NEW YORK, February 25, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Howard Dean, immortalized by the yell that ended his run at the Democratic nomination, has inadvertently put his finger on a long-standing controversy between pro-lifers and nominally Catholic politicians. Dean, now the Democratic National Committee chairman, was speaking to students at Cornell University when he let slip that politicians know perfectly well that one of their most cherished sound bites is a gross deception.
Dean referred in his speech to the many women who considered themselves pro-life but were actually ‘pro-choice.’ Their position that abortion is immoral, but that abortion must remain legal, is not a pro-life position, he said,.
“Cuomoism,” the position of being ‘personally opposed’ to abortion but unwilling to oppose it publicly, was named after the former Governor of New York, Mario Cuomo, who popularized it in a now-famous speech at Notre Dame University in 1984. The position, which is contrary both to Catholic teaching and reason, was eagerly embraced, particularly by those who were looking for a way out of their dilemma of supporting abortion while courting the Catholic vote.
One young member of the audience at Cornell, writing in the student-run conservative blog called, “Sounding the Trumpet,” said Dean indicated he “hated that Americans like to call the Democrat party the pro-abortion party.”
Writing under the online pseudonym, “Raccoon,” the student blogger said, “Dean always talked like he assumed that no women would choose abortion, because it was bad, but it was up to them, and they should come to that decision themselves. Should murder become legal, because we think that people should be able to make a wise decision themselves?”