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In a commencement speech at Notre Dame last month, President Obama appealed for common ground in the tense debate over abortion.
He won't find it among anti-abortion activists gathered in Charlotte this week.
“Either the baby is alive or dead – what's the common ground?” Carol Tobias, former political director for the National Right to Life Committee, said Friday.
The committee, America's largest anti-abortion group, winds up its national convention this weekend at uptown's Blake Hotel. Organizers said as many as 1,300 activists from around the country are taking part.
In April, Obama acknowledged the intensity on both sides of the debate.
“The most important thing we can do to tamp down some of the anger … is to focus on those areas that we can agree on,” he said.
That's not much, according to members of the anti-abortion group.
“When a baby is threatened by abortion, the baby is either going to end up dead or alive,” said David O'Steen, the group's executive director. “I don't think there's a place in the middle.”
Political director Karen Cross called Obama “the most pro-abortion president” in American history. “Look at the devastation brought by the first 100 days of Barack Obama's administration,” she told a room full of delegates on Friday.
Since taking office, Obama has eased restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. He lifted the so-called Mexico City rule that barred U.S. financing of international groups that perform abortions. He also sought to reverse a rule giving broad protections to health care providers who refuse to take part in abortions.
Obama has sought common ground by encouraging adoption and calling for fewer unwanted pregnancies.
“To people with very strong pro-life positions, the president's view of common ground is not common ground at all,” said John Green, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum For Religion and Public Life. “The positive news is abortion is not a priority for many Americans.”
Shifting polls
Last month a Gallup Poll found that 51 percent of Americans considered themselves “pro-life,” while 42 percent described themselves as pro-choice. It was the first time Gallup found more people identifying with the anti-abortion side.
“There's been a real shift in America,” Right to Life president Wanda Franz said Friday. “For the first time more than 50 percent of the American public self-identified as pro-life.”
Nancy Keenan, president of the National Abortion Rights Action League, said the poll “doesn't square” with the election of an abortion rights president and abortion rights majorities in Congress. Other polls, including a new CBS News-New York Times survey, find continued support for abortion rights.
“Americans want a change in the tone of the debate,” she said Friday, “and that begins with common ground on birth control and sex education. As long as right-to-life refuses to support better access to contraception, they will continue to be outside the mainstream values of this country.”
But an April poll by the Pew Research Center Poll also found the percentage of people who support legalized abortion has fallen.
“It could be what we're seeing is the pro-life constituencies are becoming more vocal and more strident precisely because there's a president with more pro-choice sympathies,” Green said.
Urged to stay active
Franz and others warned that Obama's promised health care reform could allow even more access to abortions. Leaders at this week's Right to Life convention urged delegates to stay politically active to defeat any proposal, as well as abortion rights candidates.
During the convention, abortion rights demonstrator Bill Baird of Massachusetts led a lonely protest outside the Blake Hotel. Two weeks before Wichita abortion doctor George Tiller was gunned down last month, Baird warned that Obama's election could escalate anti-abortion violence.
“They've got to realize they're responsible,” he said of anti-abortion activists, “because they've created the climate of hatred with their hate rhetoric.”
Some convention delegates acknowledged a backlash since last month's killing, which was strongly condemned by the Right to Life Committee.
“People supporting the pro-choice side may try to use that to paint us all as being violent,” said Allen Morris of Fayetteville, executive director of Concerned Methodists. “That is not what we're about.”
Jim Morrill: 704-358-5059
