COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (ABP) — Focus on the Family founder James Dobson said Nov. 6 that Barack Obama's election could set America's pro-life movement back 35 years.
In the first of a two-part broadcast on his radio show, Dobson admitted he is “in the midst of a grieving process” over election results the day before. “I'm not grieving over Barack Obama's victory, but over the loss of things that I've fought for for 35 years,” he said.
Dobson said he understands the excitement over election of the country's first black president and that he wished he could have voted for Obama for that reason.
“But to be honest, I have to say that his win causes me enormous concern, because he will be the most committed pro-abortion president in our history, even supporting infanticide for babies who survive botched abortions,” Dobson said. “He's in favor of much of the homosexual agenda, and he's going to appoint the most liberal justices to the Supreme Court, perhaps, that we've ever had. So there are many reasons why I'm struggling today over the likely path that nation has taken.”
Obama and his campaign spokespeople have repeatedly disagreed with characterizations of his views on abortion rights such as Dobson's comment on “infanticide.” When in the Illinois Legislature, Obama opposed a purported infanticide ban because he said it was unnecessary due to other laws already on the books and was simply a back-door attempt to restrict abortion in violation of federal Supreme Court precedent.
American Values President Gary Bauer, one of Dobson's guests on the program, found it ironic that both Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King appealed to the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence to argue for treating black Americans with equality.
“That is also our basis for support of the sanctity of life of innocent unborn children,” Bauer said. “Because that paragraph says that all men are created equal, endowed by their creator — that's God — with certain unalienable rights
— rights that can't be taken away — among them, and the first one as we all know was the right to life. So what an irony — that our first African-American president appears to be confused about the meaning of the words of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.”
Dobson said Obama's election created a “dilemma” for him, because he wants to join the excitement and congratulations due after such an historic achievement.
“Yet I look at what this man wants to implement, and it scares me,”he said.
“The Freedom of Choice Act [a bill Obama said he would sign if Congress approved it; it would legalize abortion in all states even if the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade] would instantly, if it passed, invalidate more than a hundred laws and provisions that would protect the unborn child. I mean it would set back to 1973 the efforts to have parental notification and waiting period — all those things that have been done in various places — gone, because he wants no restriction on abortion whatsoever.”
“Our movement has crawled across broken glass for years to get each one of those limitations put in place,” Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family's vice president for public policy and government, chimed in.
While licking their wounds over losing the presidency, the panel featured two guests celebrating victories for gay-marriage bans in California, Florida and Arizona.
Bauer lamented that too many churches around the country have been “AWOL” on such moral debates.
“They've claimed it's about politics or they don't want to jeopardize their tax status,” he said. “There's all kinds of excuses, and in fact what we saw in California and Arizona and I believe also in Florida is that when the church steps up and speaks moral truth to the flock, people will respond. So yes, when we rely on God he does great things, but God works through his people and God counts on his leaders, his church leaders, to not be silent during these great debates about America, our families, the sanctity of life and our future.”
Robert Marus contributed to this story.