Joseph Bottum, writing for First Things, pens a compelling, thoughtful essay on what is to become of the pro-life rationale now that Obama has won. He interacts with those who think the issue should “just go away”, and gives a prediction on where Obama will go with regard to these matters. On Obama:

On abortion, Obama is the complete man, his support so ingrained that even his carefully controlled public speaking can’t help revealing it. He’s not a fanatic about abortion; he’s what lies beyond fanaticism. He’s the end product of hard-line support for abortion: a man for whom the very question of abortion seems unreal. The opponents of abortion are, for Obama, not to be compromised with or even fought with, in a certain sense. They are, rather, to be explained away as a sociological phenomenon—their pro-life view something that will wither away as they gradually come to understand the true causes of the economic and social bitterness they have, in their undereducated and intolerant way, attached to abortion.

After acknowledging that Obama’s Cabinet is not as radical as some feared, Bottom explains that in 1992 President Clinton gave social policy decisions at the United Nations to the far left wing of the party “as part of its spoils in the Democratic victory, and the first signs suggest that the Obama administration will do the same”. Then he notes:

All this means that Obama is unlikely to resist when the abortion extremists in Congress hijack or extend the White House’s new economic and social legislation. Nancy Pelosi in the House and Dianne Feinstein in the Senate, for example, are certain to include, in health-care reform, provisions that mandate abortion training for doctors and abortion services for hospitals. And while Obama’s political advisors may regret the political objections that will result, the president himself will see it only in those terms: a problem of electoral politics, rather than a problem of constitutionality or ethics. Resist the far left on some things, but pacify them with complete support on the life issues—that seems, so far, the method of the Obama team, and it is a method wholly in keeping with what we know of the new president’s own predilections. He has already said that his Supreme Court nominations will begin with the litmus test of support for Roe v. Wade.

Bottum’s conclusion:

After every election, out in full howl come the voices declaring that the fight over abortion is over. And, after every election, those voices prove wrong. That’s because, in the long run, the fight will never be over until the slaughter of the unborn ceases. And it’s also because the supporters of abortion will not rest with their electoral victory. They are going to push and push until, at last, we stop them.

Read the whole thing.
(HT: JT)