The following is a great post by Reverend Debra W. Haffner, director of the Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice, and Healing. Please check out her blog for her other terrific posts.


There was a steady drumbeat of articles last week calling for new common ground on abortion in light of the election of a pro-choice President. Articles quotes such anti-choice religious leaders as David Gushee, Jim Wallis, Professor Kmeic, and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good as calling in Gushee's words in the Baptist Press for "reducing the demand for abortion" by expanding adoption services and providing pregnant women with health care, child care, and education.

Missing from every one of these calls was a call to work to prevent unintended pregnancies in the first place through sexuality education and contraceptive services.

These leaders use the Guttmacher Institute's research that shows that women often choose abortion for financial reasons and that poverty impacts the abortion rate. But what they fail to mention, is that it first affects the unintended pregnancy rate: that poor women are at least five times more likely to become pregnant unintentionally.

Here's what Guttmacher Institute's Susan Cohen wrote the last time this abortion reduction strategy was floated by Democrats for Life in 2006:

While it is theoretically possible that increased social supports for pregnant women and even more “adoption-positive” problem-pregnancy counseling could have some impact, neither can hope to approach the real reductions in the abortion rate that could be achieved by preventing unintended pregnancy in the first place.

That's what the science says -- and I also think it's the moral position. I've worked with thousands of women facing unintended pregnancies. They aren't looking for "abortion on demand"; with less than a handful of exceptions, they sat with me (and often their partners or their parents) and wept as they tried to decide what was best to do. They often did have financial concerns, but they were rarely short term (how would I pay for prenatal care or infant care?) but rather about how they could afford to raise a child (or in many cases another child in a family that already had them) to adulthood. And they too often didn't have partners who they wanted to spend their lives with or who could support them. In the words of one of colleagues, "they had too much responsibility already and too few resources, both personal and economic."

So, here's my suggestion for common ground. Let's stop talking about reducing the numbers of abortions as a goal by itself, and let's start talking as a country about reducing unintended pregnancies in the first place. We'll work with you to make sure that every pregnant woman who wants to carry her pregnancy to term can afford to do so and you'll work with us to reduce the number of women and couples who have to face an unintended, unplanned, and often unwanted pregnancy.

Sounds like a plan.

Hopefully the one that the Obama administration and the new Congress (as well as my evangelical colleagues) will adopt.

For reproductive rights advocates, these weeks after the election have been a little like looking into a snow globe: after the shakeup there's a lot of important issues floating about ready to calmly settle in a new place.

One of the major changes a foot is the common ground movement that has emerged from the election. It has caused new alliances full of goodwill and potential. It has also caused lots of grief on the part of the "pro-life" establishment which appears to have a greater stake in keeping the culture wars in full swing than coming up with solutions to the high rates of unwanted pregnancy and abortion in the United States. The new movement for common ground is being touted by editorial boards and leaders, like Doug Kmiec and Richard Land, President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, are emerging and calling for a new national approach. A USA Today editorial posited,

"Realism seems to have struck some ardent foes of abortion. After 35 years of trying to outlaw the procedure nationally while chipping away at abortion rights state by state, they have decided to add a new and sensible initiative. They'll work with the other side to reduce the number of abortions...In fact, the abortion rate has fallen steadily for nearly three decades: In 2004, the latest year for which statistics are available, it was down 33% from its 1980 peak, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights. The wider use of contraceptives and more effective birth control are major reasons."

But there are those who put the flake in snowflake in this snowglobe. It's the usual pro-life suspects who are eager to shut down these efforts before they gain any momentum. Joseph Schiedler, president of the Pro-Life Action League, took the opposing view to USA Today's common ground endorsement writing,

"There is no evidence that increasing social programs — such as low-cost health care and day care, college grants and maternity homes — will impact a woman's abortion decision. It is rare in our experience to find a woman who says the reason she is choosing abortion is that she doesn't have day care, or that she'd rather go to college...We see the effort to combine pro-life and pro-choice forces as a betrayal on the part of the pro-lifers. Besides, it has been tried, several times. And it always fails."

