Posted on 03/05/2005 8:41:59 AM PST by upchuck
Something very unusual is happening to some Democrats and pro-choice abortion activists. They're getting smarter about their strategy. For years, they've harped on and on about a woman's right to choose, while failing to capture in any meaningful way the moral qualms so many of us have about abortion itself. So they often seemed strident, ideological and morally obtuse. They talked about abortion as if it were as morally trivial as a tooth extraction--not a profound moral choice that no woman would ever want to make if she could avoid it.
But that obtuseness seems--finally and mercifully--to be changing. Senator Hillary Clinton led the way in a recent speech to abortion-rights activists. She said something so obvious and so right it's amazing it has taken this long for it to be uttered: whatever side you're on in the pro-choice vs. pro-life debate, we surely all want to lower the number of abortions. Whether you believe that an abortion is a difficult medical procedure for a woman or whether, like me, you believe that all abortions are an immoral taking of human life, we can all agree on a third principle: we would be better off with fewer of them. And the happy truth is, abortions have been declining in numbers. According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control, since 1990 the number of reported legal abortions dropped from 1.4 million a year to 853,000 in 2001. The number of abortions for every 1,000 live births dropped from 344 to 246.
How did this happen? No one is quite sure. It could be related to less access to abortion providers, but more likely it is a function of declining teenage pregnancies, more widespread use of contraception, abstinence programs and cultural shifts toward sexual restraint among young women. None of these strategies separately is a panacea, but each has a part to play. So what's the new pro-choice line? Let's keep up the progress. Let's defend the right to an abortion while doing all we can to ensure that fewer and fewer women exercise it. Leave the contentious issue of Roe v. Wade for one minute, quit the ideological bickering about when life begins for a while, take down the barricades, and craft a strategy that assumes abortion will be legal for the foreseeable future, but try to reduce it.
Both sides have something to contribute. Sure, we should fund abstinence programs, as many pro-lifers argue. They can work for some women. But so too does expanded access to contraception. The pro-life Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, has a bill called the Prevention First Act that would expand access to birth control. Or you can focus on expanding adoption as an alternative to abortion (which means adoption by gays as well as straights). NARAL Pro-Choice America, formerly known as the National Abortion Rights Action League, actually took out an ad in the conservative Weekly Standard last month, appealing to pro-life groups to join in the antiabortion crusade--not by making it illegal but by increasing access to contraception.
What's the downside? I cannot see any. Both sides can still fight to keep abortion legal or illegal. But both can also work hard to reduce the moral and human toll of abortion itself. Why shouldn't a future Democratic candidate commit to an actual goal of reducing abortions nationally by, say, one-fifth in a four-year term? Alas, the pro-life side is leery. A key part of their coalition is made up of conservative Catholics who oppose any kind of birth-control devices; others are hostile to any adoption rights for gay couples. Still others may fear that if the number of abortions drops significantly, their argument for making it completely illegal may become less salient.
But none of those arguments makes sense on its own terms. If abortion really is the evil that pro-lifers believe it is, they should stop at nothing to reduce its prevalence--now. Is it really better that someone should have an abortion rather than be on the pill? Is it really preferable for an unborn life to be snuffed out than to allow him to have loving gay parents? Those are the questions that pro-choicers should be posing to pro-lifers. Saving human life is the priority. Why are you so reluctant to do it? Call this position the pro-choice, pro-life compromise. If Democrats want to regain credibility on moral issues, it's a great way to start. And if Republicans want to prevent abortions rather than use the issue as a political tool, they can get on board. We have nothing to lose but trauma and pain and politics and death. And we have something far more precious to gain: life itself.
Yeah, right. The Hildabeaste charges full speed ahead towards 2008, desperately trying to align herself just left of right center. Ain't gonna happen.
Please do not kill the messenger (that would be me :) for posting this.
LOL...keep your head down, chuck
The beginning of a national PR campaign attempting to "realign" the PERCEPTIONS of the voters that the Dem's are "in touch" with RED STATE voters and not really the radical liberals that they really are.
