Provider 'Conscience' Rule, Sebelius Nomination Present 'Ticklish Challenges' For Obama, Washington Post Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Stem Cell Research
Article Date: 06 Mar 2009 - 4:00 PDT

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President Obama has been "waging a quiet, long-term campaign to ease the nation's division around religious and moral questions," Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne writes in an opinion piece. Obama has "pressed this effort through persistent calls for personal and family responsibility, a pledge to continue social service partnerships between government and faith-based groups, and a promise to pursue policies to reduce the number of abortions," Dionne says. Obama's recent announcement that he plans to repeal the HHS provider "conscience" rule and his nomination of Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) for HHS secretary "underscored how brokering cultural peace will keep presenting him with ticklish challenges," according to Dionne.

He continues that Obama "set off a loud skirmish" among antiabortion-rights advocates when he nominated Sebelius, a Roman Catholic who supports abortion rights. Although the choice was "quickly denounced" by conservative Roman Catholic groups, "even before the conservatives launched their assaults, more liberal Catholics began rallying to Sebelius," Dionne says. He notes that the progressive group Catholics United "immediately issued a statement signed by 26 prominent Catholics" detailing how Sebelius as governor has expanded adoption programs, financed social services for pregnant women, encouraged alternatives to abortion and signed a bill that made killing a fetus a separate crime when a pregnant woman is murdered. In addition, a "largely evangelical group" issued a statement noting that the abortion rate in Kansas has dropped 10% since Sebelius became governor, Dionne says. This "rapid mobilization ... marked the emergence of an organized movement of religious progressives as a forceful counterweight to religious conservatives," he writes, adding that it "brought home the centrality of abortion reduction to the overall argument."

Dionne writes that this "has made some traditional feminist groups nervous," as did Obama's decision to give his Office on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships a mandate to work to "reduce the number of abortions." Obama "went out of his way to include opponents as well as supporters of abortion rights on the council," Dionne continues, adding that the president also "reassured family planning and pro-choice groups by moving to alter the Bush conscience rule." The rule has "long applied to doctors, nurses and others who refuse to play any role in an abortion, and the administration has indicated it will maintain those safeguards," Dionne writes, adding that Obama is "likely to narrow" the rule "so that it doesn't get in the way of family planning services and fertility treatments."

Obama will now "face pressure from many religious liberals to guarantee that federal money is not used for abortions," an issue that could arise during debate about abortion coverage under his universal health care proposal, Dionne writes. He continues that Obama "almost certainly hopes that congressional opposition to funding abortion will make this issue go away," concluding, "His success as a cultural peacemaker depends on his ability to move the country's moral discussion toward social justice and economics. Paradoxically, perhaps he'd rather have citizens thinking about taxes and collapsing banks than about abortion" (Dionne, Washington Post, 3/5).

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