Doug Johnson of National Right to Life had nothing nice to say about efforts to unite as a country and find a better way to address this national conflict. He called it an "Abortion Reduction Scam." The pro-life movement seems most invested in high abortion rates, that's what the take away is from their repulsion by the talk of real solutions. We will continue to watch and report on the common ground movement, and efforts to stop it, closely. So stay posted.

President-elect Obama has pledged to reinstate funding to UNFPA and it efforts to provide family planning services to people living in the most desperate regions of the earth. This has placed it again in the cross-hairs of the Population Research Institute which has gotten its slander machine humming. They've dusted off their playbook from 2002 and are out with the same misinformation campaigns attempting to characterize the agency's efforts to prevent unwanted pregnancy as "pro-abortion." President Steven Mosher's most recent work of fiction was published in the Catholic Exchange and reads:

"By signing a series of pro-abortion Executive Orders, President Obama will be perceived as governing from the Left. The die will be cast, and pro-lifers will rally against him from that moment. They will start looking towards 2010 to restore some checks and balances on this man they will rightly perceive as a pro-abortion zealot.

Clinton’s pollster argued strongly against acting on abortion policy as one of the new administration’s first pieces of business, but he went ahead regardless. The debacle of the 1994 House elections for the Democrats began at that moment.

Let us see if Barack makes the same mistake."

There's lots of other flurries in the snowglobe, including President-elect Obama's choice of a communications director, Ellen Moran of Emily's List. It is a comfort to know that the messenger he has chosen speaks the language of prevention and choices. We'll continue to peer in this mesmerizing globe of change and report on all the flurries and where they settle.

It will take years to fully grasp the tsunami that swept Barrack Obama into the presidency. "It's the first time" or "not since" or “historic” have punctuated most coverage of it – even President Bush called it “awesome.” It reconfigured electoral politics and created "never before seen" voting blocs. One new and powerful wave of support for Obama came from the most surprising of groups: evangelicals.

Incredible as it sounds, exit polls show that the number of white evangelicals (ages 18-44), the base of the Republican party, supported Obama in double the numbers that came out for John Kerry in 2004. (Even Catholics were more enthusiastic about protestant Obama than they were for Catholic Kerry—Obama won the majority, 54%, of Catholic voters; Kerry got 47%.) Nationally, 25% of white evangelicals voted for Obama. In certain key states, the numbers were higher. He saw a 14% increase in support from white evangelicals in crucial states like Colorado, 8% in Indiana, 8% in North Carolina and 4% in Ohio. Most important, he won 32% of young evangelicals (doubling the 16% for McCain).

The surge of Evangelical support for Obama reflects stunning changes among voters who have traditionally voted for the most right-wing of Republicans. Democratic strategists should hear this message loud and clear: many morality voters have party-hopped. Are these culture warriors laying down their swords? The 2008 election may mark the moment religious voters put reason above rhetoric. The birth of the Obamagelical.

Clearly Obama's inclusive approach resonated with many Evangelical voters—but to only credit the candidate is to miss the bigger story. According to a poll taken by Beliefnet.com, Obamagelicals believe the Democratic party platform holds the greatest potential for progress on the most intransigent issues. Take, for example, abortion. Of evangelicals who voted for Obama only 8% believed that restricting abortion would lead to reductions in the abortion rate (61% of Evangelicals for McCain did). A whopping 86% of Obamagelicals believe that instead "the best way to reduce abortion is by preventing unintended pregnancy (through education and birth control), or providing financial assistance to pregnant mothers." This is in direct opposition to the "pro-life" agenda, which seeks to ban many forms of contraception along with abortion.

