William J. Bennett What is most impressive about Noemie Emery’s article is its moral force. She paints a searingly accurate portrait of what happens to a society when abortion-on-demand is granted constitutional protection and celebrated as a breakthrough for “women’s rights.” In fact, the abortion- rights advocates have helped to create a world which is more dehumanizing, brutal, coarse, predatory, anti-woman, anti-child. Emery understands that this outcome is not incidental; it is inevitable. Such are the radiating cultural effects, the social end game, of those who put a premium on “choice-driven morals.”
Emery also provides an honest assessment of current political realities. Her tactical advice to the pro-life movement rests on the assumption that most of America “thinks abortion is almost always wrong and should sometimes be legal.” Assuming Emery is right — and I believe she is — the question becomes:
What kind of tactical and strategic approach will do the most to move the debate forward and significantly reduce the number of abortions in America?
Emery thinks the pro-life movement should focus much more of its attention on moral persuasion and less on legal remedies. Not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with legal remedies. Rather, given current political realities, a moral/cultural approach will be more effective. Such an approach would find strong public support — including among many Democrats who are deeply troubled by the massive number of abortions that take place every year but who remain uncertain of what the proper legal status ought to be. It would also succeed in isolating and exposing the radical nature of the proabortion movement — those who have not yet found a single abortion of which they disapprove.
Emery’s arguments, though compelling, are nonetheless incomplete. My advice would be to support a pro-life strategy that goes a good deal beyond what she lays out in her article (perhaps she agrees; we need to hear more from her). Specifically: A pro-life Republican party should hold that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and ought to be overturned; oppose the use of public funds to pay for abortion; and support legislative efforts to expand the boundaries of legal protection for the unborn — including restricting abortions after viability, ending late-term abortions and sex-selection abortions, and establishing waiting periods, informed consent, parental notification, and other such measures. These are legal reforms which our nation can sustain, which would reinforce Emery’s culture-based strategy, and which would move along, even as they do not completely out-distance, a polity that believes abortion ought to be legal only some of the time.
I do not think that the Republican party should insist on a constitutional am endment to ban all abortions. Hence I favor a modified — but still vigorously pro-life — platform. But whether I am right and a constitutional amendment is counter-productive, or whether I am wrong and a constitutional amendment is a u seful (though unrealistic) goal to keep, Emery is surely right in her attempt t o move the emphasis from the legal to the moral venue. Why? Because building a moral and political consensus is the necessary precondition for legal reform. E mery makes a persuasive case that prolifers who advocate to a deeply conflicted public the least popular, least sustainable legal remedy (i.e., a constitutiona l amendment) are making a moral and political consensus much more difficult to establish. Some in the pro-life cause will continue to condemn and alienate mil lions of would-be allies — perhaps Emery among them. They will continue to mak e the centerpiece of their strategy the only position on the continuum where mo st Americans simply will not follow. We need to accept the fact that absent a n ew, broad consensus, little will really change. The intellectual debate will go back and forth. Some will falsely frame the debate, speaking as though one’s po sition on a constitutional amendment will actually determine whether or not the re will be 1.5 million abortions in America next year. Some will exalt the purity of their own position. And all the while the giant abortion machine will continue to grind on.
John J. Dilulio, Jr.
Noemie Emery conjectures that Republicans could consolidate and expand their recent electoral gains by moderating their views on abortion. Apparently, Sen. Bob Dole now thinks so, too. But he’s skating on thin strategic ice, and, in any case, such moral irresolution from a self-professed pro-life candidate is unbecoming at best.
There are dozens of post-1973 scientific opinion surveys on abortion. They show that most Americans favor a woman’s right to obtain an abortion in cases of rape, incest, severe birth defects, or acute threats to the mother’s life, but would deny her right to choose because she is poor or can’t afford more children, is unmarried or doesn’t want to marry the baby’s father, or is married but simply doesn’t feel like giving birth. About two-thirds of voters who identify themselves as strongly committed Republicans oppose abortion on demand; ditto for strongly committed Democrats.
No presidential contest has turned on abortion, but it’s clear that Ronald Reagan and George Bush were helped, not hurt, by their party’s “immoderate” abortion platform, and that abortion figured hardly at all in Bush’s 1992 defeat. Go find the millions of registered voters who would have switched to Reagan or Bush if the Republicans had sounded more like Pat Schroeder, less like Pat Buchanan, on abortion; they don’t exist.
And mind the example of Pennsylvania’s former two-term Democratic governor, no-exceptions pro-lifer Bob Casey. Casey is a true social policy progressive — no welfare caps, family-friendly tax reform, and more. He believes that Democrats should fight for the rights of the poor and the powerless, from the unborn to the unemployed. He governed as he preached. In his 1990 reelection bid, one ardently pro-choice primary opponent ran television ads equating him to a rapist. And most voters disagreed with his belief that abortion should be banned. Still, he won in a landslide. For an encore, he bested Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortions-for-kids crowd in a major court decision on parental notification. Today, 50 million Americans are getting his message: The mass response to the recent profile of Casey’s life and beliefs in Reader’s Digest has been tremendous.
