{"id":71,"date":"2008-08-19T12:21:46","date_gmt":"2008-08-19T12:21:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/dncs-platform.html"},"modified":"2008-08-19T12:21:46","modified_gmt":"2008-08-19T12:21:46","slug":"dncs-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/dncs-platform.html","title":{"rendered":"DNC’s platform and Abortion – A Pro-Choice point of View"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a pro-choice Dem,  I am pleased by the DNC’s plank on abortion. It reaffirms Roe…AND it also show <\/font>party’s  <\/span>respect for pro-life Dems.  Most smartlly, it challenges the Republican party to connect its rhetoric to results.  <\/span>For years, Rs have simply condemned Roe, criticized women, and curried favor with <\/span>Catholic hierarchy…which is all male.  <\/span>But they made little effort to actually support women in their choice to have a child. They did not commit to funding. Now, thanks to Doug Kmiec, Tony Campolo and others, our party has specifically acknowledged the need to make sure that pregnant women receive pre and post natal health care, parenting skills, income support and caring adoption programs. <\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

The platform underscores the fact that a  <\/span>woman’s  <\/span>decision  <\/span>to have a child is not make in isolation but is connected to questions about many aspects of her life.  <\/span>By specifying that a women should have access to  services  during pregnancy and after, the language reflects a significant part of the Catholic moral tradition of the common good…and the truth that the relationship that we have with one another can help us make good choices.  <\/span><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/p>\n

For years, Dems have pointed out that  <\/span>Democratic party policies in fact help to reduce the number of abortions.  <\/span>Abortions were reduced under Bill Clinton and rose under George Bush. This new language by explicitly  <\/span>connecting the support  for women  to the issue of abortion helps to make show why that could be so.  <\/span><\/em><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As a pro-choice Dem,  I am pleased by the DNC’s plank on abortion. It reaffirms Roe…AND it also show party’s  respect for pro-life Dems.  Most smartlly, it challenges the Republican party to connect its rhetoric to results.  For years, Rs have simply condemned Roe, criticized women, and curried favor with Catholic hierarchy…which is all male.  But they made…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[61],"class_list":["post-71","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","tag-abortion-dnc"],"yoast_head":"\nDNC's platform and Abortion - A Pro-Choice point of View - Progressive Revival<\/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\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/dncs-platform.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"DNC's platform and Abortion - A Pro-Choice point of View - Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As a pro-choice Dem,  I am pleased by the DNC’s plank on abortion. It reaffirms Roe…AND it also show party’s  respect for pro-life Dems.  Most smartlly, it challenges the Republican party to connect its rhetoric to results.  For years, Rs have simply condemned Roe, criticized women, and curried favor with Catholic hierarchy…which is all male.  But they made…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/dncs-platform.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Progressive Revival\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-08-19T12:21:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kathleen Kennedy Townsend\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"DNC's platform and Abortion - A Pro-Choice point of View - Progressive Revival","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\/progressiverevival\/2008\/08\/dncs-platform.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"DNC's platform and Abortion - A Pro-Choice point of View - Progressive Revival","og_description":"As a pro-choice Dem,  I am pleased by the DNC’s plank on abortion. 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The eldest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, she saw her parents make the connection between faith and justice, between faith and the common good. Civil rights was a moral issue - poverty unacceptable. Her father\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s article \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Suppose God is Black?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d highlighted for her the notion that our religious beliefs were intimately connected to our public actions. In the early eighties, Kathleen wrote a number of articles connecting faith to the fight for a fairer society. She founded the Maryland Student Service Alliance to make Maryland the first, and still only state that requires young people to engage in community service as a condition of graduation. And, as Maryland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first woman Lt. Governor, she instituted the office of Character Education - to provide a focal point for the teaching of responsibility and respect to the next generation. Kathleen serves on a number of non-profit boards. She is the chairman of the Institute for Human Virology at the University of Maryland and serves on the board of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, the Points of Light Foundation, National Catholic Reporter, and the Character Education Partnership, among others. While serving as the chairman of the board of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, she created the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. Mrs. Townsend is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Before being elected Lt. Governor, Mrs. Townsend served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the United States. She helped design and launch the nationally acclaimed Police Corps, a program that gives college scholarships to young people who pledge to work as police officers for four years after graduating Kathleen has been appointed an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s School of Public Policy and has been a Visiting Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government where she focused her efforts on faith and public life. Mrs. Townsend is an honors graduate of Harvard University, and holds a law degree from the University of New Mexico where she was a member of the law review. She has received ten honorary degrees and has published several articles in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Washington Monthly, among others. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend lives outside Baltimore, Maryland with her husband, David, a professor at St. John\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s College in Annapolis. They have four daughters Meaghan, Maeve, Kate and Kerry.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/author\/kktownsend"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/155"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/progressiverevival\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}