{"id":198162,"date":"2007-12-06T06:32:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-06T11:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/12\/06\/obama-and-abortion-profile-in-cowardice\/"},"modified":"2007-12-06T06:32:00","modified_gmt":"2007-12-06T11:32:00","slug":"obama-and-abortion-profile-in-cowardice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2007\/12\/06\/obama-and-abortion-profile-in-cowardice\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama and Abortion: Profile in Cowardice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It turns out that when Barack Obama had the opportunity to take a stand on abortion rights, in the state senate, when called to make a vote on the proposed ban on the DNX procedure, he voted &#8220;present&#8221;. (see <a href=\"http:\/\/firedoglake.com\/2007\/12\/05\/note-to-obama-either-youre-pro-choice-or-youre-not\/\">here<\/a>,<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mydd.com\/story\/2007\/12\/5\/1045\/13366\">here<\/a>, and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/news\/politics\/chi-0705030101may03,1,2089175,print.story?coll=chi-news-hed&amp;ctrack=1&amp;cset=true\">here<\/a>)<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>During Senator Obama&#8217;s 2004 senate campaign, the Illinois NOW PAC did not recommend the endorsement of Obama for U.S. Senate because he refused to stand up for a woman&#8217;s right to choose and repeatedly voted `present&#8217; on important legislation.<\/p>\n<p>As a State Senator, Barack Obama voted `present&#8217; on seven abortion bills, including a ban on &#8216;partial birth abortion,&#8217; two parental notification laws and three &#8216;born alive&#8217; bills.  In each case, the right vote was clear, but Senator Obama chose political cover over standing and fighting for his convictions.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;When we needed someone to take a stand, Senator Obama took a pass,&#8221; said Grabenhofer. &#8220;He wasn&#8217;t there for us then and we don&#8217;t expect him to be now.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>At the time, Obama represented what was arguably the most liberal senate district in Illinois, so there was no need for him to duck and cover, but <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">duck and cover<\/span>, he did.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, he did it on the Petraeus\/Moveon vote too, <a href=\"http:\/\/tpmelectioncentral.com\/2007\/09\/_obama_misses_vote_on_moveon_right_after_voting_on_boxer_measure.php\">he showed up for Barbara Boxer&#8217;s amendment, but was not in the hall later that afternoon for the Moveon condemnation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s very well spoken.  He&#8217;s telegenic.<\/p>\n<p>But it appears that when the going gets tough, and let&#8217;s be clear in his Hyde Park senate district, being unapologetically pro choice is actually pretty damn safe, he is AWOL.<\/p>\n<p>His <a href=\"http:\/\/40yrs.blogspot.com\/2007\/10\/sorry-obama-is-engaging-in-dog-whistle.html\">dog whistle gay bashing behavior with his gospel tour<\/a> appears to be a part of a pattern.<\/p>\n<p>No guts, and the moreI hear him going on using Republican talking points like &#8220;hostility to religion&#8221; and :social security crisis&#8221;, the more he sounds like Joe Lieberman with a better tan.<\/p>\n<p>As to the Presidential race&#8230;He&#8217;s still ahead of Mike Gravel in my mind, but if push comes to shove, I vote Hillary instead of him<sup>*<\/sup>.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:85%;\">Yuck&#8230;I think that I just threw up in my mouth.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It turns out that when Barack Obama had the opportunity to take a stand on abortion rights, in the state senate, when called to make a vote on the proposed ban on the DNX procedure, he voted &#8220;present&#8221;. (see here,here, and here) During Senator Obama&#8217;s 2004 senate campaign, the Illinois NOW PAC did not recommend &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1123,1051,978,977,1122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-abortion","category-hypocrisy","category-politics","category-presidential-campaign","category-reproductive-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=198162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}