Dear Senator Obama,
Despite your protestations that your lackluster performance at Saddleback Saturday were peculiarly the fault of John McCain, ordinary Americans aren't buying it. That's because some of your answers simply defy logic.
I was particularly struck by your inability to answer Rick Warren when he asked you when human rights accrue. Your answer, that it was "above your pay grade," struck me as, at once, flippant and devious. "Above your pay grade?" You mean, in all your 47 years, you've never thought about when people deserve human rights? Not when you were a teenager, just becoming aware of the world outside your school? Not when you were a college student, drinking coffee (or stronger), experimenting with drugs, discussing world events? Not in law school, when you pontificated (I'm sure) to your colleagues about justice? Not as a "community organizer," where you had certainly determined that some forms of activism were noble and worthy causes? Not as a husband, father, son to other women?
You don't know when someone gets human rights? Really? Even after saying you didn't want your daughters punished with a baby?
There are some who have rushed to your defense, desperately trying to miss the substance of your statement in the calculus of your words. But the problem is, your "above your pay grade" comment illuminates the problems with being pro-choice in the first place. Amanda Marcotte's latest screed explains it quite well.
I get that the joke was a faux paus because the piety set abhors jokes of this nature, mostly because said jokes draw attention to the fact that they believe horrible things (in this case, that “life begins at conception”, a euphemism for the belief that sperm have more rights than women), and that those horrible things are protected from criticism because they call themselves “people of faith” and are reliably so touchy that most people are scared off the hard questions.
The truth is, it isn't really that difficult to state when you think someone deserves human rights. The problem for you was that you knew your answer--sometime after birth--would be unacceptable to a religious group. Which is the main reason your non-answer is so important.
If you are unwilling to tell the truth in front of a less-than-enthusiastic group of potential supporters, how can Americans expect you to tell the truth to all of them? You've flipped and you've flopped on a whole variety of issues in an attempt to make yourself into something you aren't because--while Jesse Taylor can't admit it--you know that liberal northern Democrats haven't been elected POTUS in your lifetime (the last one being JFK in 1960).
Let me state what you should have said,
There are few questions in the world more important than when human rights accrue to a person. We know what the law says: you become a person at birth. But for those of us lucky enough to be parents, we know that there's something special about children even before birth. Emotionally, it's difficult to recognize the humanity of unborn babies and still agree with the law, but the law protects all of us by giving bright line rules in difficult situations. Any place other than birth creates bigger problems. This doesn't mean we cannot and should not grieve for the difficult decisions made during pregnancy. But birth is one place we can all agree that human beings deserve protection.
It's just a suggestion for the next time your lousy reputation on life issues comes up.
Sincerely,
The Gold-Plated Witch on Wheels
P.S.: The dirty little secret is that of course, Obama knows when he thinks a baby gets human rights.
(A)s a supporter of Roe and Casey, Obama does have an answer: He thinks that a baby acquires rights when it's born - well, perhaps depending on how and why it happens to be born - and lacks them at every juncture before birth. He just didn't want to come out and say it.
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