The camel got pushed out of the tent when Bush won the election and they're trying to get the nose back in the tent.
The Democrats are lying to themselves if they think their new strategy is better. As soon as you concede that abortion is wrong you've given the moral high ground to the pro-lifers. They were better off pretending that getting an abortion was like clipping your nails.
Compromise on abortion but keep it enshrined as a constitutional right? Yeah sure.
By my reading of the Declaration of Independence as well as the U.S. Constitution, we have asserted that our constitutionally guaranteed rights are those with which we are "endowed by our Creator". The very assertion that abortion is a constitutional right is, in an of itself, a callous blasphemy. The only righteous response is to denounce both this barbaric sacrament as well as its court-ordered enshrinement as a "right". The goal must be to utterly crush any politician of either party who doesn't seek that end.
Is there a shortage of prospective traditional adoptive parents? If so then the gays-as-adopters argument might have a basis -- but not as a countermeasure to abortion. To the best of my understanding, nobody has been advising pregnant women to abort based on a lack of adoption candidates.
How do we know that any of the statistics on abortion decline are accurate?
The CDC does NOT require the reporting of abortions; it merely compiles data that is provided voluntarily!
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5309a1.htm
FReepers disagreeing with this article should contact Andrew Sullivan, not me. I disagree with it too!
Fuzzing up the sharp lines of the issue for political gain attempts to replace moral certainty about infanticide with moral subjectivism.
People need to be on one side or the other about human life or you begin to make Solomonic slices of the baby into one camp or the other.
The "down side" is that their side gives up nothing in this "compromise". All they are doing is changing the subject.
Exactly. "Why not just give up and accept the fact that we've won?" This is a despiration tactic, because the pro-death crowd realizes that their side won by resorting to the non-democratic judiciary, and that after thirty years of abortion by royal fiat, they still haven't convinced enough people of the correctness of their position.
You are right not to want to compromise on abortion if you believe it is wrong. What Sullivan says above is a mistake if you're pro-choice. My position on the abortion issue is that is a private choice between a woman and her doctor. It's not the business of Sullivan or society to monitor and wring hands over the number of abortions. But if you are anti-abortion as so many on FR, then the argument above that we would be better off with fewer of them is equally wrong. You would say we'd be better off with none. To sum it up, there is no compromise possible. Either abortions are legal and nobody's business or the state will make them illegal and then it's the police force's business to round up the criminal doctors and wire hanger purveyors.
A category into which Mr Sullivan doesn't fall. Of course, "conservative Catholic" is a tag he's unlikely to have pinned on him in his other capacity as a fully paid-up, practising shirt-lifter.
The libs *have* to be kidding!!! The baby is either dead or it isn't!
Yeah right, Hillary. Abortion is a fee-per-service industry....nothing hits the Planned Barrenhood franchisees' profits like respect for life.
Oh there are grounds for compromise. You can oppose Roe because you love the Constitution. You can oppose tax money going to groups involved with abortion on the grounds that it is "nobody's business". You can support parental notificaton/consent because you don't want abortionists to have privileges real doctors don't have.
We are not a "pro-choice" society, we are a "pro-abortion" one and it makes me sick.
As for me, I'm not in favor of turning girls into criminals for having had an abortion -- at least those in the circumstances in which I was acquainted. So there's compromise on my end too.
Exactly. But I'd disagree that there is room for compromise. Right now, the pro-abortion side has won the legal battle. However, the move in this country is toward greater government control through legislation. And the anti-abortion crowd is picking up considerable steam. One side or the other will always be in charge. I frankly believe it's only a matter of time before abortion becomes illegal again. There was a historical loosening of the grip of government in the early 70's. But that noose is tightening with every passing decade. Whether right or left, we will all be trapped in a totalitarian utopia soon enough thanks to the statists who call themselves Republican and Democrat.
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