As long as you don't create a climate where an early pregnancy can't be terminated if the birth control fails who could complain. The right is probably too rigid to do this but there's an interesting question here. Since their goal is to create a situation where no one has sex who isn't willing to risk parenthood, if they stopped fighting contraception and relied only on it's occasional failure to accomplish their goal of deterring sex, (by preventing/stigmatizing abortion) how successfull would they be.

I think that access to family planning, contraceptives and health care should be its own debate (separate and apart from the abortion issue). I think the Democrats should continue to play this card in the run up to the elections. The vast majority of Americans understand and support access to contraceptives, family planning and reasonable, age appropriate sex education. Americans all want the right to choose how and when to start a family (excluding the religious crazies) and want the government to keep out of their business. Its a privacy issue, and getting middle America to understand that its a privacy issue (again, apart from abortion) and to support the idea of a right to privacy for family planning will help on the abortion front.

Seeking common ground is actually a really good thing for a politician to do, because it's on the common ground that progress actually gets made. But if you support a woman's right to choose, don't you support her having access to contraception? How is that a compromise in any way?

The reason why this is, in fact, a middle ground, is that it implicitly concedes the point that abortions are bad, and that reducing the number of abortions is good. You could instead argue that abortions are good, in that they improve the lives of the women who have them, or at least morally neutral, in that fetuses aren't people and, therefore, no harm is done.

The bigger problem with Hillary's arguement is that it doesn't defend Roe at all. To paraphrase the conversation:

Person A: Abortions are bad and should be illegal!

Hillary: If abortions are bad then there should be more contraception.

Or,

Q: Should abortion be legal or illegal?

A: Contraception should be readily available.

Ultimately (and I'm pretty close to being Hillary's biggest detractor on the planet, or at least the biggest detractor of Hillary 08) I think Hillary is mostly right: I'm pretty sure it's good politics to change the subject, and more contraception is good policy.

If you want to make this sort of arguement, though, I actually prefer, "If abortions are bad, then you should vote for Democrats because we're the only ones who can reduce poverty and thereby reduce the number of women who are forced to have abortions by the radical right's pro-business, anti-women, anti-fetus policies."

Oh, here's another one: "The Republicans want to take the decision of whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term out of the hands of the woman and put it into the hands of her employer."

I was in Manhattan about two weeks back, and just about every subway train car we took had a public awareness campaign poster from Planned Parenthood about contraception.

Some were sunny, positive, and upbeat--two beautiful twentysomethings goofing off on a beach, with a caption that says "We'll be great parents some day, but for now we're using contraceptives." Or "We don't know if we want children, so for now we're using contraceptives."

Another, more pensive variation was an admonition to have emergency contraception on hand... worried faces of about 8 different people (men, women, varying races and ages, some with small kids already, from teens to forty-somethings), and the tag-line of "50% of all pregnancies are unplanned, it can happen to anyone."

I liked the campaign. It was matter-of-fact in its unstated assertion that People Have Sex. Let's Be Responsible. Let's not pretend that sex is immoral, or that it doesn't happen, or that it ought not to happen. Let's agree that it does happen, and empower people to plan their lives accordingly.

Wish I could see that campaign on the sides of buses in my conservative neck of the woods.

What ever happened to unapologetic sexuality, just like men are afforded? What ever happened to privacy? What ever happened to "it's none of the governements fucking business who I have sex with, when I have sex, or what I do with my reproductive organs."

Pandering to the right to get votes is bad enough. Admitting abortions are aproblem puts you on a slippery slope. Having someone who purports to be a feminist apologize for creepy moderation that reeks of government sponsored religious morality is even worse.

Feminists of my mother's generation would puke after having read this. So much for the notion of true equality.

Again, Lynn Harris is not a smart woman and should not be employed by salon.com

I don't see that Clinton's statement as making any kind of concessions or seeking a middle ground. It's what many pro-choice advocates have been pushing for all along. If Clinton can fool the Right into thinking she's compromising, go for it.

Chris M's point that her position suggest that abortion is bad is valid. However, I think most women who've had abortions and those who haven't agree that it's not a desirable thing. It's much more physically invasive than birth control, and that's not even dealing with emotional issues. I guess I see that has Clinton's only concession - that maybe abortion isn't actually desirable. I think I'm willing to concede that point in order to further the cause.

If they want to frame access to contraception as a middle ground- fine. Conservatives have been masters of taking extremist ideas and framing them to seem like common sense things that appeal to more people (death tax anyone?).

By re-framinging the debate into something that is easily digested by the middle, maybe we can get rid of abstinence only education or increase funds for low-income women to get birth control or any number of things that have been stripped and desecrated by the far right.