Oh if only the abortion debate could be carried out with the civility of two posters in our comment box. Both Denny and Michael make excellent points (on opposite sides) related to my long post about the behind-the-scenes negotiations over the Democratic Party abortion plank:
Denny:

In the Democratic Platform it says “In the platform hearings, Americans made it clear that it is morally and economically unacceptable that our high-schoolers… The Democratic Party clearly believes that graduation from a quality public school and the opportunity to succeed in college must be the birthright of every child-not the privilege of the few.” So while the need for education is put in moral terms, the need for birth is not

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Michael:

The problem with the “moral” language expectation is that there are two, competing moral concerns here. Abortion is a moral problem; the state restricting or controlling a woman’s health care is a moral problem.
Would the pro-life side have been happy with moral language on abortion if there was competing language on the morality of the state controlling a woman’s health care? Obviously, the risk of Obama including moral language when talking about abortion is that it ignores over 30 years of work by party loyalists working for the morality of allowing women to make their own heath care decisions without facing the power of the state. Restrictions do raise concerns about the morality of accessing helath care.