There seems to be some confusion about the reproductive rights section of the proposed Democratic Party platform. Some pro-life Democrats are claiming credit for the language on adoption and on supporting pregnant women who choose to carry to term. But before we all hail Jim Wallis and friends as supposed platform authors (they weren't), folks should realize that pro-choice advocates have been experimenting with language like this for years.
In 2006, Jessica Arons, director of the women's health and rights program at the pro-choice (and very influential) Center for American Progress, authored a report called "More Than a Choice." Arons also heads a working group of grassroots and Washington, D.C.-based reproductive health professionals who discuss a range of topics, including how to better frame and discuss abortion rights.
In any case, Arons' report, just like the proposed 2008 platform, situates abortion rights alongside the right to parent, and discusses ways government can better support low-income expectant moms. Like the platform, the report discusses adoption not as a means of reducing the abortion rate, but as another reproductive right to which both pregnant women and adoptive parents should have full access. A progressive reproductive rights platform must, Arons writes, "embrac[e] equally the rights to have or not have children."
This kind of thinking, in which the terms of the reproductive rights debate are broadened, is the influence behind this year's proposed platform draft. And let's be clear -- Democrats who oppose abortion rights have no more ownership over this language than pro-choicers do. These ideas have been in wide circulation among reproductive rights advocates for quite some time, and are seen as a way of protecting abortion rights.
--Dana Goldstein
