Catholics for Choice: Obama hasn’t done enough for abortion rights

The newest issue of the Catholic pro-choice magazine Conscience raises several questions about the current administration’s stance on abortion-rights issues.

The recently published issue, which is a project of Catholics for Choice, is meant as a “comprehensive analysis of President Barack Obama’s prochoice record,” and the current “administration’s abysmal failure to take action on choice issues.”

Jodi Jacobsen’s article, “Is Obama Prochoice?,” highlights the differences between candidate Obama and President Obama, which the author says is akin to a “volte-face”:

As a candidate, Obama said all the right things. As a president, his actions suggest that then-presidential contender and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was right—he will not fight for us. … The president has presided over the greatest erosion to women’s reproductive health and rights in the past 30 years, and a continuing degradation of our rights at the state level. Yet still he remains silent. Is Obama prochoice? Not by my definition.

In another Conscience article, “Still Looking for a Champion,” Catholics for Choice President Jon O’Brien writes:

As I write, President Obama is announcing his bid for reelection. I expect we’ll be hearing more promises about improving the lives and health of women in this country, whether through education and family planning, or support for women who want to continue a pregnancy as well as for those who do not. The new campaign website asks, “Are you in?” Perhaps a better question is, “Mr. Obama, are you?”

Though some have criticized the administration’s failure to take a stand on certain pro-choice issues, others have criticized Obama for being too far to the left.

In a December 2006 post on the conservative blog Human Events, Obama is described as being “more pro-choice than NARAL,” the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. And during an August 2010 appearance in Jacksonville, Sarah Palin called Obama the “most pro-abortion president to ever occupy the White House” and said that his time in office had been “a trail of broken promises.”

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