Barack Obama Q & A and Some Thoughts on Abortion

Christianitytoday.com posted an interview with Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama concerning his outreach to evangelical voters. I'd like to focus my remarks on his statements concerning the abortion issue:
-----------------------------
CT: For many evangelicals, abortion is a key, if not the key factor in their vote. You voted against banning partial birth abortion and voted against notifying parents of minors who get out-of-state abortions. What role do you think the President should play in creating national abortion policies?
BO: I don't know anybody who is pro-abortion. I think it's very important to start with that premise. I think people recognize what a wrenching, difficult issue it is. I do think that those who diminish the moral elements of the decision aren't expressing the full reality of it. But what I believe is that women do not make these decisions casually, and that they struggle with it fervently with their pastors, with their spouses, with their doctors.
Our goal should be to make abortion less common, that we should be discouraging unwanted pregnancies, that we should encourage adoption wherever possible. There is a range of ways that we can educate our young people about the sacredness of sex and we should not be promoting the sort of casual activities that end up resulting in so many unwanted pregnancies.
Ultimately, women are in the best position to make a decision at the end of the day about these issues. With significant constraints. For example, I think we can legitimately say — the state can legitimately say — that we are prohibiting late-term abortions as long as there's an exception for the mother's health. Those provisions that I voted against typically didn't have those exceptions, which raises profound questions where you might have a mother at great risk. Those are issues that I don't think the government can unilaterally make a decision about. I think they need to be made in consultation with doctors, they have to be prayed upon, or people have to be consulting their conscience on it. I think we have to keep that decision-making with the person themselves.
------------------------------
Where to begin?

(1) I respect the Senator's sentiments, but I think he is totally wrong concerning the starting premise of his argument. There is only one issue in the abortion debate and that is the moral standing of the unborn. If the unborn is not a member of the human community with certain rights like the right to live and not be harmed, then the abortion debate is a settled issue - a woman may abort for whatever reason she deems fit - wrong gender, predisposition to homosexuality, budget, whatever. Why all this talk about why no one is pro-abortion and why this is a difficult issue to decide between women, doctors, spouses, and clergy? Could we imagine the absurdity of a similar argument for why father's should be allowed to kill their toddlers as long as they go through a difficult process of anguish and adjudication with the proper people involved? But one may object: Conway, that's not fair; a toddler is a person and we ought not to kill her because she has a right to live and not be harmed. Yes, that is the issue, isn't it? If the toddler is a full member of the human community, then what about the unborn? You need to deal with the real issue and not confuse things with wishy washy politic-speak. It's too bad the interviewers did not ask him a follow up question such as: Senator, using the same line of reasoning, would you permit a bank robber to rob banks if they did so after a soul-searching process where they consulted their spouses, clergy, and psychiatrists?

(2) Senator Obama's desires to reduce unplanned pregnancies and increase the sacredness of marriage are commendable. Keep doing what you're doing there, Senator. More power to you! But he also says that ultimately it's up to the woman if she wants to abort. Now, I've read the constitutional reasoning given for the right to abortion, and it is just plain bad reasoning (see the second half of my essay "Originalism and the Flawed Constitutional Right to Abortion"). Why does the decision ultimately lie upon the woman? The obvious answer that one may propose is that it's her body that is carrying the pregancy. But the rejoinder is a good one: aren't there two bodies that are now involved -- the woman and the unborn? Why does the woman have a right to abort which leads to the willfull killing of the unborn? The Senator does not provide a reason here. Perhaps he could argue that because the unborn is not viable (i.e. able to live outside the womb independently), the woman has a right to abort. But when is the weakness or dependence of a being give you the right to kill it? Once again, the issue of the status of the unborn rises to the forefront.

(3) Senator Obama says he voted against the ban on partial birth abortions (specifically a gruesome abortion procedure known as D/X abortion) because it did not have a health exception. As a former lecturer on constitutional law, I am sure he knows that Roe v. Wade's companion ruling, Doe v. Bolton, defined "health" in such broad terms you can fly a Boeing 747 through it. "Health" is defined to include physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman's age. All a woman needs to do to satisfy the "health" requirement is to find a doctor willing to render the "health" decision. And since a woman's doctor does not have to be her primary care physcian, she could literally have met him for five minutes before the abortion is performed. The "health" exception is why constitutional law scholars as well as the former Chief Justice Warren Burger (who voted for Roe) see that Roe effectively allows abortion on demand - and that includes partial birth abortions on demand.

If Obama truly wants to get the evangelical pro-life vote, he's going to have to do better than this. He'll have to change his views the way Mitt Romney did and become pro-life.