Pro-Choice Candidates: This is Your Chance, Keep It Real

Thursday August 16, 2007

With the upcoming presidential primaries, presidential hopefuls should consider switching their campaigning strategies. In fact, pro-choice presidential candidates may be missing the opportunity to convert a dubious group of voters - the pro-lifers! This would seem like a good strategic move given that all the data reveals that the pro-choice movement is actually doing a better job at attaining the pro-life goals, such as reducing the number of abortions.

Does anybody else see that although pro-life presidential candidates may argue abortion’s immorality, their strategies (or lack thereof) appear to result in more abortions? Given the notion that pro-life advocates are the ones who wish to end abortion, instead of wasting time standing on their moral high ground, shouldn't they be accountable for creating solutions to the high rates of unintended pregnancy and abortion?

Something worth considering come election day (regardless of whether you are pro-life or pro-choice) is the fact that it is the pro-choice policies that are resulting in significant declines in the need for abortion. The pro-choice movement advocates solutions in the prevention of unintended pregnancy. Their approach promotes wider access to birth control, fights for health insurance coverage and helps to bring new and more effective contraceptives to the public, such as emergency contraception.

We cannot keep turning our backs to the fact that each study that surfaces keeps affirming that the right to life approach is truly the root of the problem; it results in more abortions and later ones, too. Pro-choice candidates should capitalize on the fact that:

91% of Americans strongly favor the use of birth control.

It doesn’t seem like rocket science to me that since pro-life groups are against birth control, presidential hopefuls who aren't afraid to talk about the factual link between prevention, contraception and results, should win (especially given that approximately 80% of those who would consider themselves to be pro-life voters also strongly support birth control).

Is it a coincidence that America witnessed the most dramatic decline in abortion rates ever recorded when our first pro-choice president, Bill Clinton, was in office? Its time that our presidential candidates take a stand and admit to the public that the pro-choice approach is successful, safer and consistent with our values of personal freedom and protection. Isn’t that the very notion that our country was founded on – Freedom - Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?