My favorite evangelical Democrat Jim Wallis recently talked to CT. He covered a lot of ground in terms of the relationship of people of faith to the Democratic and Republican parties.

In particular, Wallis had some revealing things to say about abortion:

… we ought to work on really doing something about teenage pregnancy. That ought to be a real point of common ground. An awful lot of teenage pregnancies could be avoided. Second, adoption reform is crucial. And I’ve been supportive of Wade Horn and his efforts in HHS [the Department of Health and Human Services] to work on adoption reform and foster care. In fact, I’ve been at those meetings and Wade and I have talked a lot about it. Third, I think supporting low-income women economically always reduces the abortion rate. You saw the piece by [Fuller Theological Seminary professor] Glen Stassen before the election. That’s a real issue, too.

If the Democrats want to win back some of those red states, this kind of talk will go a long way. But I’m not so sure how serious they will take people like Jim Wallis.

The key to the abortion issue really is one of preventing crisis pregnancies. There are plenty of ways to do that. The Democrats have shown little interest in any of them. Their solution has been to throw money into sex education programs and getting free contraceptives into the hands of teenagers. The problem with that solution is that it often has the opposite effect. I’d imagine that very few of the teens who become pregnant either didn’t have access to contraceptives or didn’t have some kind of sex education. The real question is whether pregnant teens would be having sex at all if they didn’t have free contraceptives and sex education. It may seem like a silly question, but it’s something worth looking into.

Democrats look at abstinence as being completely ineffective and worthless. Such a position ought to offend Christians on the left and the right. If Democrats reallly want to win on the abortion issue in those red states, embrace abstinence, embrace adoption, embrace parental notification, and embrace limits on late-term abortions. If you make all of these part of your message, then the issue of overturning Roe v. Wade becomes almost moot. If the abortion rate is decreased without the Supreme Court or Congress touching Roe, then I think you’ve trumped the conservatives.

At the same time, I think the issue of economic support for low-income mothers is another smart idea. Giving poor women some financial incentive to keep their babies instead of getting an abortion make a lot of sense. Call it LifeFare instead of Welfare, and you blow the Republicans out of the water.

These are the types of strategic ideas that Democrats should begin embracing if they really want to make progress with values voters. Jim Wallis is a great voice to have in that cause.