Some Victory

National Review, Sept 1, 2003 by Ramesh Ponnuru

Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War, by William Saletan (California, 327 pp., $29.95)

Will Saletan, a writer for Slate and a friend of mine, has written a thoughtful and engaging book on the politics of abortion. His analysis distinguishes between two kinds of "pro-choice" positions. What he calls the "conservative pro-choice" position grounds its support for legal abortion in the limits of government power and the autonomy of families. I assume that the liberal pro-choice position, which Saletan develops only by implication, is based on egalitarianism, feminism, and the empowerment of individuals.

Liberal pro-choice activists favor taxpayer subsidies to give low-income women access to abortion. Conservative pro-choice voters oppose such subsidies, as they want the government neither to hinder nor to aid women seeking abortions. Liberal pro-choicers oppose parental-consent laws because they violate the autonomy and bodily integrity of teenage girls. Conservative pro-choicers support those laws because they safeguard the autonomy of the family.

Saletan tells the story of how the organized pro-choice movement triumphed by appealing to the conservative pro-choice voters-and, in the process, sold its soul. His story begins in Arkansas in 1986. Opponents of abortion had placed a referendum on the ballot to ban taxpayer funding of abortion. The governor, one Bill Clinton, said he agreed with the initiative's "stated purpose." Pro-choice activists were able to beat the referendum, barely. They did it by running a deceptive campaign. Instead of defending taxpayer funding, they ran an ad falsely suggesting that the initiative would increase such funding.

They ran another ad pretending that the initiative would ban abortion. Its text: "Imagine. Your fourteen-year-old child, your own sweet daughter, is raped and pregnant. She's frightened, confused, and so are you. Imagine, too, the government says they'll make the decision. Never mind the circumstances. You, your doctor, your preacher, your daughter have no say in this personal, private tragedy. Don't let this bad dream become reality. Vote against Amendment 65." With that ad, Saletan argues, the pro-choice movement took two right turns. By drawing attention to victims of rape, the movement implicitly treated other women's reasons for having abortions as less compelling. The movement was back to separating women deemed innocent and those deemed guilty. Second, pro-choicers had stopped emphasizing the decision-making authority of the pregnant woman. All of these other people-her family, church, and doctor-were in the mix, too. (Actually, there was another right turn: The ads against the initiative also argued that less abortion funding would mean more welfare spending.)

The next conservative pro-choice triumph was the defeat of Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court. His opponents hammered away at Bork's hostility to the "right to privacy" and even accused him of atheism. Support for Bork among conservative voters, and especially among Southern whites, plummeted. (Saletan sees a racial subtext to these voters' concern about government activism, as also to their concern about pregnancies resulting from rape.) Soon after Bork's defeat came the election of Douglas Wilder as governor of Virginia on a pro-choice, anti-funding, pro-parental-consent platform. Pro- choice candidates who made those concessions put pro-lifers on the defensive, particularly those pro-lifers unwilling to make exceptions for rape. Wilder's election marked the start of a period, roughly coterminous with the first Bush presidency, during which the pro-choice movement was as politically strong as it has ever been.

But the limits of this strength became apparent early in Clinton's term. Pro-choicers' attempt to codify Roe v. Wade in a federal "Freedom of Choice Act" foundered on the funding and parental-consent issues. Pragmatic pro- lifers began to make headway by appealing to conservative pro-choice voters. Leading pro-lifers first quit trying to ban abortion in cases of rape and incest. Then they gave up on a ban altogether, concentrating instead on an incremental strategy of chipping away at abortion rights. Parental consent and a ban on partial-birth abortion topped their agenda. The pro-choice movement had secured a "right to abortion"-but defined in conservative terms.

For Saletan, the trouble with those terms is not just that they exclude taxpayer funding and teenagers' rights. The swing voters to whom both pro- lifers and pro-choicers have appealed are not primarily motivated by the woman's right to choose or the unborn child's right to life, but by "the rights of husbands, parents, businesses, and taxpayers." Catering to their demands can generate results that are neither pro-life nor pro-choice-that threaten both women and children.

Saletan explores a series of cases in which what he calls "the right to choose life" has been threatened. Parents have tried to force their daughters to have abortions. Employers have sought to bar pregnant women, or women who could become pregnant, from certain jobs (for example, jobs involving lead exposure), leading to abortions and sterilizations. Politicians and judges have sought to implant Norplant, a contraceptive and abortifacient, in welfare recipients and criminals. In many places, welfare reformers have successfully imposed a "family cap": Where welfare recipients had previously seen their payments rise as they had more children, under the cap they did not rise. Many pro-lifers and liberal pro- choicers opposed the family cap as a form of governmental encouragement of abortion. Conservative pro-choicers did not object to it.