Struggle Over Semantics
Democrats attempt to balance abortion on party platform
August 8, 2008— -- "Democrats for Life" decided on Friday not to seek an amendment to the Democratic Party platform which would have cast the party as a "Big Tent" welcoming pro-life as well as pro-choice voters. This "conscience clause" was in the Democratic platform in 1996 and 2000 but was stripped in 2004.
"We decided not to offer an amendment because we are working with the party to try to solve this issue," Kristen Day, the pro-life group's executive director, tells ABC News.
Having let the 5:00 pm ET Friday deadline pass, Day is hoping that the platform committee's leadership will adopt similar language without the pressure of an amendment.
The DNC's platform committee is set to consider a 51-page statement of party principles -- including three paragraphs on abortion -- when it meets Saturday in Pittsburgh, Pa.
The abortion section was carefully crafted.
These three paragraphs, which appear under a "Choice" header, begin with a statement of support for Roe v. Wade and a pledge to oppose "any and all efforts" to "weaken or undermine" a "woman's right to choose a safe and legal abortion, regardless of ability to pay."
The "Choice" section goes on to affirm the party's commitment to a handful of measures that hold the potential for reducing the incidence of abortion.
These include family planning services, sex education, adoption programs, as well as income support and pre- and post-natal health care.
The platform affirms its support for women who choose to have abortions as well as women who make the decision to have a child.
"We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions," reads the draft platform's language.
Slate's Will Saletan, the author of "Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War," told ABC News that the Democrats struggled to craft abortion reduction language because a "gulf" exists between "pro-choice and pro-life people over the semantics of how that is said."
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