DALLAS - Barack Obama and John McCain got a chance during their third presidential debate on Wednesday night to directly address their respective bases when they were asked about abortion.
Moderator Bob Schieffer, who noted that Democrat Obama supports the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court Roe vs Wade decision that grants women a constitutional right to an abortion, while the Republican McCain opposes it, asked: “Could either of you ever nominate someone to the Supreme Court who disagrees with you on this issue?”
Both candidates said they would not apply ”litmus tests” if they were to select justices for the top U.S. court, whose nine members are currently almost evenly divided between conservatives and liberals.
“I would consider anyone in their qualifications. I do not believe that someone who has supported Roe v. Wade that would be part of those qualifications. But I certainly would not impose any litmus test,” McCain said.
Obama said: “I am somebody who believes that Roe versus Wade was rightly decided … what ultimately I believe is that women in consultation with their families, their doctors, their religious advisers, are in the best position to make this decision.”
Abortion is one of the most emotive and partisan issues in America. Most Democrats support abortion rights; the Republican Party is opposed to abortion rights and its conservative Christian wing is especially vocal and activist in this regard.
It is an issue that can engergize the bases of both parties, but amid worsening economic news and a plunging stock market, neither candidate has been paying it much attention.
Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage
Photo credit: Reuters/Gary Hershorn
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i understand a women should be able to self determine her own productive rights but because of entrenched politics we have decent people unfortunenatly have to support the action of a baby being dragged from the womb and murded on the way to stay partizan to a political agenda.we should get together and spend as much time as we do on renewable energy to try to develope tech to incubate the baby and give it a chance to live then every one will benifit including the mother.
- Posted by brian leeHere’s where your ‘choice’ begins and ends–whether to have sex or not— ok my fellow women, now CHOOSE– and then be willing to live with the consequences if you do choose to have sex. You need to decide BEFORE you have sex if you are ready to have a child–and if not, DON’T HAVE SEX. Simple as that. But problem is pro-choice women want to be just as sexually irresponsible and lust driven as so many men are because they think it makes them equal or “free” as men who spill their seed all over the place and don’t look back. But its not an ‘equality’ that is worth stooping down to claim.
- Posted by kmleTo Susan and those who think as she does: Making murder a capital offense–illegal– has not ended it, but it has sure stopped many a person who wanted to kill someone but didn’t want to pay the price. To make such laws is to take a moral stand as well. If the law said abortion was murder, how many women do you think would be willing to go to jail for life or if not life carry that record? To be pregnant is a 9 month sojourn–its NOT a life sentence–its 9 mohths out of ones life. Can one not even put them self and their plans aside for 9 months??? I can tell you this, if money was put into providing all that any woman with a “crisis” pregnancy might need in order to go through the 9 months necessary to give birth and then adopt out the child–housing counseling of all types, medical care etc–with no judgments attached but simply caring support–then the women that you claim would be going somewhere else for abortions would also diminish. People need a great deal of support in that situation and if its there, the situation can be gotten through. If you HAVE to get through something, and have the support needed to do so, you get through it, no matter how much it disrupts your life. I can tell you that what you may suffer when your life is disrupted for 9 months, or the memory of a child out there that you bore being raised by someone else is far less painful than the memory that you took your own child’s life. I speak as one who has been there and only wished there had been a law to stop me.
- Posted by PD