I mean, since he's busy cutting and pasting bits and bytes from civil rights speeches to claim as his own and all ...

It seems to me that what Obama is missing is that we are pro-choice precisely because we respect the difficulty, seriousness and emotional minefield that women face when dealing with pregnancy, and do not presume to be able to decide for others on the basis of our own individual beliefs.

In fact, I would submit that people who support the right of women to make their own reproductive decisions have more respect for what is at stake, and that is why we do not impose ourselves on that decison-making process.

How does he not get that?  Really, how?  

It's comments like his that make me question whether he really understands what it means to be pro-choice.  And I have a viscerally negative reaction to being condescended to - again - as if being pro-choice means I haven't bothered to take the time to consider the totality of the issues.

I've only ever been pregnant twice, and I have two wonderful 20-something daughters who make me proud every day.  I was fortunate to have been married and financially secure and healthy and to have planned both pregnancies.  I don't know that I could have had an abortion - but I could not and would not presume to impose my own feelings on any other woman.  Ever.  

Honestly, the more I hear this man speak, the worse I feel about him.  And the more my response to him is, "Who the h*ll do you think you are?"

I'm sorry, but I don't want a president who is that in love with himself and his inflated idea of who he is - I want a president who is in love with America and in love with us, the people.

Like abortion should be safe, legal, and rare?

He doesn't have the vaunted Rethuggernaut pounding on media and local partisans to support stupid statements.

Bush is a lightweight whose every stupid statement had "support" in that the slightest critic got shredded [by phone banks, bosses at the media salt mines, party machinery donors, the character=assassinating Wurlitzer and so on.]

Therefore Bush could walk into any Village cantina and shake his saber or spout his hooey as the buffoon at the head of the right wing and corporate phalanx.

But TeamO can't keep relying on their usual excuse-making with their candidate screwing up this persistently with his own actions and words.

His fans can't claim that the evil Sen. Clinton misrepresented Obama's words or put them in his mouth when they're right out there, baldly stating the latest POS he just baldly stated.

They can't cry Leave Britneybaaaama Alonnnnnnnnne because he's being called out on his own words -- and expect, too, to be taken seriously as the leadership of Destiny and Change.

Down the road in the GE, they can't pretend that there's "swiftboating" going on -- ie, revisionism from invention -- with all this fresh, obvious crud Obama has left in his win-ugly, scorched-earth campaign when his magical roller coaster ground to a haltto before he sealed the primary.

Gargh. Barak, abortion is a private matter between the woman and her healthcare provider. Keep yourself out of it.

About 4 weeks later, she had to attend a seminar on abortion, as she went to Catholic school.  She was depressed and distraught for weeks.  She said she would never do it again, and was positively beside herself for her "lack of responsibility" regardless of how much my friends and I reassured her.

In college, she got pregnant again because the condom broke.  Whether there really was a condom or not, I have no way of knowing.  But she had her baby, and finished college as a single mom.  The dad, of course, bailed.  But she kept telling me she couldn't have an abortion a second time because she "[was] responsible."

Purely anecdotal, but when people beat that dead horse of pro-choicers not having a moral compass or understanding or what-have-you, I think of my friend and get irate.

Rights and protections: not only do we all DESERVE them, they're not something he can strip away to use as political capital.

Obama is just slippery. His pattern is that whatever is right is what gets him good news coverage or transient support in his immediate fight to take down his immediate obstacle to the WH.

Problem is, in scorching away what's in front of him he's also taking apart what'll get his back in the fight against the GOP wood chipper ahead.

I believe the automatic awarding of Catholic support to the anti-choice column -- based on the wrong-headed mainstream tendency to run away from this "icky" issue instead of making it a cornerstone of human rights -- is a big reason the Dems consistently lose out on support.

Being anti-abortion and pro-choice isn't uncommon among practicing -- and even practicing conservative -- Catholics. That gets yadda yadda'd a lot by numbers crunchers who stick it in the Special Interest aisle only because they don't care about it.

Their other empty exercise of tweaking filigreed frames always comes off as patronizing and outright stupid. No one needs Democrats to tell people how to practice their reliions and save their souls.

In fact, I've even said what you said about appendectomies.

I happen to believe that a fetus becomes a baby when the mother thinks it's one.  For some it's way before the pregnancy and for others, it's never going to happen.

AND, "I really wish that progressives would stop pandering to the right on this issue. Abortion is a medical procedure. When we start to overlay moral issues on private medical decisions, things get ugly fast. "

Abortion is something women do when they have no other choices, and generally, when you are at a point where you have no other choices, you are not in a very good place.

And abortion is one of those things where, when viewed in the abstract, it seems wholly clinical - I mean, what's the big deal, right?  Collection of cells that isn't a person - might as well be a bunion - or so it seems until you are actually pregnant.

I would never want abortion to not be an option for anyone.  And it irks me no end when men presume to want to control what our choices are.

But - and I say this as a mother - there is a huge difference between what abortion can mean when you are not pregnant and have never been pregnant, and what it means when you are.  At least in my opinion.

When I was pregnant with daughter #1, I first felt her move at about 15 weeks - just barely into the second trimester.  With #2, it was a week or so earlier.  Trust me when I tell you that when it moves, it's no longer an abstract, it's pretty real.  And you don't feel like you did before you got pregnant - what with all the hormones and the big b**bs and the constant nausea - so it's not like you are the same person.  It's all different.

