Deacon Keith Fournier: Obama Chooses Senator Biden for VP and the Battle for Life is Engaged

Deacon Keith Fournier writes at Catholic Online:

... So, enter Joe Biden the Catholic. Joe Biden is a native of Scranton, Pennsylvania has Irish, blue collar, working-class roots which he will certainly attempt to bring to the campaign. He is a practicing Roman Catholic Christian. Along with his wife Jill, he attends St. Patrick Church, which is a part of the Diocese of Wilmington in Delaware. His careful discussion concerning all of the issues related to the deprivation of rights from children in the womb have been careful and strategic. He is a talented debater, a solid interviewee, a careful speaker on this issue. I believe that the Obama campaign is counting on this to stem the loss and attempt to reengage the efforts to attract Catholics and other orthodox Christians who simply will not accept any candidate who argues that an entire class of persons, children in the first home of the whole human race, can be summarily killed and that such an action should be called a “right”.

Joe Biden is also a member of that group of Catholics, from both major parties, who have come under unrelenting scrutiny from a growing and vocal part of the Catholic lay faithful. These Republicans and Democrats try to expound a “public/private” dichotomy on the fundamental human rights issue of our age, the Right to life from conception to natural death. Senator Biden the Catholic purports to be personally opposed to abortion and to “accept” the clear Catholic teaching that all human life is sacred and must be protected and respected from the moment of conception, throughout all of life’s spectrum and to a natural death. Yet, in his own words, he also "strongly supports Roe v Wade”, which was the Supreme Court decision that entrenched unrestricted abortion as the positive law in America.

While still a candidate for the Presidency himself, he participated in the NBC sponsored Presidential debate of April 27, 2008 in South Carolina. The venue gave him the opportunity to summarize his position as he responded to a question concerning the nomination of potential Supreme Court Justices and the decision of that Court in affirming the federal ban on partial birth abortions:

MODERATOR: “Senator Biden, as president would you have a specific litmus test question on Roe v. Wade that you would ask of your nominees for the high court?”

BIDEN: “I strongly support Roe v. Wade. I wouldn't have a specific question but I would make sure that the people I sent to be nominated for the Supreme Court shared my values; and understood that there is a right to privacy in the United States Constitution. That's why I lead the fight to defeat Bork. Thank God he is not in the court or Roe v. Wade would be gone by now.

“Number two, that's why I was so outspoken and have been criticized for being outspoken and leading the effort to try to defeat Roberts and Alito. That's why I opposed, the other, Thomas on the court. The truth of the matter is that this decision (Ed: referring to Partial Birth Abortion) was intellectually dishonest. I think it is a rare procedure that should only be available when the woman's life and health is at stake.

“But, what this court did is it took that decision, and it said -- put a Trojan horse in -- through dishonest reasoning, laid the groundwork for undoing Roe v. Wade. That's the danger of this decision. Not the specific procedure, but the rationale offered to justify, I think, the next step they're going to try to take.”

So, Senator Biden has tried to have it both ways. To say that he supports the ban on “Partial Birth” abortion but also opposed the Supreme Courts decision to uphold it? In an April 29th interview with the late Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” the now Vice Presidential candidate was asked to elaborate further on this position:

MR. RUSSERT: “Let me talk—turn to abortion. The ban on partial-birth abortions or late-term abortions, you supported that ban.”

SEN. BIDEN: “I did and I do.”

MR. RUSSERT: “And the Supreme Court came and basically upheld that ban...”

SEN. BIDEN: “That’s right.”

MR. RUSSERT: “...and you criticized the Supreme Court.”

SEN. BIDEN: “I’ll tell you why I criticized the Supreme Court. They upheld the ban, and then they engaged in what we lawyers call dicta that is frightening. You had an intellectually dishonest rationale for an honest justification for upholding the ban, and that was this: They went further, and then they, in the language associated with the decision said, by the way, they blurred whether there is the first trimester and third trimester in how much—I know this is going to sound arcane to the listeners—but whether or not they blurred the distinction between the government’s role in being involved in the first day and the ninth month.

“They blurred the role in terms of whether or not there is—they became paternalistic, talking about the court could consider the impact on the mother and keeping her from making a mistake. This is all code for saying, “Here we come to undo Roe v. Wade.” And it went on to say, by the way, that the life of the mother was, in fact, permissible exception, and it went on to say that even—that any woman could challenge, even if her health is at risk, could come back to the court to challenge that. So the bottom line here is, what they did is not so much the decision, the actual outcome of the decision, it’s what attended the decision that portends for a real hard move on the court to undo the right of privacy. That’s what I’m criticizing about the court’s decision...”

***

In choosing Senator Joe Biden, the Obama campaign has guaranteed that the Right to Life will continue to be a preeminent issue in the Presidential campaign of 2008...

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(emphasis added)

Let me get this straight: When the partial-birth abortion ban appeared unlikely to withstand a Supreme Court challenge, Sen. Biden voted for it. When, to the shock of Sen. Biden and the rest of his Democrat cohorts, the Supreme Court actually upheld the ban, Sen. Biden then criticized the Court for not striking down the very ban for which he had voted. In fact, he has stated for the record that he will only support the types of Supreme Court nominees who would be likely to strike down such measures as the ban.

So, to put this in the nuanced terms of a previous pro-abortion Catholic running on the Democrat ticket for the highest office in the land, Joe Biden was FOR the ban on partial-birth abortion before he was AGAINST it.