Yesterday, Bob Casey, Jr., the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, told a panel of reporters and editors of the Associated Press that if elected he would focus more on health care and jobs than abortion. With regard to abortion, he said he wants “to see more of an emphasis on what brings people together rather than what tears people apart.” He also said that being pro-life means, “I support initiatives which would reduce the number of abortions.”
Catholic League president Bill Donohue commented as follows:
“Every politician whose voting record supports abortion-on-demand says that he is opposed to abortion. For example, President Bill Clinton said that his approach to reducing abortions was to make them safe, legal and rare, yet he vetoed every bill that would have barred partial-birth abortions. This made him dramatically different from the governor of Pennsylvania, Bob Casey, Sr., whose opposition to abortion included legal restrictions. Now we have learned that Bob Casey, Jr. has far more in common with Bill Clinton than he does with his father on this issue.
“If someone said he was opposed to racial discrimination, but would not commit to using the law as a means to affecting its reduction, we’d call him a fraud. It would not matter, for instance, if he said that he wants ‘to see more of an emphasis on what brings people together rather than what tears people apart.’ We’d want to know why he prefers to dialogue about racism while doing nothing substantively about it. Similarly, if someone said that his opposition to racism would lead him to support ‘initiatives’ to reduce it, but said nothing about support for legislation to that end, we’d call him a fraud. That’s why Casey is a fraud: his reluctance to use the law as a means to reduce abortions speaks volumes.
“Dealing with the root causes of social problems is important, but it can never be a rational excuse for doing nothing else. We have to stop the bleeding first, and this is especially true when it comes to something as bloody as abortion.”
