the choice of the pro-choice pros

By Diogenes ( articles ) | Feb 20, 2008

Lifesite's Peter Smith reports that Frances Kissling, former director of Catholics for a Free Choice, is endorsing Obama for president. The reason? Dead isn't dead enough. Red-in-tooth-and-claw Hillary is not sufficiently pro-abortion:

[Kissling] agreed that both Clinton and Obama would nominate pro-Roe v. Wade justices, overturn the Mexico City policy, and give back funding to UNFPA, which lost US funds after being exposed for its cooperation in coerced abortions in China. But for Kissling nothing indicates that Obama would be any less of a pro-abortion leader than Clinton.

The main difference between the two candidates, for Kissling, was that Sen. Clinton was not radical enough on the issue of abortion and "had more than once failed the movement." Kissling criticized Clinton for failing to require abortion coverage in her health care reform plan as First Lady in 1994, and for allowing "any provider, religious or not, to refuse to provide any service they deemed immoral and still participate in the plan and reap the benefits of participation."

No one doubts that Obama favors abortion on demand at any time for any reason, and is as rabid on the issue as any feminist could wish (über-trolls Kate Michelman and Barbara Ehrenreich and Katha Pollitt all support him as well). If I were in their place, though, I'd be rooting for Hillary, and from the pro-life perspective I think it's Hillary that inspires the greater dread.

There's an admittedly subjective component to that dread. Hillary stares at all opponents, but especially Christians, as if she's measuring them for the knife. And there's something reptilian about her unblinking intensity that makes her smile even more chilling than her rages.

Yet it's Hillary's record that's really unsettling. Though often forced by political necessity to settle for half-measures, it's clear she's playing for the whole kitty, and for the long term. She's a Lenin in her knowledge of the political apparat and in her attention to detail. Like Lenin, she seldom stoops to persuade where she's in position to compel, a tactic she uses with allies as well as adversaries (and which may explain why so many of the former are pulling for Obama). Like Lenin, she understands the importance not only of filling the judgeships and executive appointments with ideologically reliable lieutenants, but of replacing mid- and low-level functionaries with persons carefully educated in a politics of revenge. That means your children's children will still be living with the consequences of a Clinton victory -- regardless of whom they elect for their own chief executive.

Both of the Democratic candidates would spell disaster for pro-lifers. But one of them, if elected, could be voted out.