Bob Dole’s last day in Congress should have amounted to an uninterrupted string of photo opportunities and warmly reminiscent speeches. Instead, he picked a fight with members of his own party. In a TV interview, Dole attacked conservative Republicans — one of them, Gary Bauer, by name — who had questioned his recent decision to include a statement in the Republican plank on abortion welcoming divergent views. “I don’t know where these people come from,” an exasperated Dole wondered aloud.
Dole’s comments surprised even his own aides and, barring anything short of an apology, virtually guaranteed what could be an ugly floor fight over abortion at the Republican convention in August. But Dole did not act irrationally. Supporters of legalized abortion are an increasingly outspoken force in the Republican party — more powerful than they have been in 20 years.
We know what pro-lifers believe: They believe abortion is the taking of a human life. What, exactly, do the newly energized pro-choice Republicans believe?
“I believe we need to make the platform a big-tent platform, all inclusive,” says Sen. Arlen Specter, launching into his well-rehearsed position on abortion and the future of the Republicans. “I think we need both Pat Buchanan and Christie Whitman.” Specter’s words come out seamlessly, without passion, as if recited from a text he memorized long ago. Seemingly on cue, he adds the obligatory disclaimer: “I think it’s very important to make the point that I’m not pro-abortion. I’m personally very much opposed to abortion. I just don’t think the government can control it.” The procedure, he continues, is “a bad practice. I think that it’s something that is preferable not to do. But I think it’s a matter of personal determination. I think it’s up to the family, the woman, with input from ministers, rabbis, priests.”
But why is he personally opposed to abortion?
Specter stops cold. Eighteen seconds of uncomfortable silence pass. The senator has spent much of the past year talking incessantly about abortion — he based an entire presidential campaign on his pro-choice views — yet he seems baffled by the question, as if he has never heard it before, or even imagined it could be asked.
When Specter finally replies, his tone has changed. He speaks through clenched teeth: “Well, it is something I would not choose to do. And I would just leave it at that.”
And Specter does leave it at that. Asked to elaborate on his views, he angrily refuses: “I think it says all there is to say that I’m opposed to it. Now, do you have another question?”
Coming from a former prosecutor accustomed to making and defending rational arguments, it is not much of an answer. But it may be all the answer Arlen Specter has. Like other pro-choice Republicans, Specter has staked out a position on abortion — personally opposed, but against government restrictions — that is difficult, maybe impossible, to defend as a species of logic. And indeed, Specter and others rarely do defend it. Instead, pro- choice Republicans toss out phrases — “intensely personal decision,” ” intimate religious conviction” — designed to throw squeamish constituents and reporters off the subject. Or they do not respond at all: Now, do you have another question? As a temporary rhetorical stopgap, it works. It does not amount to a sustainable political position.
Pro-choice Democrats have it a lot easier. In a party that officially sanctions abortion, pro-choice Democrats often can afford to take a logically defensible position on the subject, and the more outspoken among them do: The fetus, they argue, is merely a piece of tissue, an appendage that belongs wholly to the woman in whose body it resides. An abortion, by this reasoning, is no more morally significant than an appendectomy, and a lot safer. The procedure can even be, as pro-choice theorist Beverly Harrison argues, a ” positive good,” a “loving choice.” “I would say that early abortion is a matter of relative indifference, given that we terminate all forms of life,” says Harrison, a professor of Christian ethics at Union Theological Seminary. (Harrison also defends infanticide: “Under certain circumstances it is not a great wrong,” she explained in a recent interview. “I mean, have you read Toni Morrison’s Beloved, for which she got the Nobel Prize? There are many situations in which women kill their children out of mercy. . . . Who’s to judge these things?”) Whatever else they are, strongly pro-choice Democrats are capable of fielding a consistent position on abortion.
Pro-choice Republicans are in a tougher position. Unable or unwilling to make the fetus-as-lump-of-flesh argument, they are left defending the right to abortion, while insisting that, personally, they find the practice repugnant, or at least the subject of an Agonizing Personal Decision. Yet it is hard to see why abortion should in any way be a repugnant choice, or even a particularly agonizing one, if it is not somehow the taking of a human life. (Some pro-choicers respond by arguing that all medical decisions are agonizing, though there doesn’t seem to be much moral controversy surrounding the choice of cancer patients to undergo chemotherapy, or of syphilitics to take penicillin.) And if abortion is the taking of a human life, even just a developing life, then it becomes difficult to argue that government should not strictly regulate it, if not make it illegal. Pro- choice Republicans, in other words, are in a philosophical bind. And it shows.
Ann Stone, chairman of Republicans for Choice and one of the most visible critics of the party’s official stand against abortion, explains that although she supports the right of others to have the procedure, “For myself, I wouldn’t choose it.” And why is that? She falls back on reasoning that is painfully circular. “Because it’s not a procedure I would choose,” Stone says, explaining that, “I have this nurturing thing in me.”
