I've been canvassing in Northern Virgina every weekend for the past few months and have run into quite a few people who are purely single issue voters on abortion. Many of these people are otherwise Democratic voters and so I have tried to persuade some of them, when I can. Below is my response, which I have been working on for some time and have had some success with. Please let me know what you think and help me improve on it to make it more clear.
Here's my opening statement and question:
"Hello, my name is Todd Smyth and I'm a neighborhood volunteer and we are talking to people about our Democratic candidates in Virginia, Barack Obama for President, Mark Warner for US Senate and Jim Moran for US Congress. We are asking people if they know yet who they will be supporting in November?"
Here is the common pro-life objection:
"None of your candidates are pro-life and I'm a pro-life voter."
My response:
Do you really believe the Republican Party is pro-life?
Usually I get a pause unless they shut the door and I try to continue...
There are three major factors that affect a womens decision to have an abortion. 1) Her access to health care, 2) her level of education and 3) her economic opportunity. If a woman has good health care, a good education and economic opportunity, she is much less likely to have an abortion.
This usually produces some agreement and provides a little more time to continue...
Making it illegal doesn't solve the real problems. This is why Health care, Education and Economic Opportunity are core issues of the Democratic Party. Republicans use abortion to deceive people into voting for them while they block every piece of health care, education and economic legislation that would actually reduce the number of abortions in the U.S.
Below is a pivot that is widely accepted and points out how Republicans use hot button issues to deceive and manipulate.
Republicans do the same thing on guns, gay marriage and taxes. They focus on these hot button issues because they know they can manipulate enough people to keep themselves in office. Republicans have bankrupted our economy, shredded our Constitution and destroyed our standing all around the world and yet people still vote for them because they are scared into voting against their own interests.
For example: The McCain campaign has been fear mongering that Obama will raise everyones taxes, while the independent Tax Policy Center has confirmed that Obama's tax plan offers greater tax relief to the middle class than McCain's plan. In fact, everyone making less than $112,000 a year gets a bigger tax break under Obama than McCain. This is clear and blatant deceit on the part of the McCain campaign.
Obama and McCain Tax Proposals
Don't be fooled, if you really care about reducing the number of abortions then vote for the candidates who are actually trying to reduce them not the people who are using you to give more tax cuts to the oil industry.
More on Abortion:
* Countries with the highest infant mortality rates like Angola, Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Liberia, Egypt and Guatemala also have illegal abortion, meaning more babies die in countries where abortion is illegal.
* The Netherlands has the lowest abortion rate in the world even though contraception and abortion there are legal and free. The teenage pregnancy rate in the Netherlands is 9 times lower than in the U.S.
* Countries with the lowest infant mortality rates, (including abortions); Sweden, Iceland, Singapore, Finland, Japan, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Canada all have legal abortion.
* What makes these countries so much better on abortion than the US is they all have free access to high quality health care, a lower poverty rate, better quality education and comprehensive sex education taught throughout puberty.
* In 2007 the Bush administration published a 3 year HHS study to prove the effectiveness of abstinence only education but results of the study showed it is not effective in reducing pre-marital sex, unwanted pregnancies or abortions. The common misconception is that abstinence only education and abstinence are the same thing but they clearly are not.
* Former Republican Senate Leader Bill Frist and his family own Hospital Corporation of America, HCA (also known as TriStar) which performs the largest number of "for profit" abortions in the US. Not only are Republicans hypocrites, they are the ones profiting from abortions.