Empty Words

Smooth talk, bland face: 

Wearing the blue gown of the university, Obama said the Notre Dame controversy reminded him of a letter he received from a doctor who voted for him in the 2004 U.S. Senate primary in Illinois. He said the man complained about language on his campaign website that suggested "right-wing ideologues" wanted to take away a woman's right to choose. 

"The doctor said he had assumed I was a reasonable person," he said. "But that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable."

Obama said he did not change his position on the issue but did instruct his staff to change the language on his website.

Just words. Empty words. Empty Heart.

More. Powerline:

But Obama continues to employ the same kind of linguistic assault on those who disagree with him on other fundamental issues. For example, he demonizes those who stand in the way of his redistributionist agenda by attemping to exercise contractual rights. And he demonizes those who made tough decisions to protect this coutnry from attack at a time of crisis -- decisions to which the Democratic leadership did not object at the time -- because, from the relatively safe perspective of today, the tactics his political opponents employed strike him as unduly harsh.

Thus, Obama's plea to the graduates that they not "demoniz[e] those with just as strongly held convictions on the other side" rings hollow. If Obama is going to demonize his opponents on issues other than abortion, then he plainly lacks standing to object if he is "demonized" for his views on this issue. This is particularly true to the extent that Obama's concept of "demonization" encompasses statements by the pro-life forces that merely express the strong moral convictions that underlie their position.

Obama was also quite disingenuous when he discussed his experience with religion in the South Side of Chicago.

And on the polling showing for the first time a majority of Americans are pro-life, Donald Douglas, American Power, deals with a critique from the left. In part:

I'll simply close with a reminder on the bottom line on abortion: It kills. Leftists continue to spin slanderous tales about how conservatives are determined to suppress the rights of women. But what they rarely discuss are questions of sanctity of life - and that's because it's an argument they just can't win.

I just read an astonishing essay at Psychology Today on the science of fetal development in the earliest stages of pregnancy.

The title of the article is indicative: "A Fateful First Act: The Action-Packed Days a Baby Spends in Utero Influence Her Emotional and Physical Makeup for Years to Come."

The essay recounts the science showing that even within the first 40 days of pregnancy, the development of a fetus is powerfully influenced by environmental factors like environmental noise and the mother's oxygen levels. Difficulties in a fetus' brain development could later have consequences for cognitive impairment and susceptibility to disease. What is most interesting about the story is how scientists conceive of a fetus not just as a living organism, but as a developing person; and thus such a consensus makes even more grisly the arguments suggesting that fetuses are "brain dead" or other such nihilism we hear routinely among abortion-rights absolutists (for example, right here)

Paul Kengor, TWS, Duped at Notre Dame: Barack Obama says he wants abortion to be safe, legal, and rare, while doing everything in his power to advance it.