Naturally, however, the “New” Democrats wouldn’t dare let Casey be heard at their Old Abortionists “92 convention. Nothing shames or troubles them, not even third-trimester partial-birth abortions. Never more than an after- cocktails liberal cliche, “safe, legal, and rare” (why so rare if it’s so right?) fails the moral giggle test. Now the joke belongs to the GOP
Maybe the New Republicans won’t let the spellbinding pro-life candidate Alan Keyes speak at their ’96 convention. Maybe they want to tone down the volume on abortion while turning it up on cutting the capital gains tax and gutting guaranteed federal welfare and medical support for poor children. If so, they merit Rep. Barney Frank’s biting description as folks who believe that life begins at conception but ends at birth.
Rep. Henry Hyde is one of the few men in power today who, agree with him or not on abortion, crime, welfare, term limits, and other issues, inspires trust and exudes honesty. He has promised to schedule public hearings on post-Roe biomedical advances in understanding prenatal development. The sights, science, and sounds will educate everyone, wrench hearts, and change millions of minds. Dole and other Republican leaders ought to tune in even if the pro-choice press and the White House tune out.
Dole’s latest word on abortion was spoken in virtually the same breath as his latest vote for Colin Powell as his running mate. But Republican strategists and spinmeisters have totally misread the Powell phenomenon. It isn’t that Powell is a moderate. It’s that he so clearly comes by his moderation honestly, authentically, and on the basis of his own lived experiences.
Like Casey, Powell is quite simply a morally centered grownup whom many people will listen to and follow even if they disagree with him on abortion or other issues. One-size-fits-all moderation may be chic, but it is morally suspect and, in the end, it won’t sell.
With pro-life Republicans suddenly content to dole out abortions, it’s no wonder that the American people are groping toward a third party. On abortion and other soul-of-the-nation issues, both President Clinton and Dole seem increasingly tone deaf to the silent majority’s silent screams for courage, conviction, and compassion.
Phyllis Schlafly
The Republican party has held five national conventions since the Roe v. Wa de decision. In 1976 and 1980, the convention platforms called for “a constit utional amendment to restore protection of the right to life for unborn childre n.” The 1984, 1988, and 1992 platforms declared that “the unbor n child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed” and reaffirmed support for “a human life amendment to the Constitution.”
With these unequivocal words, Republicans became the majority party for the first time since the 1920s. Grass-roots Americans who believe in those platforms invested their own time, money, energy, and principles on the battleground of politics. This coalition of conservative and pro-life voters elected, first, an authentic pro-life conservative as president, Ronald Reagan, and then a pro-life conservative Congress.
Republicans achieved these victories not by equivocating or compromising, but by articulating a consistent pro-life conservative vision. In the 1994 congressional election, not a single pro-life Republican congressman was defeated, and the newly elected Republican members of Congress are two-to-one pro-life. Pro-life votes for Republican candidates are the reason why Republicans have a majority in the House of Representatives for the first time in 42 years.
It is curious why anyone would want to quarrel with such spectacular success. One can only assume that those who do are uninformed about political history — unless the real goal is to grease the way for the nomination of a Republican presidential or vice-presidential candidate who will not run on the party’s historic platform.
Noemie Emery wants Republicans “to move the battle from the legal to the moral venue” and assume “the moral, not the legal, pose.” She has it exactly backwards. The moral venue already exists in the holy books of the world’s great religions. Translating moral principles into public policy objectives is precisely the function of politics and of a political party.
Emery urges the Republican party to abandon the fight to make abortion illegal and instead “frame an attack based on moral dissuasion, based in a war for the soul of the country.” But the Great Communicator himself, Ronald Reagan, did precisely that when he proclaimed National Sanctity of Human Life Day on January 14, 1988. Failure to bring about political change allowed Americans to continue to commit a million and a half abortions a year.
Abraham Lincoln attacked the hypocrisy of his time in these words: “You say that you think slavery is wrong, but you denounce all attempts to restrain it. Is there anything else that you think wrong, that you are not willing to deal with as a wrong? Why are you so careful, so tender of this one wrong and no other?”
In 1996, the Republican party must not be lured into adopting Emery’s “pose.” It must deal with abortion not as just a moral wrong, but as a political wrong. To abandon its historic pledge to support efforts to restore constitutional protection to innocent human life would not only be wrong, it would destroy its winning electoral coalition.
EDITOR-NOTE:
Editor’s Note: Noemie Emery’s essay ” Abortion and the Republican Party: A New Approach,” in our December 25 issue, has prompted significant discussion. life print three responses below and expect to continue this conversation in issues to come.
William J. Bennett, William J. Bennett is a co-director of Empower America and a fellow at the Heritage Foundation. John J. DiIulio, Jr., Princeton Professor John J. DiIulio, Jr. is director of the Brookings Institution’s Center for Public Management. Phyllis Schlafly, Phyllis Schlafly is president of the Eagle Forum and national chairman of the Republican National Coalition for life.
