Four years ago yesterday, on August 16, 2008, then-senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain joined Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., for the “Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency.”
The most memorable moment of the evening, by far, came when Pastor Warren asked Senator Obama about his views on human life.
Coming only a few days after his notorious remarks about bitter midwesterners clinging to their guns and religion, Obama’s now infamous response was but one in a long line of comments and gestures that have come to exemplify that galling blend of condescension and nonchalance that, for many, define this president.
Yet the flippancy of Obama’s response — that answers to such questions are, “above my pay grade” — overshadowed a very important and revealing aspect of his answer. Or rather, lost in the controversy about the tone of Obama’s response was the question that was actually asked.
Everyone seems to remember Warren’s question as “When does human life begin?” This is probably because that is the question Obama (flippantly) answered. But that wasn’t the question. What Pastor Warren did ask was a much more direct question, a question much less easily obfuscated by the supposed vagaries of science or theology: “At what point does a baby get human rights?”
Taken at face value, that’s not even a question about abortion — unless there’s some reason to assume a “baby” is unborn. As Warren asked it, the question was not a matter of science or religion. It was (and is) a question about the legal and moral status of certain acknowledged members of the human community.
In other words, it is a fundamentally political question and points directly to thefundamental political question: Who is, and who is not, a member of the community? No serious politician, still less a president, can be indifferent to such a question.
And then think about the fact that Obama voted to allow the infanticide of babies born alive as the result of a botched abortion. Chilling.
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