Obamagelicals have re-priortized what they consider the critical issues our nation must address. For McCain's evangelical supporters, abortion is their top issue; 65% select it as one of the most important issues of the election. Only 10% of Obamagelicals think this. Most list, in order of importance, the economy, Iraq war, reducing poverty, character of the candidate, the environment, cleaning up government, access to healthcare as the more critical issues facing our country. For McCain's evangelical voters abortion is the number one issue facing our country, and "reducing poverty" weighs in at #13 in importance.

That 75% of women having abortion list financial reasons as the basis of their decision doesn't click for McCain’s evangelicals. For Obamagelicals it apparently does.

As the Washington Post reported,

It could be we're at a tipping point in this culture," said R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. "Ignoring the obvious will not help."

President-elect Barack Obama and other Democrats have promised to work to make abortion rare, so long as it remains legal. "Maybe it's time to take them up on the offer" instead of "bashing our heads over and over again against the same wall," writes Paul Strand, a blogger for the Christian Broadcasting Network.

The Rev. Joel Hunter, an influential megachurch pastor in Florida, sees a new willingness among pro-life activists to cooperate with pro-choice forces in search of a middle ground. He traces that openness in part to the flourishing of crisis pregnancy centers. As volunteers meet women struggling with unplanned pregnancies, they begin to view abortion less as an absolute evil and more as a practical challenge: How do we get this single mother a job, or help that college student with child care so she doesn't feel as though abortion is her only option?"

No less than a third of white evangelicals under 30 favored Obama. These young evangelicals come to long intransigent issues like abortion with a fresh, results-oriented approachttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifh, and for the Republican party and the pro-life movement as a whole, this is bad news. Prevention of unwanted pregnancy was important enough to make it into the Democratic party platform this year (and previous ones). That platform states:

The Democratic Party also strongly supports access to affordable family planning services and comprehensive age-appropriate sex education which empower people to make informed choices and live healthy lives. We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions.

The Republican platform is silent on the subject pregnancy prevention. It has no strategy to prevent unintended pregnancy, only to ban abortion. There is not one "pro-life" organization in the United States that supports contraception, though it's the only proven way to reduce the need for abortion.

Now young evangelicals appear to be turning away from the monolithic fights of their elders. They support prevention because it delivers the results they seek. Bill Clinton, the nation's first pro-choice president, inherited high abortion rates from the previous two "pro-life" Presidents, Reagan and Bush Sr. Clinton presided over the most dramatic decline in abortion rates in the recorded history of our country. He backed prevention and financial support for the most at risk; the pro-choice approach. Banning abortion, the "pro-life" movement's approach, has little effect on its prevalence, study after study shows. The countries with the highest abortion rates in the world are those that have already adopted our Republican party's platform and banned abortion. This includes most of Latin America where abortion rates are equal to the US and in several countries twice as high.

Conversely, the strategy Obama promises to implement is what has proven to work in the countries where abortion is most rare. These countries, like the Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, have adopted the strongest pro-choice policies—abortion is legal, often free, contraception is widely available and abstinence-only education exists only as an oxymoron.

Obamagelicals have moved beyond the righteous rhetoric and political hyperbole to focus a wider array of issues that impact rates of abortion, like poverty, education and prevention. They may be the common ground movement pro-choice people have long been praying for.

In this election, record numbers of Catholics and young Evangelicals, the nation's traditional pro-life base, voted in unexpected ways. They voted to elect our second pro-choice President. Rather than induce reflection in staunch pro-life groups, they have instead reacted with denial and yet more extremism.

First the numbers. The New York Times reports that Obama inspired an 8% jump in Catholic supporters compared to those who voted for the Catholic John Kerry in 2004. And Obama doubled his support among young white evangelicals (those ages 18 to 29) compared with Kerry. The increase was almost the same for white evangelicals ages 30 to 44.

The Times reports that young evangelicals were persuaded by "a broader agenda" than abortion. In the case of the pro-life movement, that broader agenda included rolling back access to contraception, and backing abstinence-only programs despite mounting evidence of its failures. They oppose contraception, stem cell and IVF treatment, all issues that find strong support even among self-described pro-life voters. Pro-life campaigns targeting these issues clearly alienated otherwise sympathetic voters; helping propel Obama into the presidency.

