Debating abortion: the best response to a debater's question is a debater's answer

National Review, June 17, 1996 by Francis Canavan

The best response to a debater's question is a debater's answer.

AS Bob Dole prepares to start campaigning in earnest, he should pause to reflect on one feature of the primary season that is sure to carry over to the campaign itself: the debater's questions on the subject of abortion that female reporters put to candidates.

For instance, last February four Republican candidates for the Presidency were debating in South Carolina. Predictably, inevitably, a woman reporter got up and asked a loaded question: ''If I were raped by a vicious criminal and became pregnant, would you oppose a first-semester abortion, knowing that a continued pregnancy would cause me mental and emotional anguish?''

As reported in the New York Times the following day, Senator Dole said he would oppose it. But after Steve Forbes and Lamar Alexander said that they would permit the abortion in the case of rape, Dole agreed that he would do the same. Only Pat Buchanan said he would oppose such an abortion.

I wonder, however, why candidates for elective office do not have the intelligence and the courage to tell the lady (who invariably turns up at every debate) that she is asking a debater's question designed to draw attention away from the real issue. Pregnancies due to rape amount to no more, and probably less, than 1 per cent of all pregnancies. The real issue is posed by the fact that there are one and one-half million abortions in this country every year.

This figure is constantly printed in the press. One example from some years back is a statement by Philip J. Hilts in The New York Times Magazine on December 16, 1990: ''Abortion serves as the method of birth control for 1.6 million women in the nation. At least half of them turn to abortion after their chosen method of contraception has failed.'' Other sources report that abortion terminates between 25 and 30 per cent of all pregnancies. These figures remain pretty steady from year to year.

That reality is the issue worth debating. Why not answer the debater's question by asking what we are prepared to do about it? The reporter might not be willing to do anything about it. Possibly (probably) she would come back with another standard debater's question: ''Suppose it were your wife or your daughter who was raped?''

Why not reply by saying that what I personally would be tempted to do in such an extreme case is not the issue? Let's talk instead about what we are prepared to do as a people to reduce the enormous toll of abortion. When we come to the extreme cases of rape, incest, or saving the life of the mother, you vote your way and I'll vote mine -- and I see no need to tell you now how I will vote then. In the meantime, will you please stop dodging the issue with your debater's questions about hard cases, as if they were the most important or, indeed, the only ones?

But since you have asked a debater's question, I'll give you a debater's answer. Laws not only forbid certain actions as crimes, they must also state the penalty for committing them. Nulla lex sine poena -- there is no law without a penalty. Death can be the penalty for murder, but it is not the only one, because the law recognizes differences of degree among murders. Laws forbidding abortions could and surely would do the same.

American law in fact has not forbidden abortion when the life of the mother was at stake. But, for the sake of argument, I will make a fanciful proposal. Since I am only offering a debater's answer, let us suppose a law that forbade all abortions, even one to save the life of the mother (not that I expect such a law ever to be enacted). The penalty for abortion would fall not on the mother but on the doctor and on all of his assistants.

The woman might be morally just as guilty as the doctor, but man-made positive law punishes crime, not sin, and punishes in the way judged most effective in preventing or diminishing instances of the crime. The penalty for performing an abortion to save the mother's life, therefore, would consist in forbidding any of those who took part in it to collect any fee, directly or indirectly.

Let the medical people, once in a blue moon, do an abortion for free. But, you may say, such a law would be impossible to enforce; doctors and patients would certainly find ways to get around it. True enough, but it would put all professional abortionists and clinics specializing in abortions out of business. Whatever might be the difficulty of enforcing the law in rare and exceptional cases, professional abortionists could not get away with constantly violating it. It would also make obstetricians working in hospitals think twice about performing abortions for which the law allowed no payment. If you insist, the law might even permit abortion in the case of rape or incest, if no one were allowed to make money on it.

Do I seriously expect any candidate to make such a proposal? No, it is only a debater's answer to a debater's question. But when the omnipresent woman reporter asks her debater's question, I would love to see some candidate toss it back at her and ask if she would be satisfied with a law that permitted abortion only if no one got paid for doing it. If she fudges her answer, ask if there are any limits on abortion that she would accept. If not, point out that what she really wants is abortion on demand, so let's talk about that. If she is willing to accept some limits, one could say, ''Very well, let's start there, and see how far the people are willing to go.''