In light of the excitement and anticipation surrounding Hillary Clinton's speech at this week's Democratic National Convention, some may have missed the short address delivered by Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, a few hours earlier. In her short oration, Richards praised Barack Obama's commitment to women's health care and admonished his opponent by pointing out that the presumptive Republican candidate "voted against real sex education, against affordable family planning and, if elected, John McCain has vowed to appoint Supreme Court justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade."

She has little to worry about. Roe v. Wade is here to stay and come mid-November, I suspect we will all be referring to her preferred candidate as president-elect Obama. Nevertheless, Richards brought to mind an interesting question: aside from being generally pro-choice and believing that the issue of when life begins is above his "pay grade" (that certainly doesn't leave the rest of us any hope of understanding the issue, especially when he starts earning a president's salary), what do we know about Obama's position on abortion? The most revealing way to answer this question is to take a look at the senator's voting record.

Planned Parenthood is right in endorsing Obama as the candidate who will stand by the organization's principles, most notably, a woman's right to choose. He has repeatedly shown his support for the expansion of abortion rights by, for example, voting against bills that would prohibit tax funding of the procedure. This is in spite of stating at the recent Saddleback Faith Forum that he would like to reduce the number of abortions that take place in this country. But perhaps most disturbing is Obama's record on partial-birth abortion.

Okay, so you’ve got a drunk (or high) or angry or spurned 17-29 year old male. For whatever reason, he steals a car because of impaired judgment. (Maybe he’s a habitual criminal or maybe he’s a messed up kid.) He heads out into the traffic, driving erratically.

Obviously the situation needs to be diffused, but what do the cops do? You got it .. they chase him, causing him to go even faster and more erratically then before.

Within seconds, testosterone poisoning and adrenalin course through his veins and then, for sure he’s out of his mind, whether he has ingested other drugs or not. Then the cop’s T and A kick in and, yet again, a lethal weapon has been unleashed on an unsuspecting public.

Last week, the news carried the story of a police chase in Los Angeles where the “perp” had allegedly stolen a late 70’s wood-paneled station wagon most kids wouldn’t want, even if their grandmother gave it to them. It had at most, a Kelley Blue Book value of $350.