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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
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Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review August 11, 2008 / 10 Menachem-Av 5768

Obama's Catholic problem

By Linda Chavez


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Barack Obama has a Catholic problem. If he doesn't do better than John Kerry did in 2004 with this quintessential swing voting bloc, he won't be elected president. Obama's campaign understands this — which is why they're considering allowing a pro-life Democrat, Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, to speak at the Denver convention. Sen. Casey's father, the late Governor of Pennsylvania Robert Casey Sr., was denied a speaking slot at the Democrats' 1992 convention for fear of offending pro-choice Democrats. But simply allowing his son to speak at the convention won't be enough to woo Catholics back.


Catholics are by no means a single-issue voting group. But for observant Catholics, those who attend Mass regularly and follow the Church's teachings, a candidate's position on abortion matters. Even among more broadly identified Catholics — those who call themselves Catholic, regardless of whether they are observant — 59 percent oppose abortion, according to a recent Time magazine poll. And Barack Obama's record on this issue will cause pause for many of them.


Like most Democratic politicians, Barack Obama favors abortion rights for women, with few exceptions. He has recently said that he might support some limits on very late-term abortions, those that occur in the last trimester of pregnancy. But when it comes to actual legislative limits, he's never found one yet he can vote for.


Take partial-birth abortion, a gruesome procedure in which the fetus is delivered feet-first, its skull punctured and its brain suctioned out, thereby killing the fetus and collapsing the skull for easy delivery of the full body. Although he was not in the U.S. Senate when it voted to ban partial-birth abortions, Obama has nevertheless heavily criticized the legislation and the Supreme Court ruling that upheld its constitutionality. "Some people argue that the federal ban on abortion was just an isolated effort aimed at one medical procedure — that it's not part of a concerted effort to roll back the hard-won rights of American women. That presumption is also wrong," Obama told those attending a 2007 Planned Parenthood meeting. But Americans overwhelmingly oppose partial birth abortion — 70 percent in a 2003 Gallup poll — so Obama's views put him in a distinct minority.


Obama's most controversial action on the abortion issue occurred when he was an Illinois state senator. Bills that would have required medical personnel to treat infants who survived abortion procedures came up several times during Obama's tenure in the Illinois state senate — and each time, Obama opposed passage. He has since tried to defend his stand by claiming that the purpose of the Illinois bills was to overturn Roe v. Wade. And he's even argued that the Illinois legislation was unnecessary because "there was already a law in place in Illinois that said that you always have to supply life-saving treatment to any infant under any circumstances," as he told Relevant magazine last month.


In fact, the Illinois legislation was introduced after a Chicago nurse, Jill Stanek, came forward to describe her own experiences "where babies were being aborted alive and shelved to die in the soiled utility room" at Christ Hospital in a Chicago suburb. Stanek testified that she held one of the infants for 45 minutes before it died after being denied any medical treatment. Clearly the legislation was not superfluous, as Obama suggested. Moreover, Obama explained his vote at the time by complaining, "if we're placing a burden on the doctor that says you have to keep alive even a previable child as long as possible and give them as much medical attention as — as is necessary to try and keep that child alive, then we're probably crossing the line in terms of unconstitutionality."


Polls show Catholics pretty evenly divided between Obama and McCain at this point — with 45 percent favoring the GOP candidate and 44 percent favoring the Democrat. But Obama will have a difficult time wooing pro-life Catholics, given his record — and a speech by a pro-life Democrat like Sen. Casey won't be enough to tip Catholics in his favor. And, of course, the biggest obstacle to Obama's outreach will be pro-choice Democrats, many of them feminists who supported Hillary Clinton.


As on so many issues, Obama risks losing the far left of his party if he moderates his own out-of-the-mainstream positions on abortion in order to win more centrist voters. Instead, he'll probably continue to talk out of both sides of his mouth on this issue and hope Catholic voters don't notice.

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JWR contributor Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity. Her latest book is "Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)

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