Question for NARAL Pro Choice America: Please Explain Your Tortured Defense of Obama's Flop on Abortion Rights

Please explain your organization's tortured defense of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama reversal on abortion rights. I ask that since Senator Obama clearly said in his recent interview in Relevant, a Christian magazine that "I don't think mental distress qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy." That directly flies in the face of NARAL Pro Choice America's etched in stone position on the late term abortion ban that states, "A health exception must also account for the mental health problems that may occur in pregnancy."

NARAL has repeatedly gone to the political and legal barricades against Congress, the Supreme Court, state and federal courts and state legislatures to ensure that the crucial and medically sound mental health exception remain intact when a woman in late term pregnancy seeks an abortion. In fact, NARAL regards the mental health distress exception as an anchor protection of a woman's right to an abortion.

Obama's position on the mental distress exception is the diametric opposite of NARAL's. As such, it also flies in the face of the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe versus Wade ruling which held that states can ban late term abortions except when the pregnancy directly threatens a woman's physical and mental health. His position flies in the face of three decades of federal and state court rulings which have upheld mental distress as a legitimate reason for approving a late term abortion. Obama's reversal flies in the face of the Freedom of Choice Act that he himself has co-sponsored in Congress. The act unequivocally permits late term abortions when the physical and mental health of a woman is jeopardized.

Obama's volte face on the mental health protection for women that seek abortions in late term and seek to skirt the late term ban flies in the face of his own stated position a year ago. He then blasted the Supreme Court's decision upholding a federal court's ruling banning late term abortions.

This was a major reason why your organization endorsed Obama this past May and since then have beat the drums on your website for him. You even call on your site for 73 people a week to volunteer to help Obama beat his Republican rival John McCain. Unfortunately to justify your over the top support of Obama, you've violated your own precept and principle on when and under what conditions a late term abortion can and should be permitted. You have done an unconscionable political somersault to rationalize Obama's back flip on abortion rights even though it's obvious his flip is nothing more than a crass political pander to Christian fundamentalists and conservative pro-life advocates for votes.

Please then tell me this. Why is it so difficult for NARAL to publicly express disappointment with Obama on the flip flop? Why is it so difficult to challenge him to rethink his position on late term abortions? Does NARAL believe that Obama is above criticism? Does NARAL think by stating its frank opposition to Obama's reversal that the organization risks dumping the election to McCain?
Or, is it simply a case that NARAL fears shame and embarrassment in publicly admitting that Obama may not be the unrelenting vigorous and principled defender of a woman's right to choose in any and all circumstances that NARAL thought he was? Would that admission be too big a blow to NARAL's organizational ego?

I await your answers.

Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is The Ethnic Presidency: How Race Decides the Race to the White House (Middle Passage Press, February 2008).

Comments

[batguano]

This is a cheap shot as is usual with your comments about Obama. This has less to do with your "concern" for womens rights and NARAL, Obama's policies, abortion rights or morality than your own ambition and a quick "gotcha".
How about YOU explain your tortured, shameful defense of OJ Simpson, & the dog torturer/killer Michael Vick? You said of both that they were "victims of a rush to judgment" & "They are both black males"......yeah, lets not rush to judgement over murder & torture of innocent trusting animals....but what about your rush to judge....and benefit from.......Obama's statements?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/tossing-vick-and-young-bl_b_57268.html
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/vicks-a-victim-of-o-j_b_58109.html

Your concern for human and canine life....or lack of it......is clear by your own writings. Your "concern" for womans rights...both black and white...... and the issues of abortion you are using to further your own politics, ambition and book sales is, however, in great doubt.....sadly.
You are doing a bang-up job working to expand your nich among the tiny pool of black Republicans who support the Republican/Con agenda at the expense of the black community.

I await your answer.

Remember, a black person voting for a Republican is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.

[4wehttam]

Get over it Earl. Barack didn't flop and you know it. When will you actually right a positive piece? Is it even IN YOU to do so?

[mom2sons]

Crabs in a barrel syndrome. Go lay under a rock right along with Juan Williams and the others who keep bashing Obama. We will remember all of the traitors!

[pottery]

I think Senator Obama understands both sides of the abortion debate, and clearly, has a position that NARAL finds more acceptable than his alternative. Not understanding and speaking to those misunderstandings and fears about pro- choice positions and the law, is stupidity. Mr. Obama isn"t as stupid as you like to think. As he reaches out to people on the other side of the isle during this campaign in an effort to broaden the electoral map for Democrats, Senator Obama is speaking in the context of those misunderstandings - that a woman who gets an abortion, even a late term abortion, is allowed to on her whim of being merely "distressed," an emotional state everyone has felt, and yet everyone realizes is almost always a transient state of mind.

