Yostivanich

Fem­i­nist­ing has a post up today regard­ing abor­tion and the Democ­rats new plat­form (PDF warn­ing) for the 2008 elec­tion. The whole of the arti­cle essen­tially focuses on how “safe, legal and rare” has become “safe and legal”. My main area of con­cern is as follows:

The Demo­c­ra­tic Party strongly and unequiv­o­cally sup­ports Roe v. Wade and a woman’s right to choose a safe and legal abor­tion, regard­less of abil­ity to pay, and we oppose any and all efforts to weaken or under­mine that right.

I won­der why the Demo­c­ra­tic lead­er­ship removed the word “rare” in their plat­form for this upcom­ing elec­tion. First is that Obama has been a pretty strong sup­porter of com­pre­hen­sive sex-ed as well as sup­port­ing con­tractep­tives. Sec­ond it seems that hav­ing the word rare in there adds to a wider range of appeal. I would argue there are very few sup­port­ers of abor­tion who want abor­tion to be a non-rare event. Instead the major­ity of pro-choice pos­tions sup­port com­p­re­sen­hive sex-ed and cheap and open access to con­tra­cep­tives to reduce abor­tion. Why not, the fewer abor­tions the less of a con­tro­ver­sial issue it becomes. Get smart peo­ple and increased con­tra­cap­tives mean fewer abor­tions which works for both parties.

So I must ask the Demo­c­ra­tic Party why the change in lan­guage, it seems you are both going against what makes good polit­i­cal and log­i­cal sense? Or is there a sec­ondary rea­son that I am not seeing?