The Senate may have failed to override President Clinton’s veto of the partialbirth-abortion ban last week, but the total and staggering inability of the pro-Clinton forces to make anything resembling a coherent argument was testimony to the fact that a) the procedure is indefensible and b) abortion backers feel, nonetheless, they have to fight for every form of abortion with absolutist fervor.
Here’s an illustration of how badly they did: On September 24, Sen. Rick Santorum, a Pennsylvania Republican, posed a hypothetical question to Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat. What if, after delivering everything but the baby’s head (at which point partial-birth “abortions” are performed), the doctor accidentally allowed the baby’s head to slip out? Would the doctor and the mother, asked Santorum, still have the right to kill the fully delivered baby? In other words, does Barbara Boxer think infanticide should be legal?
It’s hard to tell, because Boxer refused to answer Santorum’s query. She began with a discussion of her support for Roe v. Wade — which says nothing about partialbirth abortion and then wandered off into a discussion of how “this entire subject should be left to the privacy of families, to the religious convictions of our people.” She talked on and on. But the one thing she never did was declare her opposition to killing a fully delivered baby. Congratulations, Mrs. Boxer: Maybe we’re now beginning to see the logic of your position.
While we’re on the subject, we would like to offer a tribute to the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen, who wrote a remarkable column last week reversing himself on partial-birth abortion. Turns out, Cohen says, he really didn’t do any research before opining in favor of the procedure; but once he did, he came to see it as indistinguishable from infanticide. Cohen’s mea culpa was an impressive and large-spirited gesture and an example of genuine intellectual honesty. As were the two Washington Post articles the week before that helped change Cohen’s mind, by reporters David Brown and Barbara Vobejda.
By the way, it would have been nice if the words “partial-birth abortion” had escaped Bob Dole’s lips last week. It is, after all, an issue on which over 75 percent of Americans are on his side; one that is of particular importance to swing Catholic voters; and one that proves Dole’s contention that Clinton is beholden to the extreme left of his party. But no, addressing this issue that actually does shed light on the moral bankruptcy of the Clinton administration would have taken the Dole campaign “off message.” Unbelievable.