This election provides further evidence that the pro-life movement has lost resonance with voters. Oddly, pro-life groups have responded to defeats by redoubling their efforts - usually the exact same efforts - on behalf of this extreme agenda.

The three days after his election, for example, one anti-abortion group took aim at President-elect Obama's leadership on expanding access to contraception. The organization, the Population Research Institute (PRI), is best known for its mission to stop family planning in the poorest regions of the world. On Friday the group attacked Obama for having been the sponsor of Prevention First, legislation that would dramatically expand access to birth control in the United States. The organization's press release stated,

"Obama has pledged to pay for abortions with Americans' tax dollars, such as in the Prevention First Act which he co-sponsored in the Senate. The bill will "increase funding for family planning and comprehensive sex education that teaches both abstinence and safe sex methods. The Act will also end insurance discrimination against contraception, improve awareness about emergency contraception, and provide compassionate assistance to rape victims." According to PRI, this language disguises the "ugly reality" that the legislation would "force insurance companies to fund, doctors to prescribe, and pharmacies to dispense, abortifacient contraceptives."

Despite the fact that the Prevention First legislation does not fund or expand access to abortion, PRI presses ahead with its transparent misinformation campaign claiming contraception can act as an abortion. They do this despite the evidence that such tactics helped drive many self-described pro-life Americans (those that know the difference between contraception and abortion) to vote for Obama. His proven-to-work prevention policies enjoy wide public support.

PRI is not the only pro-life group ignoring the writing on the wall. Those behind Colorado's Amendment 48, which was handily defeated, have only been encouraged by their spectacular failure. No less than seventy five percent of Coloradoans, including many prominent pro-lifers like Governor Bill Ritter, rejected the thinly veiled attack on contraception. After such a resounding defeat, you might think that campaign strategists would reconsider such an approach. Instead, one day after the election, Amendment 48's team apparently took this lesson from the failure: if it doesn't work once, try it again (and again). One day after the election the amendment's sponsor announced the launch of the same exact effort in the 17 states. According to Life News, "Keith Mason, one of the Personhood Amendment organizers, says his group plans to take the measure to every state where citizens can put proposals on the ballot and to submit them over and over again until they win."

Such obstinacy in the face of public consensus appears to be trying the electorate's collective patience. In South Dakota, for the second time, the state's deeply religious and conservative voters rejected the ballot initiative that would have banned abortion. How did Leslee Unruh, the abortion ban organizer, respond? Like a stalker. She told the LA Times, "Third time's the charm. We're coming back. We're not going away. "

The electorate may need a restraining order.

Over the past two years of election coverage, the media has done occasional pieces about abortion politics. A good example was the pre-election piece run by the New York Times. The themes were Catholic voters and the saliency of the issue (in particular, candidates being threatened by bishops who would withhold communion) and a possible southern strategy by Democrats to pick-up seats by running so-called "pro-life" candidates. But yesterday's election showed that if political analysts would look for a moment through something other than the narrow lens of abortion they’d find a broader set of crucial reproductive rights issues that influenced important races.

This year a number of candidates that ran for the Senate, the House and as Governor engaged in a wide reproductive health debate that went way beyond abortion to include birth control, emergency contraceptive, pharmacist refusals to fill birth control pill prescriptions and sex education. It turns out it was a great strategy for pro-choice candidates. In the tightest of races, last night's results showed the broader agenda was a winning one.

In New Hampshire, pro-choice Democrat Jeanne Shaheen used anti-choice opponent John Sununu's anti-contraception record to portray him as an extremist. She unseated him (52/45) and we now have a new pro-choice voice in the US Senate.

