not to have an abortion and this choice comes from the individual or individuals life experiences in the home, the church or both but it has never come from a elected government official or governing body. So, FYI, I'm for life, I'm for letting people live their life and as we all know life isn't perfect. Should there be some guidelines surrounding the procedures for abortion yes and these in my view need to be based on a standard of right behavior not a law of dictated by religious groups.
The problem with the politically active religious groups in this country is that they think all morality comes from religion and that without god there would be NO morality. They also refuse to accept that morals are relative --dependent on both culture and context-- while practicing that relativism themselves, and of course denying that they do.
The real point is that scientifically, we cannot say when life begins. We can, however, all agree that to kill an innocent life is wrong. So, abortion, the termination of a possible life (possible since we do cannot prove when life begins) should be a procedure that makes people think "should we be doing this if we are not sure?".
Instead, we have those crusading about the rights of a woman to have an abortion. Since we cannot prove when life begins, those same people could actually be crusading for a woman's right to kill her own children.
I know that the rabid pro-choicers will jump all over and label me as a radical anti-abortionist (I am not...I believe it is wrong, but I do not protest at abortion clinics or stand on street corners holding signs with pictures of aborted fetuses on it), but I am simply looking at the issue with logic. I would challenge those that are pro-choice to do the same. I realize that their political stance will not allow that, but it was worth a shot.
HIllary seems able to define her abortion stance articulately. She can get into the more complex aspects or when the short version is called for she just says she believes "abortion should be legal and rare". It fits in sound bites and makes room for some middle-of-the-roaders. That kind of statement, forcefully delivered, goes over much better in a conservative crowd than nuance. It's a strong stand on abortion but encourages alternatives.
Matters of personal faith do not have any place in our government and those who wish to
FORCE their beliefs on others are fighting a losing battle.
They call these choices "personal" because they are indeed very personal and we must respect each other's right to make a well informed personal decision no matter how difficult that decision may be.
We have so many more important issues to deal with as a nation.
We have the most corrupt administration in U.S. history.
A political mafia who considers themselves above the law.
Our nation's wealth has been squandered to benefit war profiteering.
If it were not for this hoarding of tax dollars, we would have more than enough
money to provide free health care for every citizen and free college education for all future generations.
We need jobs to rebuild this nation's infrastructure and a realistic course for
energy independence and state of the art transportation.
The current administration would just love for all of us to get bogged down
with extremist wedge issues to distract us from their skullduggery.
Further to your comment a good ad would break down the cost of the war in terms of how this effects one family such as 10 years worth gasoline, a college education for every child, 10 years of universal health care, 10,000 bags of groceries, 10 years worth of mortgage payments, etc.
But I disagree with you that we have so many more important issues. They are all important, including the constitutional protection of life at all stages.But since we have no candidate that foots the whole life bill, we have to weigh all the issues. I just don't want us to be hijacked again by the partisan religious right.
"Beyond my paygrade"????
Senator, it is your paygrade that's what you will be paid to do..to LEAD.
This is why I continually have trouble with Obama he just doesn't seem to get it!
Maybe that's what happens when you take Cocaine?
May God have mercy on us all!
Boooo
Double Boooo! What the hell are you talking about. Obama is trying not to step on toes and hurt his chances of being elected because of the cruel evil evangelical so-called Christians who think they know what is best for everyone in America!!!!!; and who want to take control of America and force their religious veiws on us like an American Taliban! God - Mercy - Jesus give these people a life and stay out of mine!
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