At times I think EOF really wants another George Bush in the White House, just not the George Bush we have. A left-wing George Bush.

[ATL78]

It's over, she lost last month.

[arvay]

"Does NARAL believe that Obama is above criticism?'

No, NARL appears to be smart. It doesn't want to help elect McCain, who is in favor of reversing Roe.

Personally, I think a woman should be able to have an abortion at will, no explanation necessary. None of society's business. If her husband doesn't agree, and she persists, he should sue for divorce. It's a personal decision, like having a wart removed, but somewhat more invasive.

Fetuses aren't human beings. Neither is a late-term fetus, it's only a human being if its mother declares it so and gives birth.

But that won't fly with much of that Mencken called the American "boobocracy," and NARL presumably knows this.

[TyroneTanic]

NARAL has for years complained about the men who've always had the power to make decisions about what women can and cannot do with their bodies. (Granted, in the past it's always been white men.)

For the first time, NARAL has had the chance to back a viable female candidate for presidency, And they don't.

Whatever happens, NARAL asked for it. I have no sympathy.

[blaqntelligence]

For the first time, NARAL has had the chance to back a viable female candidate for presidency, And they don't.

Owning ovaries and a uterus is no more the makings of a viable candidate for presidency than getting shot down and captured.

[SeanGardner]

Wow...Obama's "reversal on abortion rights"?

You really are the master of overstatement!!!

Obama is not reversing his position on abortion rights....I see it another way: he is systematically undermining any potential "policy landmine" Republicans will be able to plant along the way. I am not distressed by it at all. In fact, I am impressed.

Obama wants to win. He knows that if John McCain gets elected, every thing women have been fighting for over the past 50 years will be in danger: abortion and the larger notion of reproductive rights, Family and Medical Leave, and...yes, affirmative action, which covers the vaunted and celebrated TITLE IX - an affirmative action program at Division I Universities that clearly commodified the WNBA.

Obama is fighting to put himself in the White House so that Justices Stevens and Ginsberg can both retire and Obama can replace them with younger, like-minded Justices. The type of justices who will be able to preserve abortion-rights for women, something that I and over 60 percent of the country want to remain legal.

Obama is simply subverting potential Republican issues. That's all. Nothing more, nothing less.

[Koa]

You Mr. Hutchinson are as shallow as a kiddy pool and as transparent as my living room window. I would hope that with your education and supposed intellect that you would understand the difference between mental distress and mental health. Senator Obama does support the mental health provisions for abortion. He has stated before that he would talk to us as adults, apparently that does not work for knee jerk reactions, i.e., his statement to refine his policy towards Iraq has been blasted all over as a reversal of positions, seems to me most intelligent people understand the meaning of refine. Just as his statement regarding mental distress versus mental health. Your love of "gotcha" politics is truly disgusting.

[allhailmary]

Thank you. You are so rational and thoughtful.

[JohnFromCensornati]

I'd just like to point out that "Please Explain Your Tortured Defense of Obama's Flop on Abortion Rights" is *not* a question.

[mindact]

Here's the case. I think any sane minded person, who knows that a 6 month old festus outside the womb has a propensity to survive in this day and age but is willing to give allow unrestrctedaccess to abortion to such ought to check themselve. That's murder pure and simple. Five month old fetuses is in that gray category of mayba or maybe not. Any fetus less than 5 months is up to the mother, the doctor and whoever she choose to invite in the decision making process.

A ban on late term abortions as long as the physical health of the mother is in jeopadry is where most sane Americans are. With respect to mental distress, that's another issue. If the mother is mentally uncapable, that has very little to do with the ability of the fetus to physically suvivie. In fact, it would be foolish for the state to allow decisions on abortion to be left to a mentally distressed person. They are not capable of making sound decisions for themselves talkless of the fetus.

The state and we as a whole have a vested interest in protecting the santity of life of a fetus in the third trimester. Might I add that any woman who's willing to allow the pregnanacy to advance to that stage and then turn around and try to abort the fetus has lost thier rights to that fetus

[Rjmartinelli]

Probably because they know that with Obama, there's at least a reasonable middle ground, with McCain they don't get abortion at all.

They're not foolish.

[WAstateliberal]

Another anti-Obama piece from Hutchinson. You see, Earl, no one gives you any credence when all you do is hate, hate, hate. If you had ever been objective, your articles might be worth reading.

Also, why does it matter if NARAL and Obama have symmetry of positions? Why would it matter if they slightly disagree? Are you suggesting that NARAL should withdraw its endorsement of the Democratic nominee over this? Because if you aren't suggesting that, then who cares about this?

[johnwinner]

Remembering your arguments for Clinton during the Primaries, Mr. Hutchinson, all I can do is remark what a sore loser you are.