In Colorado, Protect Families Protect Choices, the campaign to defeat Amendment 48, educated Coloradans about threats the Amendment posed to the most common and effective birth control methods as well as stem cell research and IVF treatment. Amendment 48, which just a month ago seemed a toss up, was handily defeated by 73 to 27.

In the United States, poll after poll shows 9 in ten voters support birth control. If a candidate, or measure, can be "outed" as extreme on such a popular practice, it resonates with voters. These are important life decisions that have resonance in voters’ lives. Compare the number of times a woman uses birth control to prevent pregnancy to how often she terminates an early pregnancy. One in three women will have an abortion in her lifetime. Yet, virtually all women (98%) aged 15–44 who have ever had intercourse have used at least one contraceptive method. Birth control is universally used and supported. And so candidates that can expose their opponents’ positions against contraception can win over voters in a big way.

Take, for example, the Connolly-Fimian House race in Virginia's 11th. In the final days of the campaign, pro-choice Democrat Gerry Connolly was able to focus attention on anti-choice Republican Keith Fimian's ties to a extremist anti-contraception operative. Connolly revealed that Fimian is a board member of an organization that seeks to have business leaders impose religious doctrine in the workplace. Connolly also exposed Fimian’s decision as a CEO to deny his employees contraceptive coverage. In that tight race, Connolly was able to pull out a victory. In Washington State, what was long viewed as a tight gubernatorial race became a runaway contest. Incumbent pro-choice Democrat Governor Christine Gregoire used access to birth control as an issue and ran ads revealing that her opponent, anti-choice Republican Dino Rossi, supports giving pharmacists the right to deny women their prescriptions for birth control. Gregoire won 54 to 46. (Several other races where contraception played a important role are still too close to call.)

In the Presidential race, the reproductive health issues that clicked with voters were those that Americans could see affecting their own lives. The failure of abstinence-only was exemplified by Bristol Palin and her unintended pregnancy. It isn't what Americans want for their daughters. McCain's attempts to portray Obama as an extremist on sex education fell flat. Americans understood that age-appropriate sex education protects our children. People understood that what Obama supports is teaching children from an early age that they have the right to protect themselves, whether from a sexual predator or, when age-appropriate, from STDs and pregnancy. Palin's support of a policy to charge rape victims for pregnancy prevention was something Americans could imagine happening to themselves or a loved one. McCain's inability to answer whether he supported contraceptive coverage became a big issue, mystified most Americans, an revealed how out-of-step he was from the day to day lives Americans live.

The electorate believes deeply in protection, prevention, and common sense solutions. That's the pro-choice platform that the media failed to recognize this year. But as this election year demonstrated it's this broader array of issues where pro-choice politicians and gained traction with voters. The 2008 election is the time we finally broadened the discussion to be about our right to make important life decisions for ourselves. It was the year that pro-choice became pro-choices.

--

Maeve Reston is the journalist for the LA Times who famously asked John McCain aboard his campaign bus whether he supported mandating health insurers that cover Viagra also cover contraception. His answer to her question (or search for one) was caught on tape and became one of the most memorable images (and most widely watched videos on youtube for that matter--with over 600,000 views) of the presidential race. Most Americans were startled that McCain could not, or it seemed would not, answer such a straightforward question on what for most was the most common sense of issues.



It showed the power of asking questions the public doesn't think need to be answered. Few knew McCain's 30 year voting record against contraception. The fact was, McCain couldn't answer the question, for if he did the answer would have to be "no." That would lead to a whole host of other questions. By not answering, McCain did his best to defuse it as much as he could. It could have certainly blown up in his face far worse had it led to questions about his record on contraception which it, mysteriously, never really did. But the question did have a dramatic impact on his campaign as Maeve Reston, the LA Times reporter, recently revealed in a "behind-the-scenes" account of her experience before and after she asked the contraception question. She wrote:

At the time of that July bus ride with McCain, there was broad disagreement among his staff about whether the endless hours of questions were helping his quest for the White House.

