From TruthDig
By Marie Cocco

Somewhere along Barack Obama’s winding road through the red states, he lost me. It happened when he talked about women who are “feeling blue.”

Obama says that these women should not be able to obtain a late-term abortion, because just “feeling blue” isn’t the same as suffering “serious clinical mental health diseases.” True enough. And totally infuriating.

During the recent Obama pander tour—the one in which he spent about a week trying to win over conservative religious voters—the presumptive Democratic nominee unnecessarily endorsed President Bush’s faith-based initiative, a sort of patronage program that rewards religious activists for their political support with public grants. Then in a St. Louis speech, Obama declared that “I let Jesus Christ into my life.” That’s fine, but we already have a president who believes this was a qualification for the Oval Office, and look where that’s gotten us.

Obama’s verbal meanderings on the issue of late-term abortion go further. He has muddied his position. Whether this is a mistake or deliberate triangulation, only Obama knows for sure.

One thing is certain: Obama has backhandedly given credibility to the right-wing narrative that women who have abortions—even those who go through the physically and mentally wrenching experience of a late-term abortion—are frivolous and selfish creatures who might perhaps undergo this ordeal because they are “feeling blue.”

The wordplay began when Obama, in an interview with the religious magazine Relevant, said he believes late-term abortions can be banned except in cases where “a serious physical issue … arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems with the mother carrying that child to term.” In other words, a woman’s emotional and psychological health would not be considered factors. Obama said he doesn’t think “ ‘mental distress’ qualifies as the health of the mother.”

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