And that is Stone’s response to an easy question. She does less well when the scenarios get tougher. Asked where she stands on abortion for the purpose of sex selection, Stone doesn’t hesitate. “Of course I’d be against it,” she says, “it’s the wrong reason to have an abortion.” How come? Well, she says, in most instances in which the sex of the child is a criterion for abortion, the aborted fetuses are female. “I’m a woman,” says Stone. “I want to see more women in the world. I’d hate to think that my gender is being obliterated.”
Arne Carlson doesn’t even get that far. “I don’t understand the purpose of this question,” replies the agitated Republican governor of Minnesota when asked about his views on abortion. Although Carlson has taken a vigorous pro- choice position during his 20 years in public life, he refuses to say where he stands on the subject personally. “I’m not going to give you my personal opinion,” Carlson growls, demanding to know why his aides had not prepared him for such a query. “Politely, it’s none of your goddamn business. don’t ask you about your sex life with your wife. My personal view is not what’s germane.”
What is germane, says Carlson, is his political position on abortion. Except here, too, the governor seems unable to muster much of a defense of the pro-choice stand. “I agree with a woman’s right to make that decision,” Carlson explains. “Whether I agree with her decision or not is irrelevant. I agree with the right of a man to choose his school. That does not mean I agree with the chosen school. It is your right to go to a school and pick a box of soap. I may not pick that same box of soap, but I believe in the right of choice.” His position on “this in-depth philosophical issue” as clear as it may ever be, Carlson signs off in a huff.
Not all pro-choice Republicans share Carlson’s fondness for non sequiturs, though almost all use at least one of his arguments to defend their position: Abortion, they contend, is a deeply personal matter (or as Sen. Alan Simpson puts it, “personally a deep, deep intimate personal decision”). As such, it is by definition beyond the scope of politicians to judge — particularly Republican politicians, who have traditionally espoused a smaller role for government and maximum liberty for individuals. Bob Dole, though generally opposed to abortion, came close to ceding as much when he explained why he thought the platform should be changed. Abortion, Dole told CNN, “is a moral issue, it’s not like all the other things in the platform.” Precisely because it is a moral issue, Dole seemed to imply, Republicans shoudl not tkae an inflexible position on it. This is a seductive argument, perhaps the only one pro-choise Republicans have. But when applied to abortion it quickly becomes indefensible.
Which does not prevent pro-choice Republicans from employing it, since the argument provides a handy dodge. By this line of reasoning, legislators don’t have to take a stand on the sticky particulars of abortion, made even stickier by recent improvements in fetal photography. Instead, they’re covered by higher principle. “Whether [the fetus] is human life or not, that’s irrelevant to my position on the issue,” says Rep. John Porter, a nine- term Republican from Illinois. “I may think so for myself and yet that is irrelevant to my making policy for the country.” Porter’s colleague, Jim Kolbe of Arizona, while admittedly uncomfortable with abortion, is similarly unwilling to allow his moral views to inform his politics — though, unlike Porter, he does seem willing to impose his personal convictions in some cases: “There can be no doubt in my mind that at the birth of the child the state has a right to step in and be protective,” says Kolbe resolutely.
Few, however, are willing to extend the stock pro-choice defense as far as Rep. Jim Greenwood. Greenwood, a Republican from Pennsylvania, readily concedes that abortion constitutes the taking of a human life. “Of course” it does, he says without pause. Yet Greenwood, who voted against the recent bill to ban partial-birth abortions, is adamant that government cannot in any significant way restrict the practice. How does an otherwise sensible legislator find himself admitting that abortion is the killing of human beings, while simultaneously arguing that he has no right to do anything about it? By citing the Constitution, which Greenwood says “tells us to be limited in the degree to which we use the power of the state.” Needless to say, Greenwood does not apply the same hands-off standard to other deeply personal choices individuals make to commit violence, such as rape or drive- by shootings.
If it seems strange to hear politicians — who spend their professional lives passing judgment on every conceivable idea and behavior — aghast at the notion of making even elementary judgments about abortion, it’s even stranger to hear some of the country’s most liberal Republicans suddenly wax rhapsodic about the beauties of small government. “I feel that one of the major tenets of the Republican party is individual freedom and liberties, and less government is better,” says Rep. Connie Morella of Maryland. Or at least less government is better when it comes to regulating abortion. In other instances, maybe not. Moments after laying out her credentials as a Jeffersonian, Morella explains that although government should not interfere with abortion, it should increase funding for a comprehensive variety of ” programs that are going to help children before they’re born and after they’re born,” including the Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program and other pillars of the welfare state. So much for the stand against big government.
