WASHINGTON — After Christine Seidel and four other pro-life advocates met with Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., in the fall of 1999, Seidel remembers leaving the meeting feeling like she had just encountered “a wolf in sheep's clothing.”

She recalls Edwards did and said all the right things. After all, the pro-lifers were constituents from his home state of North Carolina. They had traveled to Washington, D.C., to talk to him about the Senate's upcoming vote on the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.

During the meeting, Edwards became teary-eyed when he heard the story of a woman's late-term abortion. He held the woman's shaking hands as she cried while telling it. Seidel said he told the group they had made some “good points,” which he needed to look into. But one moment remains frozen in her mind.

“What really bothers me the most was when he was shaking all our hands goodbye,” said Seidel, who until recently led the Respect Life committee at her parish, St. Gabriel's in Charlotte, N.C. “We were standing in the lobby. And when he came to me, I said to him, ‘You are going to vote for the ban on partial-birth abortion.' If looks could kill … His demeanor completely changed. His smile went off his face. He looked at me and said, ‘I said I will need more information.'”

The meeting didn't sway Edwards' position. He voted against the ban, which was eventually passed and signed into law by President Bush. The law is being contested in court by pro-abortion advocates.

Seidel said she is “devastated” about Edwards being Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry's pick to be the vice presidential nominee for the Democratic Party because of his pro-abortion stance.

“He will be smiling that winning smile with that face of a young man and he will look at you like he is absorbed in what you're saying, and you will feel like he's listening with all the sincerity he can muster, but it's a façade,” she said.

“People will believe him because people choose, or are ignorant, to think that he is being sincere,” she continued. “That he's honest and truly cares about their issues. People who choose not to delve beneath the surface will be sucked into the rhetoric. And you're thinking he's a nice guy, father of four and loves children.”

On the Issues

Someone else who has followed Edwards' political career also doesn't trust him and predicts he will fudge his pro-abortion position during the presidential campaign.

“Sen. Edwards will try to downplay his extreme position on abortion,” said Barbara Holt, the president of North Carolina's Right to Life Committee. “He will make his position seem mainstream, [but] it's extreme.”

Here are Edwards' positions on some issues of concern to Catholic voters:

• He supports legalized abortion. He has voted against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which makes it a crime to harm a fetus during a violent crime.

• He does not support same-sex marriages but opposes a constitutional amendment to ban them. He believes states should decide whether civil unions between homosexuals are permissible.

• He supports embryonic stem-cell research.

• He opposes federally-funded vouchers to help parents pay for private-school costs.

Edwards might be pro-abortion, but he is concerned about the poor, said Patricia Kelly Matthews, a cradle Catholic and a Democrat from Morgantown, W.Va. “Sen. Edwards will appeal to the hearts of Catholics [who] ever thirst for justice and mercy,” she predicted.

Noting that he is from a working-class family in North Carolina, “a state that knows too well the harm done by politicians who do not care about anyone who needs a helping hand,” Matthews said Edwards has consistently supported legislation intended to help “the least of his constituents: the very young and elderly, the un- and underemployed.”

In offering guidance to both political parties and Catholic voters, the U.S. bishops earlier this year released a document called “Faithful Citizenship: A Catholic Call to Political Responsibility.”

“For Catholics, the defense of human life and dignity is not a narrow cause but a way of life and a framework for action,” the bishops said.

By selecting Edwards as his running mate, Kerry has made a “clear statement” that the Democratic Party has no room for pro-life Democrats — further confirmation of the message the party sent when it excluded then Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey from speaking at the 1992 convention because of his opposition to abortion, said Robert George, a professor of politics at Princeton University.

“When it comes to the merits, when it comes to the specific issues,” George said, “Edwards has made it very clear that he is on the cultural left, and that's not where faithful Catholics are on these issues.”

Not Moderate

Edwards does not add moderation to the Democratic ticket, George said.

The endorsements of two politically active groups also give a good indication of where Edwards stands. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute said he has “a record of strong support for key issues important to lesbian, gay, bisexual and [transgendered]” people. The institute's executive director, Matt Foreman, called Kerry and Edwards “the most gay-supportive national ticket in American history.”

And NARAL Pro-Choice America, a pro-abortion group, applauded the choice of Edwards, noting in a press release that of 20 votes since 1999 on issues relating to abortion and contraception, all of his were pro-abortion votes.

“The contrast between Kerry-Edwards and Bush-Cheney could not be clearer regarding the protection of women's rights,” said Elizabeth Cavendish, NARAL Pro-Choice America's interim president. “We are confident that the Kerry-Edwards administration will reverse George Bush's limits on family-planning services, nominate judges who protect basic liberties and work to expand access to birth control, responsible sex-education and other means of preventing unintended pregnancies.”

Not surprisingly, the National Right to Life Committee has given Edwards a 0% rating on pro-life issues.

Carlos Briceño writes from Seminole, Florida.