Baby Steps - pro-life movement in Michigan

National Review, May 17, 1999 by John J. Miller

JOHN J. MILLER

Making abortion rare. Really.

Lansing, Michigan

Pro-life activist Helen Alvare has traveled to all 50 states as a speaker and fundraiser. She finds that she often has to try to energize pro-lifers discouraged at the plight of their cause-except in Michigan. "I remember going there once and seeing 'Respect Life' on the marquee of a major hotel chain. I called home and told my husband, 'I'm on another planet.' Michigan has done it so right for so long-they're famous for being good."

Measuring success isn't hard for pro-lifers: They look at a state's abortion rate. And by this standard, Michigan is a national model. After holding steady throughout most of the 1980s, the abortion rate there has taken a nosedive, falling by more than 40 percent since 1987, compared with a national decline of roughly 12 percent. "Over 100,000 lives have been saved," boasts a report by Right to Life of Michigan.

For all the high-volume arguing among Republicans over abortion politics-how the Republican National Committee should fund candidates, what the GOP platform ought to say, whether a pro-choice vice-presidential nominee is acceptable-the neglected success story in Michigan shows that abortion politics needn't be a matter of haggling over symbols or an inevitably losing proposition. President Clinton has long said he would like abortion to be "rare." In Michigan, what for Clinton is only a rhetorical flourish is a matter of some seriousness.

The pro-life movement enjoys several natural advantages in Michigan, from the large Catholic population around Detroit to strong Protestant churches in the western half of the state. "An overall pro-life ethic pervades Michigan politics," says Republican governor John Engler. Many of the state's voters are Reagan Democrats-union members who blend economic liberalism with cultural conservatism. Of the ten Democrats in Michigan's congressional delegation, three are strongly pro-life (James Barcia, Dale Kildee, and Bart Stupack). A fourth, David Bonior, was too, until he joined his party's House leadership and moved left. Frank Kelley, another pro-life Democrat, was attorney general for 37 years until his retirement last year. In fact, Michigan is one of just a few states with a statute outlawing abortion (after 24 weeks) still on the books.

For many years, however, pro-lifers struggled in Michigan. Until Engler's election in 1990, a pair of pro-choice governors, Republican William Milliken and Democrat James Blanchard, reigned in the post-Roe period. Pro-lifers had a majority in the statehouse, but their bills were routinely vetoed. Then, in 1988, they performed an end run around Blanchard by winning a ballot question to bar Medicaid funding of abortions. "That vote energized the grassroots for Engler's election two years later," says state GOP executive director Greg Brock.

The Medicaid cutoff had an enormous impact. Michigan's abortion rate dropped by nearly 25 percent within a year. Data from other states show that bans on funding typically lead to a 20-40 percent decline in abortions among Medicaid- eligible women. Not only are there more live births among these women, but also fewer pregnancies-suggesting that the law affects behavior in addition to the decision whether to abort.

Parental-consent laws have a similar effect. The abortion rate among minors has fallen by 42 percent in Michigan since the state enacted a parental-consent law in 1990. Sometime in May, U.S. district judge Nancy G. Edmunds is expected to rule on whether to allow Michigan's informed-consent law, which includes a 24- hour waiting period, to go into effect. If it does, the rate will probably decline further. The state has also started to teach abstinence in the public schools. "We eliminated the mixed message kids were getting," says Engler, who takes credit for a 26 percent drop in teen pregnancies since 1991.

The force behind many of these changes has been Right to Life of Michigan, a Grand Rapids-based organization with an annual budget of about $4 million. In a 1995 survey of legislators and lobbyists in Lansing, the group was rated the state's second-most-influential organization, behind the Chamber of Commerce. "Some people would argue that they're even more powerful than the Chamber," says Betsy DeVos, the Republican state party chairman. The same survey, in fact, named Right to Life the state's best get-out-the-vote organization. "Right to Life has become what the labor unions used to be. It can deliver votes, and lots of them," said Bill Ballenger, the publisher of Michigan's most important political newsletter, last October.

Yet the group's national reputation has more to do with an ongoing media campaign than with politics. "They own the rights to the best pro-life literature out there," says Mary Spaulding Balch of National Right to Life. At a nominal cost, Right to Life of Michigan sells posters, billboards, bumper stickers, books, and other items to an international client list of 15,000. It also has a strong presence on television, regularly placing ads meant to improve the image of pro-lifers, rebut assisted-suicide advocates, and condemn abortion- clinic violence. The production values of the ads are outstanding-they are slick, Madison Avenue-quality work, not the blurry, muffled cable-access ads typical of special-interest groups.