{"id":865,"date":"2008-10-16T21:37:19","date_gmt":"2008-10-16T21:37:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/godometer\/2008\/10\/post.html"},"modified":"2008-10-16T21:37:19","modified_gmt":"2008-10-16T21:37:19","slug":"post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/10\/post.html","title":{"rendered":"On Abortion, Obama Echoes Bush"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The conservative pro-life movement <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nrlc.org\/Election2008\/Release101608.html\">has been hitting Obama<\/a> on his explanation last night for why he opposed the Born Alive Act in the Illinois state legislature. But God-o-Meter thought the bigger headline from the abortion discussion in the debate was Obama&#8217;s emphasis on reducing abortion while foregoing any rigorous defense of a woman&#8217;s right to choose.Check out this exchange from last night:<object width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/f_CxQzm42hE&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/f_CxQzm42hE&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><\/embed><\/object>Compare it to this exchange over abortion between John Kerry and George W. Bush from a 2004 debate:<object width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/ZX-zu9UZ7Uk&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/ZX-zu9UZ7Uk&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><\/embed><\/object>The thrust of Kerry&#8217;s response: as much as he might oppose abortion personally, he couldn&#8217;t force his personal beliefs on others. The thrust of Obama&#8217;s: the goal of reducing abortion is one that&#8217;s widely shared by Americans and there are plenty of reasonable ways to work toward it without outlawing the procedure.Pro-life groups view such rhetoric as cynically political; what legislation has Obama ever pursued, at the state or federal level, to reduce demand for abortion?Politically speaking, though, it&#8217;s striking how much those themes echo George W. Bush&#8217;s response &#8217;04 about building a culture of life, which also de-emphasized the decades old Republican shibboleths about the need to ban abortion completely.<!--more-->6<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The conservative pro-life movement has been hitting Obama on his explanation last night for why he opposed the Born Alive Act in the Illinois state legislature. But God-o-Meter thought the bigger headline from the abortion discussion in the debate was Obama&#8217;s emphasis on reducing abortion while foregoing any rigorous defense of a woman&#8217;s right to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>On Abortion, Obama Echoes Bush - God-O-Meter<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/10\/post.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"On Abortion, Obama Echoes Bush - God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The conservative pro-life movement has been hitting Obama on his explanation last night for why he opposed the Born Alive Act in the Illinois state legislature. But God-o-Meter thought the bigger headline from the abortion discussion in the debate was Obama&#8217;s emphasis on reducing abortion while foregoing any rigorous defense of a woman&#8217;s right to&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/10\/post.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"God-O-Meter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-10-16T21:37:19+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"dgilgoff\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"On Abortion, Obama Echoes Bush - God-O-Meter","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/10\/post.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"On Abortion, Obama Echoes Bush - God-O-Meter","og_description":"The conservative pro-life movement has been hitting Obama on his explanation last night for why he opposed the Born Alive Act in the Illinois state legislature. But God-o-Meter thought the bigger headline from the abortion discussion in the debate was Obama&#8217;s emphasis on reducing abortion while foregoing any rigorous defense of a woman&#8217;s right to&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/10\/post.html","og_site_name":"God-O-Meter","article_published_time":"2008-10-16T21:37:19+00:00","author":"dgilgoff","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/10\/post.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/10\/post.html","name":"On Abortion, Obama Echoes Bush - God-O-Meter","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website"},"datePublished":"2008-10-16T21:37:19+00:00","dateModified":"2008-10-16T21:37:19+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/10\/post.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/10\/post.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/2008\/10\/post.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"On Abortion, Obama Echoes Bush"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/","name":"God-O-Meter","description":"A scientific measure of God-talk in the elections","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/b7e97412c87d7a3b866e9972cc090db4","name":"dgilgoff","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/858\/858da2927809a8352512cd24712c020cx96.jpg","caption":"dgilgoff"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/author\/dgilgoff"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/godometer\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}