Despite their weak arguments, it would be a mistake to suppose that pro- choice Republicans don’t have good reasons for their opinions, or that their position on abortion is always simply a political calculation. Many, like Susan Cullman, chairman of the Republican Coalition for Choice, believe passionately that legal abortion is not only a potentially winning issue for Republicans, but a net gain for the country. As Cullman, whose group is now working to remove the anti-abortion plank from the party’s platform, explains it, abortion is an unpleasant choice. On the other hand, it can also have important social consequences. For instance, says Cullman, a woman weighing abortion should carefully consider whether the child she may produce is ” going to be cared for or loved or in any way a contributing member of society. ”
In any way a contributing member of society. Cullman seems like a well- meaning enough person, so it’s likely she is not even aware of the implications of statements like this one. Yet the suspicion remains that, among some pro-choice Republicans (and, for that matter, Democrats), abortion is considered an efficient instrument with which to weed out those deemed unlikely to become contributing members of society. Or as William F. Buckley, Jr. put it not long ago, many upper-crust pro-choicers see abortion as “a good way to keep down the population, a lot of which is headed for the underclass” — “a tactful way to limit the number of blacks who are born in the United States.”
Buckley’s claims immediately drew howls of outraged protest from supporters of abortion. But it is hard to deny that some of what he said is true. While polls consistently demonstrate that the majority of the Republican rank and file opposes abortion except in the usual extenuating circumstances (rape, incest, threat to the life of the mother), affluent Republicans-the party’s donor class — appear to be much more enthusiastically pro-choice. Some of that enthusiasm, it seems clear, stems from the belief that since abortion rates are highest in inner cities, legal abortion results in fewer indolent ghetto dwellers whose presence drains the country’s economy: abortion as the price of hope, growth, and opportunity.
Such positions are no longer publicly acceptable, but they are hardly new. According to conservative author Marvin Olasky, who has written widely on the history of abortion, “the Republican party has always had a social Darwinist component.” Indeed, Margaret Sanger herself, the population-control enthusiast who first popularized eugenics among socially prominent women 70 years ago, was a registered Republican and ended her days, according to her grandson, Alex Sanger, a devoted Goldwater fan. (Goldwater, for his part, returned the affection.) “My grandmother always got more support from Republicans than from Democrats,” says Sanger. “She was infuriated with Franklin Roosevelt and the inner-city Catholic Democrats in his coalition” — many of whom, not surprisingly, objected to Mrs. Sanger’s efforts to cleanse America of the “lower orders” using abortion anti birth control. As late as the early 1970s in some places, Republicans (including George and Barbara Bush) remained in the visible leadership of the pro-choice movement. Years before Roe v. Wade, for example, it was a Republican- controlledlegislature that gave New York some of the most liberal abortion laws in the country.
All of which helps explain why some pro-choiceRepublicans appear baffled by the strength of the anti-abortion wing of their party. “I’d love to see the whole abortion issue taken out of the platform,” says Connecticut governor John Rowland wistfully, in a tone that indicates he is still wondering how it got there in the first place. Gov. Arne Carlson agrees: “I’ve regurgitated my position [on abortion] for 20 years. When is it going to go away?” From the not-unreasonable point of view of Republicans like Rowland and Carlson, bringing the party back to a pro-choice (or noncommittal) position on abortion would not rate as a departure from tradition, but instead a return to it.
Not to mention a good political move. A growing number of Republican governors claim to have become convinced that the party cannot maintain wide appeal with an anit-abortion plank intact. “I think it’s important for the Republican party to send the message that we are inclusive, that we are welcoming,” Massachusetts governor William Weld told the New York Times in May. “The best way to send that message is to take the plank out. That’s what [governors] Whitman, Wilson and I all think. It’s great for Bob Dole. It’s great for Republicans up and down the ticket, including me, as a candidate.”
Weld’s view may be more a self-interested calculation based on the sentiments of his own pro-choice constituency than an accurate reading of Republicans nationally. Or he may be right. Either way, pro-choice Republicans aren’t likely to achieve their intended reforms within the party – – much less be taken seriously as people with legitimate ideas — until they come up with some real arguments to support their position. Don’t believe it? Just ask Sen. Alan Simpson.
Simpson, who retires this year, has long been one of the Senate’s most energetic supporters of abortion. During a hearing late last year, for example, Simpson broke with most of his colleagues and emotionally denounced the partial-birth ban as “very wily, very crafty, very manipulative, very diabolical,” merely a “disguise to stop abortion.” His credentials as a pro- choice Republican, in other words, could not be stronger. Nor could his reputation as a rhetorician, a master debater, and alb around sharp guy. Ask Simpson about his position on abortion, however, and the response is not so much an argument as an explosion of hostile defensiveness. “What are you writing about?” he demands. “What are you up to? If you’re just going to get into killing babies, I’m not into that, I’ve never done that.”
Ultimately Simpson cools, but his reasoning remains fuzzy. “I don’t even know why men should vote on abortion,” says Simpson. As for his own views, Simpson has this to say: “I have always been pro-choice. I’ve been living with the same woman I started with 42 years ago. I have three wonderful children. I’m a loving person.”
And so one of America’s staunchest and most articulate pro-choice Republicans defends his position. The arguments might not make sense, might not even exist in a strict sense. But the implication is, trust me anyway: I’m a loving person.
So far pro-choice Republicans have gotten by with answers like these. Sooner or later, they won’t be enough.
By Tucker Carlson