I don't say all this as a criticism of your opinions - just as someone who knows that feelings change - or can change - when something goes from being abstract to being real, and it's suddenly your reality, not something that concerns some faceless, nameless woman.

As I said, above - it would have been a very difficult decision for me, had I been in a position where I had to consider it.  Not from a moral standpoint, but from the standpoint of something being lost, I guess.

Some women become anti-choice after having children, but for me, it strengthened my feeling that no one - no one - should have the right to step in and make a decision like that for someone else.

Having been there during my wife's ultrasounds, I'm not inclined to make a comparison between an appendix and what I saw.

I reserve the right to overlay morality on a private medical decision AS LONG AS I keep that overlay to myself.

I hope that's OK with you.

But why not read between the lines.  

MY STAFF (it is not MY fault, once again it is my stupid idiot staffers) used the "dem boilerplate"...Guess what that boilerplate?  It is a foundation of Dem social policy:  WOMEN HAVE THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE!

He nuanced his position because he realized that he didn't want to be locked into one pt view when he could ride both sides of the fence.  There is NO GREY area when it comes to abortion...you have the RIGHT (to choose) or the govt gets to decide what a person does with their own body which means you have NO right.

"Abortion is killing..we feel bad for the rape victim..but if she carries to term and delivers the constant reminder of personal violation, she'll come to love the life that her rapist forced upon her."---So says people like the SD legislature.  I disagree and for someone who is supposed to be on MY team to tell me I just don't get the moral dilemna...well he can take his condescension and go back to lifting up poor neighborhoods by partnering up with slumlords in IL.  

'You can fool some people sometimes but you can't fool all the people all the time...so get up...stand up...stand up for your rights".  I stand up for a woman's right to choose what is best for her physical health, her mental health...it is her choice NOT Barack Obama's, not Bill Frist's.

Obama, in his own words, has demonstrated time and again that he is incapable of either attracting, hiring, or managing good staff people, as shown again in this example.

That alone should disqualify him from becoming President.

1. Obama's staff wrote all of those lovely position statements on his web site. He didn't even bother to read them.
   
2. Obama is ashamed of believing that a woman has the right to control her own body.
   
3. Obama wants to be all things to all people.
   
4. I can't trust this man to put a pro-choice justice on the Supreme court. He might choose somebody who was a "compromise" candidate, somebody who would please the right as much as the left.

then you, in my judgment, are not fair-minded

Re-reading the doctor's letter, though, I felt a pang of shame.

It is people like him who are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country.

It is people like him who are looking for a deeper, fuller conversation about religion in this country. They may not change their positions, but they are willing to listen and learn from those who are willing to speak in fair-minded words. Those who know of the central and awesome place that God holds in the lives of so many, and who refuse to treat faith as simply another political issue with which to score points.

Your Obamablindness normally tickles me, but in this instance, it is incredibly dangerous.

Those who have been making the argument that we must protect the sanctity of the SCOTUS and vote Obama should he win the nom (a  big if, in my opinion), feel free to stay at home.  Dems would lockstep against a conservative, anti-choice McCain nominee.  I don't feel they would be as strong against an otherwise progressive but anti-choice Obama nominee.

Who among us doesn't recognize the wrenching morality of abortion?

And while you may view their beliefs on abortion as wrong, I don't think it is reasonable to dismiss their views.  If someone were to say that they believe that a woman should be allowed to abort a baby up to the moment of birth, would you find that simply a matter of personal choice?  Or would you consider that person a murderer for killing a baby?

This is the problem with this debate.  Virtually everyone has the same morality.  The problem is that people differ on what constitutes an organism and what constitutes a baby.  If you believed that a baby was created at conception you would be morally bankrupt if you DIDN'T try to outlaw abortion.

Last time I checked, people who supported a woman's right to choose what to do with her body were around 70% of the population. Indeed...according to the pro-choice GOP emailers I get, there's a population of Republicans out there who support a woman's right to choose.

Anyone who is pro-choice is going to see very little difference between this and John McCain's position so why would any pro-choice voter get the feeling that the issue would matter when, if elected president, he would have a SCOTUS appointment?

The sad truth is that this is further demonstrable proof that he equivocates on all significant issues to the point that you have to buy him on faith because you don't get any significant commitment on the major issues from his words or deeds.

This represents a wishy washy candidate that wants to have it all ways, stands for nothing and a re-run of John Kerry and the type of candidacy that will get destroyed in November.

I keep waiting for him to start talking about the 'wonder working power.'

It is not the job of the person seeking the democratic nomination for the presidency of the United States to have a public, philosophical discussion on the "morality"-or lack thereof-of abortion.  He was not sipping pinot and sampling cheeses of the world with his professor friends in the front parlor of his million dollar mansion. He was delivering a speech in public to the people whose votes he seeks.  It is his job to stand up and assure all democrats that he supports a core tenet of the democratic platform, which is that women have a legal and moral right to abortion.  For such a public figure, a public representative of the democratic party, to vacillate, sends a dangerous message that we can be broken.

So, when he talks to the elite, he condescends to the great unwashed, so the message to the elite is: I'm one of you.

When he talks to those who are opposed to a woman's right to choose, he belittles those who take a pro-choice position as not being able to really understand the magnitude of it all.

Does he think we can't hear what he's saying?  And does he think we aren't offended?