Monday, May 18, 2009

Obama's Abortion Speech

CNN reports on the president's speech at Notre Dame.

President Obama delved into the abortion debate in a controversial Notre Dame commencement address Sunday, calling for a search for common ground on one of the most divisive issues in American politics.

Addressing a sharply divided audience at the storied Catholic university, Obama conceded that no matter how much Americans "may want to fudge it ... at some level the views of the two camps are irreconcilable."

"Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction," he said. "But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature."


My first impression was that he certainly didn't shrink from the opportunity of talking about this topic. He could have made briefer comments about abortion and got on with the usual you-people-are-the-future-of-America speech. He didn't do that, which makes me wonder if I've been too quick to question him recently about his decisions on Afghanistan, torture and gun control.

Another thing that occurred to me was that it often seems like the liberals are the only ones talking about common ground and getting along with your adversaries. Do you think that's true? Do conservatives have a problem with this kind of thing?

"As citizens of a vibrant and varied democracy, how do we engage in vigorous debate?" he asked. "How does each of us remain firm in our principles, and fight for what we consider right, without demonizing those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side?"

What's your opinion? Do you think such suggestions as not "demonizing" the other side and not turning the opponent's "views to caricature," might be useful in the gun control debates? Do you think it was a bit courageous of the president to tackle this issue so directly?

Please leave a comment.

7 comments:

  1. "Another thing that occurred to me was that it often seems like the liberals are the only ones talking about common ground and getting along with your adversaries."

    Of course. The difference is in the terms, liberal and conservative. Conservatives have no room for nor desire to change, compromise, think out of the box. They are stuck, immobilized by the weight of their convictions.

    It is not they who must change because they have never changed. They are stuck in the past, hopelessly chained to a hitching post, as the world drives by.

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  2. If you believe that abortion (or the death penalty) is the moral equivalent of murder, I don't see how compromise is possible.

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  3. Another thing that occurred to me was that it often seems like the liberals are the only ones talking about common ground and getting along with your adversaries. Do you think that's true?

    This most certainly hasn't been my experience. Just to take the abortion debate as an example, for every conservative who calls himself "pro-life (implying that the opposition is "anti-life") there's a liberal who calls himself "pro-choice" (implying that the opposition is "anti-choice"--a phrase I've heard exactly from several liberals who can't even bring themselves to describe their opponents as "anti-abortion"). I don't have a strong opinion on whether abortion is right or wrong, but I _do_ have a strong opinion on how the debate is carried out.

    The question isn't about life or choice--it's about whether a fetus is a person entitled to protection from harm and killing. In my experiance, it's actually the liberals in this particular issue who most demonize and caricature the other side, and avoid discussing the actual issue in dispute. Conservatives' argument is based primarily on that key sticking point: is the fetus a person. Liberals' arguments more commonly try to force the discussion into a mold of choice, privacy, or womens' rights, none of which do we usually accept as a justification for murder.

    (Again, I'm not taking the position that it _is_ murder, just saying that, since is-it-murder is the core question, arguments about choice and privacy are begging the question.)

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  4. There is a reason for the term pro-choice, rather than pro-abortion. I am pro-choice legally, but anti-abortion morally. Abortion is never a good option, but sometimes it is the best of bad options. Ideally, abortion would remain as a legal option, but would be very rare.

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  5. "liberals are the only ones talking about common ground and getting along with your adversaries."

    and to show this 'common ground' thinking, Mud Rake goes on to spew
    "Conservatives have no room for nor desire to change, compromise, think out of the box. They are stuck, immobilized by the weight of their convictions."

    So much for 'getting along'.

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  6. Thanks Sevesteen. I'm with you on the idea that if a person thinks it's murder how could we expect compromise from them? I also describe myself like you do, pro-choice and anti-abortion. But I always include the idea that being a man, my anti-abortion ideas are, I don't know what, less significant than the ideas of women on the subject. For me, it's a women's thing.

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  7. There is a reason for the term pro-choice, rather than pro-abortion. I am pro-choice legally, but anti-abortion morally.

    I respectfully disagree. We're all "pro-choice", but that doesn't mean freedom of choice lets people do anything they want. Just like how we're all "pro-life", but differ on which forms of life we think can be killed to benefit an individual person, and we're all "pro-earth", but differ on how much we think people can exploit the planet for our own benefit.

    The issue in question is whether a fetus is a person, and thus whether killing it is one of the choices open to us. Just as I can be "pro-gun" without thinking every felon should be handed a pistol on his way out of prison, you can be "pro-abortion" without endorsing casual abortion as a means of birth control.

    I object to the hardcore pro-gunners referring to gun control advocates as "anti-freedom" for the same reason: I agree that they're wrong, and their actions are limiting freedom, but to frame the debate that way is to beg the question.

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