pro-politico

The more I hear and read Howard Dean, the more I like him. Yeah, I'm a little late to jump on the bandwagon. I blame it on post-traumatic-stress from Wellstone's death.

Anyway, being a mother makes me rethink a lot. Like abortion. Someone's email about an ultrasound today tickled a dusty niche in my brain about how Democrats can keep the moral high ground while supporting pro-choicers. I've always been pro-choice in practice. Fundamentally, though, I lack the conviction that life doesn't begin at conception. When I saw that little pink line appear on a home pregnancy kit, everything changed.

Dean says it well in this excerpt from the 2005 California State Democratic Convention:
The issue we need to debate is not about whether abortion is a good thing or not, but whether a woman gets to make up her own mind over what kind of health care she's going to get or whether Tom DeLay gets to make up her mind for her. That's the issue we need to debate.

When I was campaigning for this job I ran into a lot of women in the south who said they were pro-life. They would tell me "I wouldn't want an abortion and I wouldn't want my daughter to have an abortion, but I'm not sure if the lady next door got herself in a fix and had to think about what to do, I'm not sure I'd want to tell her whether she should have an abortion or not."

We call that person pro-choice, but she calls herself pro-life. The minute we start talking about choice, we're not talking to her anymore.


And earlier, but more to the point:

Because the truth is there are no red states, there are no blues states. There are only American states, and we all share the same values as Americans. Our problem is not that Americans don't share our values. Our problem is that we don't communicate what those values are very well. Our problem is not that we need to change our values. Our problem is that we need to talk to people in language that is relevant to their lives and not just ours.

That's either a) damn good rhetoric, or b) exactly what we need.