An Appeal to GOP Pro-Choicers

In this dream, the Tom Ridges, the Jennifer Dunns, and the Kay Bailey Hutchisons of the party would, singly or together, begin to say things like this: (1) They still dissent in some ways from their pro-life colleagues — no point in lying; (2) but they think abortion is a “right” that is wrong, that alternatives to it should be strongly promoted, and that the state ought to speak up for life; (3) and, differ as they do with some in their own party, they dissent even more from the feminist Democrats. These Republicans would then draw sharp lines between themselves and the Democrats, call them out of touch with the country and with its moral traditions, and make them defend their more radical view-points. How is late-term abortion not killing an infant? Do they really approve of a legal regime in which a 14-year-old girl can be taken out of the state for an abortion without her mother or father’s permission? Do they see the “choice” between giving birth and abortion as morally neutral? Why are they hostile to adoption? Do they accord fetal life any value? Would they defend “choice” for any conceivable reason? Because the child may be slightly imperfect? Because it is “only” a girl?

In this dream, pro-choice Republicans would take seriously the larger issue of reverence for life. In an age when violence is showcased in music and movies, random shootings are endemic, and an esteemed scholar at an Ivy League college advances the argument that parents should be given a grace period of 28 days after birth to decide if their handicapped child should live, one need not be undissentingly pro-life to balk at a social ethic that defines life as merely one “choice” among many. Pro-choice Republicans ought to denounce this callousness as a danger to everyone. They could say that while they are not willing to ban abortion, they are delighted to be in the pro-life party, the party that stands for restraint and for conscience, the party that says life itself must be valued and not carelessly thrown away.

Ardent pro-lifers might dismiss this as twaddle, and, by their own lights, they would be right. Moderates on the abortion issue are inconsistent and often illogical. But the abortion debate is multi-dimensional and is fought out on several levels. One is the plane of the issue itself — its rightness, its wrongness, the number and kind of restrictions — on which the opposite sides now do battle. The other is the way that the battle is waged.

Pro-life advocates (and their pro-choice counter-parts) tend to be purists, believers in absolutes that cannot be diluted or compromised. The problem for both sides are the three-fourths or more of American voters whose outlook is different. These are the situationalists, who look at each case on a one-by-one basis, who believe that these rights are not all-controlling, and can be, and ought to be, modified. These are the people — pro-life with exceptions; pro-choice with restrictions — who make up the broadest swath of voters. They are the ones who turn up in the polls with the mixed views that drive purists crazy: who say abortion is a form of murder they will reluctantly tolerate in some, not all, cases; who would allow it for “good,” not “bad,” reasons; who would grant extra leeway in cases of rape because a woman who becomes unwillingly pregnant through consensual sex has a moral and personal responsibility for what happens later that a victim of rape does not carry.

Purists may despise these people (and many appear to), but they cannot afford completely to ignore them, as their votes tend to settle elections. Pro-life Republicans have difficulty talking to these people; they tend to preach at or scold them. Pro-choice Republicans can. Situationalists all, they can relate to ambiguity and use it to push people subtly in a pro-life direction. They can appeal to the squeamishness of most pro-choice moderates, and expand the growing constituency who favor restrictions. They can make such moderates uneasy with the language of liberals. Pro-choice Republicans should make this effort, and pro-lifers should thank them, for their mutual good.

This is a small enough thing for one wing of a party to do for the other, and one that will cost these Republicans nothing. Will it lose them the support of abortion-rights lobbies? No, for these back only Democrats. Will it cost them the backing of pro-choice majorities enraged at assaults on their “rights”?

The press, of course, tells us these people are out there, ready to mangle conservatives. The polls, though, say something different, which the press has chosen not to notice. They tell us that these vast pro-choice armies are largely a fiction. They tell us that most pro-choice voters are conflicted and moderate. And they tell us that the purist pro-choice view, that abortion is a basic right, essential to women’s autonomy, with no restrictions accepted for timing or circumstance — the view of the Clintons, the Gores, the feminists, and the editorial page of the New York Times — is as extreme as the purist pro-life position, and only slightly more popular, and is held less by women than men.

