It is Obama's decision and he has spoken.
However there seems to be adverse reaction to mentioning the very punitive bill that Daschle and Clinton proposed in 1997.
Here is the gist of what Elena Kagan and her boss Bruce Reed of the DLC wrote to Obama about late term abortion.
From RH Reality Check:
Kagan and Reed urged Clinton to endorse Dashcle's amendment.Documents reviewed Monday by The Associated Press show Kagan encouraging Clinton to support a bill that would have banned all abortions of viable fetuses except when the physical health of the mother was at risk. The documents from Clinton's presidential library are among the first to surface in which Kagan weighs in on the thorny issue of abortion...
..."The position favored by Kagan was a "compromise" of abortion rights crafted by Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle in response to efforts by Republicans to pass the so-called partial birth abortion ban. "Clinton supported it," reports AP, "but the proposal failed and Clinton vetoed a stricter Republican ban."
In a May 13, 1997, memo from the White House domestic policy office, Kagan and her boss, Bruce Reed, told Clinton that abortion rights groups opposed Daschle's compromise. But they urged the president to support it, saying he otherwise risked seeing a Republican-led Congress override his veto on the stricter bill.
They urged support lest he risk an override of his veto.
I think Daschle's bill went so far that it did not exempt a mother's health from a ban of late term abortions. I found more about it, and I think it only considered life of the mother, as the health issues were mostly shoved aside.
Daschle's 1997 abortion ban was even more rigid than the GOP bill."Daschle's so-called compromise bill, as quoted in the New York Times, permits an exception to the ban for `a severely debilitating disease or impairment specifically caused by the pregnancy (emphasis added),' but makes no provision for a pre-existing, life- and health-threatening `debilitating disease or impairment' that is being exacerbated by the pregnancy. This could include kidney disease, severe hypertension and some cancers. Nor does the Daschle bill allow for an abortion in cases of severe fetal abnormality where it is unlikely the fetus would live long outside the womb, even with technological support.
"The physician certification requirement and the potential loss of a medical license in the Daschle language invites government scrutiny of private medical matters and threatens doctor-patient confidentiality. The intent of this and other abortion ban bills is to control women and to limit their ability to make critical reproductive decisions that affect their families, their health and their lives. These bills represent the ultimate in Congressional arrogance," Gandy charged.
Tom Daschle appears to have bragged that his bill was even more rigid than the Republican bill.
KWAME HOLMAN: A Democratic amendment was briefly considered and rejected, giving way to the major alternative of the abortion debate. The bill by Minority Leader Tom Daschle has attracted support of Republicans and yesterday the endorsement of President Clinton.
SENATOR TOM DASCHLE, Minority Leader: That is really the fundamental difference between the two pending bills. We ban abortion; they ban a procedure. They allow all the other abortive procedures available--dilation and evacuation, induction, hysterotomies, hysterectomies--those are still legally available. What we ban are all of those procedures--all of them.
Their bill was more punitive to a woman than the Republican bill.
So if RH Reality is correct, that is the bill that Kagan and her boss, Bruce Reed, asked Clinton to endorse.
Obama is president, it is his call.
But women should begin to speak up for themselves. After years of being marginalized for political expediency, it is time to speak up. That bill may have been from 1997, but it is still going on today. Almost all late term abortions are banned, and woman could die because doctors must carefully sort out the details and determine how to follow the law to avoid a prison sentence.