Amy Sullivan weighs in on Kerry's abortion answer at Tompaine.com.

Newly minted Kerry adviser Mike McCurry acknowledged this reality recently when he told a group of campaign reporters that his candidate should talk about abortion in a way that acknowledges the genuine moral concerns and qualms of anti-abortion voters. John Kerry did just that in St. Louis last Friday night in his response to a rigged question about government funding for abortions—an issue that hasn't been the focus of abortion politics for 15 years now. Despite the setup, Kerry went out of his way to express his respect for those who oppose abortion. And then he correctly moved into a discussion of various ways to prevent unwanted pregnancies.

It's a conversation that those of us who are pro-choice should have an interest in supporting. Because the real solution to reducing unnecessary abortions in this country doesn't lie in banning specific abortion procedures or sending doctors to jail. It also won't be helped by marshalling all of our political resources to fight parental notification laws that strike most American voters as sensible (Bush highlighted them for a reason in his answer to the same question). Instead, abortion rates drop when unwanted pregnancies decrease, whether through better sex education (that includes, but goes beyond, abstinence promotion) or insurance coverage for contraceptives.

Bush immediately mocked Kerry's nuanced answer—"I'm trying to decipher that"—and it has been roundly criticized in the press for sounding tortured. But the reality is that the feelings of most Americans regarding abortion are tortured. It's easy to stake out a post as a pro-choice or anti-abortion extremist; it's much harder to articulate a desire to respect unborn life and protect women. I suspect, however, that Kerry's answer—particularly the reference to the influence of his Catholic faith—plays better with swing voters than with political reporters precisely because it reflects a genuine attempt to grapple with a difficult issue.

It may take a Catholic Democrat to lead the party out of an era in which politicians have lived in fear of sounding insufficiently supportive of abortion rights and of suffering the consequences of withdrawn endorsements or campaign funds from choice groups as a result. If that happens, we might actually see the day in which—upon hearing the legend of Bob Casey—listeners say, "Nah, that doesn't sound like the Democratic Party to me."

Jeanne at Body and Soul had this to say about Kerry's answer:

At the same time, I think Bush had some help in losing women, because I'm pretty sure Kerry won over a lot of women last night, especially in answering the question about abortion:. . .

After Kerry's straightforward defense of women's lives, Bush sounded like he just didn't give a damn about us.

Women are going to turn that contempt right back on him.

All around excellent post, highly recommended reading.

And there's the liberated feminist view from Amanda at Mouse Words, which indicated the converse of something Amy Sullivan notes, that

What was more important in terms of picking up those moderate Catholics who are still not in the Democratic camp yet is that for the first time in recent memory, the Democratic candidate expressed respect for pro-life views and acknowledged them as legitimate in a political forum.

The converse of this is that Kerry, who has credibility with the pro-choice movement, has made it clear that pro-lifers will have air to breathe in the Party and the pro-choicers are quite happy with that.

For the record, I do not believe the questioner, Sarah Degenhart at the St Louis debate was an RNC plant.

In the 90s I was not politically active and I never thought of what party I belonged to. I do note that my impression of the Democratic Party was that it was hostile to pro-lifers which I was at the time. It is ironic because Clinton was the one who coined the magic phrase that abortions should be "safe, legal and rare."

What struck me in the primaries, early on in the Kerry campaign was that even though Kerry was firmly pro-choice, conservatives, libertarians, moderates, pro-lifers, etc were more than welcome. I remember stuffing envelopes in the Kerry HQ and talking with other very pro-choice volunteers and it struck me that we ordinarily shouldn't be doing anything together, rather, our political leanings should force us at each other's throats. But early on, it was clear that Kerry and his campaign and eventually, his Party, has the capacity to bring people together.

Amy Sullivan has expressed quite well what many of us thought during that St Louis debate, that is was home run to actually acknowledge where the anti-abortion crowd was coming from and not dismiss it outright. Kerry has shown that his Party is for everyone, not like Bush's which is for the extreme Right.