Seeing Mrs. Clinton's Selective Compassion

Marjorie Campbell, marjorie@marjoriecampbell.com

Seeing what we want to see can be a willful trick of the human eye.  Mrs. Clinton's handlers, particularly Burns  Strider, her faith outreach "guru", know this.   From her 2005 assertion that abortion is a "sad, even tragic choice", to her "faith saved my marriage" comments in June, to her recent, personalized email outreach to "people of faith", Mrs. Clinton has mounted an impressive campaign to convince religious, values-voters that she is the "moral conservative" noted in your post, Deal. 

No illusion, however, can conceal the raw fact that Mrs. Clinton's moral concerns extend no concern, no relief, no dignity and no protection to unborn children, regardless their age, health or viability.  Mrs. Clinton recognizes the beating heart of an unborn only as a "reproductive" issue for women, with claim to "reproductive health services" which include killing the unborn life, without restriction and without even the basic human concerns (extended even in administration of the death penalty) for alleviating the pain suffered by the unborn child.   

In an effort to keep the religious eye turned from this glaring gap in compassion, Mr. Strider has launched an email campaign filled with religiously-appealing portrayals of Mrs. Clinton's faith in action.  One recent email, for example, trumped Mrs. Clinton's tenderness for AIDS-HIV victims and the role of the faith community.  She wrote:  "Our churches have a powerful role to play in raising the consciousness of the nation and the world to this pandemic and urge compassion for the sick and the suffering. When we come together, seeking the common good, we can find solutions to our biggest challenges and reinforce our faith that a call to action can change lives."

But even as Mr. Strider builds for her an Internet profile of faith, compassion and religious participation, Mrs. Clinton stumps her liberal, pro-abortion profile for consumption by the secular press anxious not to hear such religious chatter.  On the recent Supreme Court decision in Gonzalez v. Carhart upholding a partial-birth abortion ban, Mrs. Clinton dropped all pretense of compassion, all concern for the common good, all enthusiasm for the role of churches and religion and all interest in the suffering, remarking, "This decision marks a dramatic departure from four decades of Supreme Court rulings that upheld a woman's right to choose and recognized the importance of women's health….  It is precisely this erosion of our constitutional rights that I warned against when I opposed the nominations of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito."  

Will voters compare the competing profiles of Mrs. Clinton as they weigh the candidate?  Will the email readers see a face of uncompromised compassion or hear a voice of fraud?  Will the seculars ignore the Burns Strider compassionately religious Mrs. Clinton and cling to NARAL's darling child?  Can we see Mrs. Clinton's selective compassion - her religious profile being cleverly overlaid upon her liberal, secular agenda, confusing . . . like the two images in this picture I have posted.  Can you see both images? - a face and a word . . . that begins with "l"?