Obama and Abortion

I’m a Democrat, and as of Saturday, I am no longer “leaning toward Obama”; I am an Obama supporter. (Unfortunately, I’ll be out of town on primary night.)

I’m also pro-abortion. Not pro-choice: I’m one of those people that Hilary Clinton hasn’t met, who is actually pro-abortion. (I don’t think I’ll try to explain this any further, because my opinions are probably extreme enough to offend even the feminists and civil libertarians with whom I find common cause.)

You might wonder, given that I’m pro-abortion, why I would support Obama. After all, as Clinton’s campaign informed New Hampshire voters,

Obama refuses to stand up for a woman's right to choose and repeatedly voted `present' on important legislation. As a State Senator, Obama voted `present' on seven abortion bills, including critical late term abortion procedure, two parental notification laws and three 'born alive' bills.

You may recall that Bill Clinton once “did not volunteer” certain relevant information with respect to an answer he gave in deposition. (Coincidentally, the information he did not volunteer also concerned something could be considered a form of birth control.) In this case, Hilary did not volunteer certain relevant information.

The information she (or her campaign) did not volunteer is that, in the Illinois legislature, voting “present” is equivalent to voting “no,” because a majority of “yes” votes are required for a measure to pass. Granted, “present” and “no” are not exactly the same, but the difference in this case is not a substantive one. The Clinton campaign said that it decided to put out the information in the quotation above because “as Senator Obama has said, ‘voting records matter.’” Of course, when Senator Obama said that voting records matter, his point was that, if you want to ascertain a candidate’s position on specific issues, you should watch what the candidate does rather than just listening to what he says. Apparently, the Clinton campaign’s response to Obama’s suggestion to look at substance rather than just rhetoric was to exploit a non-substantive aspect of Obama’s record in such a way as to blatantly mislead the reader as to its substance.

When politicians lie about something I don’t have strong opinions about (like with whom Bill Clinton did or did not have sexual relations) it doesn’t bother me that much. When they make blatantly misleading statements about something that I do have a strong opinion about, that pisses me off.

I wonder if it’s too late to get an absentee ballot.