WE Blog

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne noted how wannabe peacemaker President Obama aggravated the culture war in tapping Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to be his secretary of Health and Human Services, because she’s a Catholic who has vetoed anti-abortion legislation and otherwise upset social conservatives. But Dionne observed that liberal Catholic groups have pushed back in Sebelius’ defense, in part because abortion has declined in Kansas 10 percent since she took office. He wrote: “The rapid mobilization behind Sebelius marked the emergence of an organized movement of religious progressives as a forceful counterweight to religious conservatives, and it brought home the centrality of abortion reduction to the overall argument.”