Most of the people hewing to this hard line are Democrats or, at any rate, liberals, and they are increasingly out of step with public opinion. A 1996 CBS/New York Times poll found that while 61 percent of delegates to the Democratic convention held the purist pro-choice position, only 31 percent of self-described Democrats did so. In 1999, a feminist group astounded itself when a poll it commissioned from Princeton Survey Research showed that 53 percent of women opposed abortion for all reasons except rape, incest, and to save the life of the mother: up from 45 percent in 1997. A poll taken by the New York Times in 1998 found that almost half of Americans say it is “too easy to get an abortion,” and that “public support for legal abortion plummets from 61 percent . . . in the first three months” to 15 percent after that. A Pew Research survey last year found that 34 percent thought legal abortion had been good for the country, 17 percent thought it had made no difference, and 42 percent thought it had made our lives worse.

The movement of public opinion in recent years has been consistently in the pro-life direction. All polls show a rise in support for the kinds of restrictions deplored by Al Gore and Hillary Clinton. Large majorities support total bans on abortions in the last two trimesters of pregnancy; huge majorities (80 percent) support waiting periods and parental consent; majorities even back spousal notification, a stunning endorsement of patriarchal power. Resistance to free-and-easy abortion is growing especially among young people and women, two cohorts assumed to be strongly pro-choice.

In 1998, a UCLA survey of more than 250,000 freshmen in 469 colleges found student support for keeping abortion legal at 51 percent, down from a peak of 65 percent in 1990. A poll by John Zogby in August 1999 found that “68 percent of those 18 to 24 years old side with the view of most traditional religions that abortion destroys human life.” Pro-choice Republicans, in short, would have little to fear from public opinion should they choose to give aid and comfort to their pro-life colleagues; indeed, by doing so they would reflect public opinion. The public might even be glad.

Most pro-choice Republicans are already quite moderate — against federal funding, against late-term abortion, for waiting periods, for parental consent — they just don’t like to talk about it. Even the more ardently pro-choice among them — Rudy Giuliani of New York, Christie Todd Whitman of New Jersey, ex-governors William Weld and Pete Wilson — seem to be so from libertarian rather than feminist principles. They say and do many things that would be anathema to feminist liberals: They plump for adoption and abstinence and talk of abortion as something unpleasant that should be reduced and discouraged, although voluntarily. The feminist left not only inveighs against legal restrictions, but insists that no moral stigma should ever be attached to abortion. This is a great stumbling block for most of the American people, and one Republicans could exploit.

In its story trying to explain the 1998 poll results, the New York Times quoted Roger Rosenblatt, author of a book on abortion politics and an opponent of legal restrictions. “Sooner or later,” said Rosenblatt, “you’re going to have a system where you say, ‘One simply doesn’t cavalierly have an abortion.’ It’s not against the law, but one simply doesn’t do it, or, if one does, one recognizes the moral digression.”

This sounds like something every Republican should be able to say. In my dream, they would all say it, every Republican of national prominence, from George W. Bush and John McCain, to Tom Ridge and Colin Powell, to Christie Whitman and Elizabeth Dole. It would give them a common platform to stand on, lessen the tension that exists in the party, lessen the reluctance of some pro-life voters to support those from the less purist wing, and attract moderate voters. Republicans, together, could then ask the Democrats to join them in an effort to discourage abortion, in the way they have stigmatized other behaviors, like smoking. They won’t join such a cause; their base will not let them. But they should be publicly embarrassed for their unwillingness to do so. Pro-choice Republicans ought to go out and nail them. When license plates with the inscription “Choose Life” were recently offered in Florida, the state’s National Organization for Women chapter went to court to try to prevent this. Let NOW and the Democrats’ abortion activists explain to the people why the suggestion to “Choose Life” (emphasis on Choose) is so sinister. The explanation will not get them far.

As the New York Times has explained, “the question of whether women often have abortions ‘cavalierly’ appears to be having a powerful influence in changes in attitude.” It is moving Americans — women and men — somewhat closer to the pro-life side. There should be a political price to be paid for being too careless with life. Republicans ought to make Democrats pay it. All that is needed is for the pro-choice members of the party to take the lead. The press, of course, will think otherwise, and tell them that tolerance should come from the other side only, that one can never be pro-choice enough. The polls say something else. One good turn — or part turn — is deserving of another. Tolerance is a beautiful thing.

Noemie Emery, a frequent contributor, lives in Alexandria, Virginia.