Evangelicals Battle Publicly over Abortion
In another sign that conservatives might have a hard time rowing together in the next general election, Christian evangelicals appear to be airing their disagreements with each other in a public manner not seen in more than a decade.
The Washington Post reports that, "in a highly visible rift in the anti-abortion movement," a coalition of evangelical Protestant and Roman Catholic groups recently launched newspaper ads and Internet postings attacking Focus on the Family's James Dobson, one of America's leading evangelicals.
Using rhetoric that they have reserved in the past for abortion clinics, some of the coalition's leaders accuse Dobson and other national antiabortion leaders of building an "industry" around relentless fundraising and misleading information.
The ads accuse Dobson of misrepresenting the Supreme Court's recent ruling upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which had appeared to be a victory for anti-abortion supporters. But the ruling has reopened a schism between those who want to put limits on abortion incrementally and those who want to see it gone all at once. (It also seems to have galvanized abortion-rights supporters.)
The disagreement has caught many supporters and bloggers by surprise. Jill Stanek at the Pro-Life Pulse blog writes that the two camps can't afford to "launch a war against one another." Bruce Tomaso writes in the DallasNews Religion blog that if the groups attacking Dobson find someone who is more "staunchly anti-abortion," he hopes they take out another ad to let us know who.
1:44 PM ET | 06- 4-2007 | permalink
