PublicEye.org - Anti-Abortion Strategy in the Age of Obama
Integral to the approach of a wide swath of the movement is their embrace of religious supremacism. This aspect of ideological anti-abortionism, which is even held by such supposed moderates as Gushee, may pose an unbridgeable chasm in ever finding any actual common ground. This is evident in Gushee’s subtle, but ominous, warning on the op-ed page of USA Today soon after President Obama took office. The occasion was Obama’s expected lifting of the Bush-era executive order barring federal funding of international family planning groups that support abortion and embryonic stem cell research. [22]
“I do confess,” Gushee declared, “that my desire to retain good relationships with the Obama team has tempted me to give what was asked in return for the big payoff of a serious abortion-reduction initiative that I could wholeheartedly support.” Gushee wrote that he does not want to sacrifice principles in order to ensure access to power and he found himself struggling with what he saw as the reality that his side might lose on other aspects of abortion policy “for a long time to come.” He is worried that taxpayer funds might be used to pay for abortion services in violation of the “sacred beliefs” of his movement’s members. He is also worried that tax-exemption or taxpayer subsidies for religious institutions and anti-abortion health professionals could be jeopardized if they are “required as a condition of accreditation, or employment, or contact with federal dollars, to actively facilitate or perform deeds that their conscience forbids them from doing.”“And if we lose there,” he dramatically concluded, “then the entire relationship between religious faith and American society will move into a period of profound crisis.” [Emphasis added]
Gushee has neatly expressed, here, the religious supremacism that remains a distinguishing feature of the anti-abortion movement. We can hear it in their refusal to acknowledge that the vast majority of Christians, Jews and others – as well as clear majorities of Americans, see abortion as a moral choice. [23] Their unambiguous implication is that anyone who is prochoice cannot be religious.