Posted on 07/31/2005 2:46:34 PM PDT by wagglebee
The Democratic think tank Third Way -- run by the same strategists who moved the party to the center on the gun issue -- is crafting new message and policy ideas to help Democrats appeal to Red State voters on abortion, Newsweek reports in the current issue.
And the pro-choice groups themselves have begun tinkering with their approach, even considering whether to abandon the framework of "choice" itself. Last week Democrats signaled that abortion -- or at least the general topic of "privacy" -- will be a major issue at Supreme Court nominee John Roberts' confirmation hearings.
"We've gotten a little far away from talking with people very much from the heart," admits Karen Pearl, interim president of Planned Parenthood. The Roberts hearings could give the movement a first chance to publicly test the new strategy, reports Newsweek Deputy Washington Bureau Chief Debra Rosenberg in the August 8 issue (on newsstands Monday, August 1).
After issuing a series of memos and a major poll on the issue this fall, Third Way will roll out a new strategy to help Democrats broaden their support without sacrificing the party's core values. In one forthcoming brief obtained by Newsweek, Third Way divides voters into abortion "polars" -- those at each extreme, who believe it should always be legal or always illegal -- and abortion "grays," those who believe abortion should be mostly legal or mostly illegal.
Surprisingly, Third Way found that Democrats were losing among abortion grays, even though more of them leaned pro-choice.
The pro-choice groups themselves have also been heatedly debating what to do. This spring, activists in New York and Seattle invited Berkeley linguist George Lakoff to speak about how to reframe the abortion issue.
"They found that choice wasn't playing very well," says Lakoff, who's become an unofficial guru to beleaguered Democrats. He told the groups it was no wonder: "choice" came from a "consumerist" vocabulary, while "life" came from a moral one.
In one of his more controversial suggestions, he advised the activists to reclaim the "life" issue by blaming Republicans for high U.S. infant-mortality rates and mercury pollution that can cause birth defects. "Basically what I'm saying is that conservatives are killing babies," he says.
Lakoff advised focusing on reducing unwanted pregnancies and suggested that the groups talk about "personal freedom," a phrase intended to evoke unpopular government intrusion into matters like the Schiavo case.
Granted. I'm just leery of ANY government intrusion into personal lives, whether it be for good or ill. It's a moot point, however, since we long ago invited it and we now have the spectre of Hillary and Schumer (and Specter, come to think of it) making decisions on what we can eat, drink, read and believe. And it gets worse by the day, as PC runs amok.
Abandoning choice and moving to privacy is for the time when there is no Roe.
To me this is telegraphing that the democrat party is assuming roe is certainly going to "die." Then it will be up to the constitutional privacy amendments which have been specifically and explicitly adopted in the various states.
We are? We're way too busy throwing the elderly out of their homes and beating up minorities. Plus we're fleecing workers out of their paychecks as well.
Where do we find time to do such things? Gotta put that down on my to-do list. Kill babies (highlighted in red).
Remember when Democrats had Republicans ending school lunches?
Symbolism over substance.
That's a big problem. They keep on aborting their potential supporters.
How about inter-personal medical decisions: those involving more than one party?
For instance: Say you have a husband who has made a medical decision to give you barbituates to produce a coma, and then remove several essential organs from your body. Do you think the government should have a role in curbing this sort of choice?
Oh, so you know my ex-wife? :-)
Jenny, it is your statement in post #6 that is causing all the consfusion here:
What does that have to do with abortion? Talk about obvious Red Herring.
The problem with this reasoning is that there is no right to privacy in the constitution. It's hard to express one's views on a nonexistent item
Please see my #61. Thanks.
They'll be calling the right to murder your baby in your womb.....a civil right.
I've already noticed that the pro-abortion group no longer talks about "choice." Their new buzz word is "privacy."
The pro-aborts have used the word "choice" too many times for it to be successful anymore. Pro-aborts know that they can't defend abortion on its merits. So they devised the term "pro-choice" since it diverts attention away from the real issue (abortion) and toward an abstraction that sounds nice (choice). However, after 30 years of using the term "choice" as a euphemism for abortion, the public now thinks of abortion when they hear the term "pro-choice".
So the term is losing its usefulness now that people understand what it actually means. So the pro-aborts need a new term that has nothing to do with abortion in order to continue to con people into supporting pro-abort politicians.
Err... Where are you getting ideas like that?
Glad I'm not a two-year-old in your house.
Sheesh.
For those who think there is no right to privacy, I invite you to read the link I posted on #57. Hardly the opinion of a judicial activist.
Does a woman who is taking fertility drugs to have a baby have a right to know that her husband has chosen to undergo a vasectomy?
I agree it does get absurd. The left is more than willing to mandate seatbelts (or ban guns) in the "name" of medical good to society and eliminate private choice "there" but not on the mythical alone decision of abotion.
Think about it as long as they can isolate the poor woman with an unplanned pregnancy they can keep the fact SHE DOES NOT HAVE TO BE ALONE from her. I am not talking about religion, I am talking about the fact there are family, people, and groups out there to help her with the decision. She does not have to be alone.
Isolation of the individual is the only tool the left has anymore.
Tin eared zeroes and HollyPukes comin
We finally caught em on their own
This Spring we'll hear the ratta-tat-tatttin
Of DemoCommies gettin what they have sown
Gotta get down to it
The Dirty DemoCommies
are tearin the US down
Shoulda been done long ago
What if you knew the little Iraqi girl?
And saw her mutilated
lyin dead in thr underground?
How could forgive yourself?
Where could you run?
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