The Nation: Step by Step; Abortion's Opponents Claim the Middle Ground
By Robin Toner- 4/25/2004
TWELVE years ago, the last time abortion rights supporters rallied in the nation's capital, the political struggle was raw and fundamental.
The Supreme Court was reviewing Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision on the constitutional right to abortion, and nobody knew whether the law would survive. Anti-abortion protesters had been conducting a series of mass demonstrations, blockading clinics in Wichita, Kan., and elsewhere. Abortion rights leaders said they did not have to struggle to build a sense of urgency in their ranks, or to make the case to the more ambivalent voters in the middle that basic reproductive rights were at stake.
Today, as they assemble on the Washington Mall, the movement faces a far more complicated and in some ways more challenging political landscape. The anti-abortion movement is more confident, more sophisticated and far more ensconced in the government, with allies now in control of the House, the Senate and the White House.
Its legislative goals are incremental, careful and popular with Americans who would oppose an outright ban on abortion, even if this agenda is considered by its opponents to be a stealthy chipping away of rights. The anti-abortion movement has, in many ways, become part of the establishment.
Nobody has made a serious effort to push a constitutional ban on abortion through Congress in many years. The Republican Party platform still calls for such a ban, as it has since the ascendancy of the Reaganites, and that plank is expected to be reaffirmed this year.
But President Bush, who opposes abortion except in cases of rape and incest and to protect the life of the woman, tried to defuse the fears of moderate voters early on. He said that he did not believe the country was ready for a ban, and talks more generally about creating a ''culture of life.''
Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who also works for Naral Pro-Choice America, said her research showed that Mr. Bush rarely even used the word ''abortion'' for months at a time.
The current Congressional agenda of the anti-abortion movement is a series of steps aimed at restricting abortion and recognizing the ''personhood'' of the fetus. Legislation already passed includes the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act, aimed at a procedure performed in the second or third trimester, and the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which makes it a separate offense to harm a fetus in a federal crime committed against a pregnant woman.
Some say the anti-abortion movement looks so successful because it has essentially ceded defeat on the broader goal of ending legal abortion. When the Supreme Court ultimately ruled in 1992, it upheld the Roe decision, albeit narrowly and allowing for some new restrictions. Bill Clinton was elected president later that year and appointed two additional supporters of abortion rights to the Supreme Court.
By the mid-1990's, ''everyone was recognizing on the pro-life side that the debate was shutting down,'' said James Davison Hunter, a professor of sociology at the University of Virginia and the author of ''Before the Shooting Begins: Searching for Democracy in America's Culture War.'' The prospect of overturning the broad constitutional right had slipped away, he said.
''The pro-life movement has come to terms with this political reality,'' Mr. Hunter added, ''and having done that, they have adopted a very different strategy, one that is incremental in nature.''
Its leaders say they have simply recognized that they are in a long-term struggle to change hearts and minds -- and to reduce the number of abortions along the way. It was clearly a painful epiphany for some.
''I recognize this incremental strategy is not universally embraced in the pro-life movement,'' Dr. James C. Dobson wrote last year in a collection of essays, ''Back to the Drawing Board: The Future of the Pro-Life Movement.'' ''Our goal must always be to bring about a decisive end to this evil practice, with public policy that matches public sentiment.''
But Dr. Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, a conservative group, added, ''That time has not yet come.'' He warned, ''If we hold out for only the purest legislative approach, we will be left in the dust.''
Abortion rights leaders argue that these incremental laws are just another means to the same end; they do not see a defeated anti-abortion movement, but a smarter one.
''There are many different assaults, and it's incredibly important for people to connect the dots and recognize that they are all part of an overarching plan to eliminate reproductive rights,'' said Gloria Feldt, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. But they find themselves fighting legislation that, in and of itself, seems unobjectionable to many moderates -- among the voters and in Congress.
David O'Steen, executive director of the National Right to Life Committee, asserted, ''Fighting things like the partial-birth ban shows an extremism that the American public rejects.''
In fact, many voters who describe themselves as ''pro-choice'' are still open to restrictions like parental notification laws, or the ban on ''partial birth'' abortions, known medically as intact dilation and extraction, some analysts say. Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster, said, ''The percentage of people who say they're for the woman's right to abortion at all times under any situation is very small, as is the percentage who say women should not have abortions for any reason.''
For the supporters of abortion and reproductive rights, though, each additional restriction -- making an abortion harder to get, limiting the type of procedure a doctor can perform, eliminating public funds -- renders the fundamental right less meaningful. Ms. Feldt compares it to losing a finger at a time.
Still, the abortion rights camp might not be able to rouse the American center again until there is a vacancy on the Supreme Court. The next president may be able to name two or more justices to the court, given that there has not been a vacancy since 1994. The fight could become raw and fundamental again, very quickly.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/25/weekinreview/the-nation-step-by-step-abortion-s-opponents-claim-the-middle-ground.html
Questions:
1. What happened twelve years ago regarding the topic of abortion in the United States?
2. How, and in what context, is this issue being revisited currently?
3. What is the Republican Party’s official position on abortion?
4. What role has the Supreme Court played in the abortion debate, and how has that role changed over the years, according to the article?
5. How do “moderates” challenge the position of abortion rights advocates?
6. According to the article, what might prompt the abortion debate to “become raw and fundamental again, very quickly”?
7. Hypothesize how the political fight to name a replacement justice on the Supreme Court could impact abortion in the United States.
8. Write a 3-5 sentence persuasive paragraph, supporting one of the positions presented in the article.
Roe v. Wade Background Information
According to common law tradition carried over in the United States from England, abortion before “quickening,” (or when the fetus’s movements could be felt) was not a crime. In 1821, Connecticut adopted a portion of a British law and passed the first US law banning abortion after quickening. At the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, twenty states (out of thirty-seven) restricted abortion. By the 1950s, almost every state banned all abortions except when necessary to save the woman’s life.
A shift began in the 1960s. Beginning with Colorado in 1967, thirteen states opened access to abortion. Several states restricted the procedure, while thirty-one states allowed it only to save the life of the mother. A Texas woman, using the name Jane Roe, challenged her state law and her case eventually went to the Supreme Court.
The Constitution does not list a right to privacy. The Court has held, however, that Bill of Rights protections of free speech, assembly, and religious exercise (First Amendment), along with freedom from forced quartering of troops (Third), unreasonable searches and seizures (Fourth), and forced self-incrimination (Fifth) create “zones of privacy.” Further, the Ninth Amendment’s protection of unenumerated rights could be said to protect privacy. These “zones,” the Court held, are places into which the government cannot unreasonably intrude. Roe claimed that the law robbed her of her right to privacy as protected by the combination of Bill of Rights amendments, and of her liberty as protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Court agreed with Roe and held that “the right to privacy includes the abortion decision.” The Court emphasized that abortion rights were not absolute. “The pregnant woman cannot be isolated in her privacy…[I]t is reasonable and appropriate for a State to decide that at some point in time another interest, that of health of the mother or that of potential human life, becomes significantly involved.” States could not ban abortion during the first trimester, but as pregnancy progressed, the Court held, the state’s interest in protecting life could begin to outweigh the woman’s liberty. Therefore states could restrict the procedure later in pregnancy.
The decision in Roe v. Wade continues to be one of the most controversial the Court has ever issued. Demonstrations are frequently held on the anniversary of the decision—some in protest and some in support. In subsequent cases, the Court has upheld laws requiring waiting periods and other similar restrictions on abortion, even within the first trimester.