Obama campaign defends his abortion-rights record
By Mike Dorning
Apparently sharing the conclusion of several analysts that Barack Obama was wounded in New Hampshire in part by direct-mail literature questioning his commitment to abortion rights, the Illinois senator’s presidential campaign launched a new effort shore up his abortion-rights bona fides with a conference call a few minutes ago.
The literature against Obama has focused on a series of “present” votes Obama cast as a state legislator on controversial measures to restrict abortion rights. A present vote allows a legislator to avoid a public stand for or against a measure. The Clinton campaign and two pro-abortion rights groups supportive of her candidacy—EMILY’s List and National Organization for Women—have used those votes to question Obama’s commitment to abortion rights.
The Obama campaign has argued his present votes were part of a legislative strategy devised by the Illinois chapter of Planned Parenthood to counter a Republican leadership strategy to force pro-abortion rights Democrats into politically damaging “no” votes against popular abortion restrictions. The legislators wound then be attacked at election time for voting no legislation with names such as “The Born Alive Infant Protection Act.” The present votes would provide political cover and still have the same effect as a no vote.
The Tribune last year found few lawmakers remembered such a strategy and many of those who joined with Obama to vote present were, like him, in politically safe districts. But leaders of Illinois Planned Parenthood have maintained since the controversy erupted that they did in fact devise the present-vote strategy and asked Obama to participate.
Pam Sutherland, president and CEO of the Illinois Planned Parenthood Council, vouched again in the conference call that Obama’s present votes were made a the request of Illinois abortion-rights advocates.
“It was our strategy from Planned Parenthood,” Sutherland said.
“Sen. Obama was key to that present-vote strategy,” She continued. “He was always gong to be no votes on all of these bills. But we specifically asked him to vote present because he was so respected among his fellow Democrats that, if he did the present vote, they would follow suit. And that ended up being the case. They did follow suit. And not only did many of the Democrats follow suit. So did a couple of Republicans follow suit."
“It actually worked, because the then-Senate President was no longer able to use these votes against candidates in their races,” Sutherland added.
Jan Nicolay, co-chair of the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, also vouched for Obama’s pro-abortion-rights commitment, saying he was the only one of the presidential candidates to send money to aide with a ballot initiative to overturn a nearly complete ban on abortion that the South Dakota legislature passed.
Shortly after the Obama campaign conference call ended, the Clinton camp held its own conference, in which a former leader of the Illinois chapter of the National Organization for Women argued that Obama and other lawmakers should have voted a firm “no” on the abortion restrictions.
“NOW and other pro-choice groups did want a vote on those bills. And it was important….Let’s talk about women and standing up for women, not about strategies to protect other people,” said Gaye Bruhn, who was identified as president of NOW at the time of the voters.
Bruhn acknowledged that there was a difference at the time between the local chapters of Planned Parenthood and NOW over how best to respond to the state legislation.
“We did differ in that strategy,” Bruhn said.
Referring to Planned Parenthood’s Sutherland, Bruhn added, “We talked about it. We still like each other. We still do good work together. But in that case, she (Sutherland) knew that we were opposed to that (Planned Parenthood) strategy and that we in fact lobbied against it.”
Clinton senior adviser Ann Lewis said the votes showed a difference in the depth of the two candidates’ support for abortion rights.
“There is a real difference between his present vote and Hillary standing up and taking the lead time and again in the Senate,” Lewis said.
Posted by Mike Dorning on January 14, 2008 4:20 PM | Permalink
http://weblogs.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/blog/2008/01/obama_campaign_mounts_defense.html