Democratic party platform

Draft Democratic party platform commits to ‘affordable, comprehensive health care’ for all.

Today, the 186-member Democratic platform committee put together a draft document “united behind a commitment that every American man, woman and child be guaranteed to have affordable, comprehensive health care.” Other highlights of the platform — which will be adopted at the Democratic convention later this month — are “complete redeployment within 16 months” from Iraq, closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, and “tough, practical, and humane immigration reform in the first year of the next administration.”

(Think Progress)

Good News

Frederick Clarkson at Talk to Action reports:

There was a controversy recently, when Jim Wallis and allied evangelicals proposed "abortion reduction" as a central feature of the Democratic Party Platform. This has been concerning as religious right ideas have been percolating in the party of late as part of efforts to appeal to conservative religious voters.

The just published draft platform clearly rejects such a view, even while shoehorning in the word "reduction" in a way that will probably not alarm the vast majority of Democrats who are prochoice.

You can read the relevant pieces of the platform at the link. I've always felt that the emphasis in the party should be less on reducing abortion and more on reducing unwanted pregnancies, which every liberal, pro-choice or pro-life, can agree upon. This does that while acknowledging that reducing unwanted pregnancies naturally leads to reduced abortions, which is true without unnecessarily stigmatizing the procedure or the women who find themselves in need of it.

Pro-choice advocates have always been in the forefront of reducing unwanted pregnancies. If we had our way the government would give free birth control and reproductive health information to all Americans. But then, that's really the issue. We don't think sex is the problem (it's pretty uhm, unstoppable) --- we think unwanted pregnancies are the problem. The social conservatives clearly do think sex is the problem or they wouldn't be intent upon keeping kids ignorant, making birth control unavailable and then forcing women to have children against their will.

Good for the platform committee for adopting language that everyone who is engaging in good faith can probably support.

(Hullabaloo)