Dems Adopt Platform in Pittsburgh

ABC News’ Teddy Davis reports: A Democratic panel adopted the party’s platform "Renewing America’s Promise" during a Saturday meeting in Pittsburgh. The statement of party principles will now be presented to the full convention in Denver later this month for a perfunctory vote.

In a nod toward supporters of Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., the platform declares that the party is "united behind a commitment that every American man, woman and child be guaranteed to have affordable, comprehensive health care."

The platform stops short, however, of proposing, as Clinton did in her campaign, that all individuals should be required to have health insurance.

The influence of Clinton’s supporters is seen not only on health care but also in its discussion of opportunities for women.

The women’s rights section characterizes votes received by Clinton during the primaries as "18 million cracks in the highest glass ceiling."

On Iraq, the platform states that Democrats "expect" to complete redeployment "within 16 months," reflecting the time frame that Barack Obama has long proposed but not the air of certainty that his Web site once featured.

On abortion, Democrats reaffirmed their support for Roe v. Wade and vowed to oppose "any and all efforts" to weaken 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.

Its reference to reducing "the need for abortions" now reads as follows: “We also recognize that such health care and education help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and thereby also reduce the need for abortions."

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.”

“Here’s the problem,” Saletan said. “Obama and the Democrats are trying to craft a message that will be visible to the pro-life people in terms of saying that abortion will be reduced but that will be invisible to the pro-choice people.”

The Rev. Jim Wallis, author of “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It,” told ABC News in June that “abortion reduction should be a central Democratic Party plank in this election.”

Wallis, who worked with the platform committee on its language, reacted to the adoption of the platform by praising the "parallelism of choice" contained in it.

“There is a ‘parallelism of choice’ here in the Democratic Platform that is a good, helpful, and new direction that will make many people feel more welcome," Wallis said. "The Democratic Party is now on record in ‘strongly’ supporting both a woman’s right to choose to terminate her pregnancy or to decide to have her child with promised support, with the potential common ground of agreeing together for the need to reduce abortions.”