Rich Lowry, writing at Politico:
President Barack Obama was proud to become the first sitting president to address Planned Parenthood last Friday. But not proud enough to utter the word “abortion.” …
Listening to him, you could be forgiven for thinking that the country is riven by a fierce dispute over whether women should be allowed to choose their own ob-gyns or decide whether to take contraceptives or to get cancer screenings. One side is pro-women’s health, the other anti. In his speech, the president said the word “cancer” seven times. About that he is happy to be straightforward.
Imagine if he had been similarly frank about the rest of Planned Parenthood’s work: “In 2011, according to your annual report, your clinics or affiliates performed 330,000 abortions. That’s a lot of abortion. Over 10 years more than 3 million. Thank you, Planned Parenthood. Think of all those women who wanted to terminate their pregnancies and you were there for them. That’s what you do. That’s what you are about. And that’s what this country is about.” …The unwritten rule is that when the left discusses abortion it is never called “abortion,” but always referred to as “health” or, more specifically “reproductive health” — although abortion is the opposite of reproduction and for one party involved, the opposite of health.