Outlawing abortion is now the compromise position
by digby
If you're not against banning birth control you can now call yourself a moderate:
Congressman Cory Gardner, who has been hammered for his position on social issues ever since he jumped into the U.S. Senate race, dropped a political bombshell Friday with his revelation that he was wrong to have supported previous personhood efforts.
He said after learning more about the measures, which have the impact of outlawing abortion, he realized that proposals also could ban certain forms of contraception, a prohibition he does not support.
"This was a bad idea driven by good intentions," he told The Denver Post. "I was not right. I can't support personhood now. I can't support personhood going forward. To do it again would be a mistake."
Gardner, a Yuma Republican who has represented the conservative 4th Congressional District since 2011, late last month jumped in the U.S. Senaterace to try to unseat Democrat Mark Udall.
He did not say when he changed his mind on personhood, but said he began examining it more closely after voters rejected it by 3-to1-margin in 2010.
"The fact that it restricts contraception, it was not the right position," Gardner said. "I've learned to listen. I don't get everything right the first time. There are far too many politicians out there who take the wrong position and stick with it and never admit that they should do something different."
Udall's campaign spokesman, Chris Harris, pointed out that Gardner in the last two years co-sponsored the Life Begins at Conception Act, which defines a human being as "a member of the species homo sapiens" at the moment of fertilization. He said it was basically a federal version of the personhood amendment, a position with which Gardner's campaign disagrees.
He's obviously a right wing zealot. Let's hope Coloradan's aren't fooled.
Notice that he's fine with the banning of abortion part of the personhood gambit.And that's an extreme position among the American electorate. But now that they've brought birth control into the mix outlawing abortion entirely is paradoxically spun as a mainstream compromise. Just as it was meant to do.
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