In the driveway of the airport motel on the evening of the Viagra question, McCain's aides made an argument that would shape their attitude over the next four months: If reporters were going to ask about issues that they deemed irrelevant to voters, why should the campaign give them access to the candidate at all? Salter told me I had made the case for those who thought McCain should curtail his exposure to the press.

McCain aide Brooke Buchanan sarcastically asked whether contraception was next on my agenda. And Steve Duprey, the candidate's usually jovial traveling companion who often visited the press cabin bearing Twizzlers and chocolate, twisted my question into what I interpreted as an accusation of bias: "Are you going to ask Obama if he uses Viagra?"

That the McCain campaign considered this issue "irrelevant to voters" was certainly the thinking that led to the air quotes McCain used around the words "health of the mother" in the final debate which again did him no favors. (As Jim Ponoewozik of Time magazine explained, "Dial group report 2: Um, Sen. McCain, women don't like it when you put 'health of the mother' in air quotes.") That women are spending 68% more in health care costs out of their own pocket than men is not "irrelevant" for most women voters. Any campaign mastermind could figure that out by reviewing the many polls taken on the issue. One national poll indicated that 78% of privately insured adults (that's women and men) support contraceptive coverage, even if it would increase their costs by five dollars a month. 78% is not the block of the electorate you want to offend.



This election proved that by broadening the discussion around reproductive health issues we are able to win. Voters recognize when politicians veer off too far into their own important life decisions. People are able to distinguish cartoonish and baseless attacks (McCain's attempt to portray Obama as an extremist on abortion was seen as preposterous) from bad policies that could show up as horrendous problems in our own lives (Bristol Palin's pregnancy drew a bright light on the abstinence-only education her mother supports.) McCain and Palin's positions on issues that Americans believe should be reserved for our own individual decision-making were suddenly front and center. Palin's support of a policy to charge rape victims for pregnancy prevention became a campaign issue. Talk about adding insult to injury--people got that. These along with McCain's stammering on the "Straight Talk Express" helped to characterize the McCain-Palin ticket as extreme on the broad array of reproductive health the impact American's lives.

But, from Reston's point of view, the contraception question was powerful in others ways too. The disproportionate reaction it led to within the campaign was symptomatic of the hubris and disconnectedness the campaign suffered from all along. When 600,000 people take to the internet to watch a clip about a politician's policy position it probably shouldn't be classified as "irrelevant to voters." But that block-headed thinking caused the campaign to cordon off their candidate. By misinterpreting the question as a spurious attack rather than a genuine policy question, the campaign made the fatal error of distancing McCain from the media and thereby the American people.

Reston explains how the campaign dramatically altered it's relationship with journalists in the days and months after she asked her question:

Later that summer, the frequency of McCain's news conferences dwindled to late-afternoon, end-of-the-week affairs where he began calling more often on reporters he didn't know. We now watched from afar at most events -- listening for the few sentences that would change each day in his stump speech. We would catch glimpses of him through the window of his SUV from five cars back in the motorcade or watch him get off the plane.

At the height of vice presidential speculation, we rushed the staff cabin of the plane, frustrated that no one was around to address the rumors. "What do you want, you little jerks?" McCain said, using his former term of affection, before turning away.

On a recent Sunday during a brief stop at a Virginia phone bank, I got unusually close to McCain in the line of people waiting to shake his hand. Tape recorder out and within a foot of him, I asked if he could talk about his new economic plan, which he was to unveil that week. The man who once asked me about my wedding date returned my gaze with a stare, shook the hand of the strangers to the right and left of me and continued out the door.

The McCain campaign will probably be studied for years to come for its missteps and under-performance. No curricula on the subject will be complete without a review of the Viagra-Contraception question. But the most important take away is for reproductive rights movement. The 2008 election showed that the broader discussion on reproductive health issues is what engages the public and leaves anti-choice candidates stammering. It's not that we haven't educated the electorate about the right answers, it's that we hadn't been giving them the right questions. This election changed that once and for all.