National Affairs Rory Leishman

United States President Barack Obama is an astute political tactician. Unlike his secular advisors, he was quick to recognize that the deletion of any reference to God in the initial draft of the Democratic Party Platform was a political blunder.

The great majority of Americans still regard themselves as Christians and expect their leaders to believe in God. In a recent survey, the Washington-based Public Religion Research Institute found that two-thirds of voters –- including 66 percent of Democrats – say that it’s important for a presidential candidate to have strong religious beliefs.

To appease these religious voters, Obama not only ordered the reinstatement of a reference to God in the Democratic Party Platform, but also alluded to the Almighty, not once, but seven times in his concluding address to the Democratic Party Convention. He confided that after four years as President,  “I’m far more mindful of my own failings, knowing exactly what Lincoln meant when he said, ‘I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go.’”

Obama has not always been so devout. In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times in 2004, he discussed his Christian convictions at length.  Asked: “Do you pray often?” Obama replied: “Uh, yeah, I guess I do. It’s not formal, me getting on my knees. I think I have an ongoing conversation with God.”

In this same interview, Obama also professed to believe in sin. Asked: “What is sin?”, he responded: “Being out of alignment with my values.”

Obama, of course, is not alone in taking this view. Countless other liberal Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, likewise profess to believe in God, yet presume to substitute their own values for the natural and divine law.

Take the injunction: “Thou shalt not kill.” Until the 1950s, it was the universal and constant teaching of the entire Christian church that this commandment reasonably entails an absolute prohibition on the deliberate killing of a baby in the womb.

Obama disagrees. According to his values, there is nothing wrong with abortion. He agrees with a new provision inserted this year into the Democratic Party Platform which states: “Abortion is an intensely personal decision between a woman, her family, her doctor, and her clergy; there is no place for politicians or government to get in the way.”

However much this extremist stance appealed to the Democratic Party Convention, it is not calculated to please most voters. In a survey earlier this year, Gallup found that only 25 per cent of adults in the United States hold that abortion should be “legal under any circumstances,” whereas 52 per cent maintain that it should only be “legal under certain circumstances” and another 20 per cent insist that it should be “illegal under all circumstances.”

In 2004, the Democratic Party Platform stated that abortion should be “rare.” But this year the Democrats have dropped even this minor concession to the great majority of voters who oppose abortion on demand.

Meanwhile, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has moved in the opposite direction on abortion. Ten years ago, he supported the legal right of a woman to choose to have an abortion; today, he is pro-life.

Romney made his current position clear in a televised debate in 2007 when he was asked: “If hypothetically, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and the Congress passed a federal ban on all abortions and it came to your desk, would you sign it? Yes or no?” Romney frankly responded: “I’d be delighted to sign that bill.”

As it is, with most voters opposing a total ban on abortion, Romney advocates compromise legislation that would outlaw the procedure in all circumstances except for rape, incest or to protect the life of the mother.

Likewise, Romney opposes Roe v. Wade, favours an end to federal funding for abortion, and promises to respect the rights of conscience of individuals and groups that object to the provision of abortion services.

In all these respects, Obama and Romney are poles apart. Will Obama’s implacable and unpopular stance in favour of abortion on demand help boost Romney to victory in the November election? We shall soon see.