Abortion and the rapee - column

National Review, Dec 8, 1989 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Abortion And The Rapee When President Bush said that he would veto the congressional measure that would provide financial aid for abortions in the event of rape or incest, the comment by Ms. Kate Michelman was. "Today's official veto shows George Bush to be mean-spirited [and] without compassion... . With one stroke of his pen, President Bush today condemned impoverished women to continue crisis pregnancies that can destroy their lives." Now that language does not surprise, because Ms. Michelman is the executive director of the National Abortion Rights Action League, and that's the way lobbyists talk.

But it is something quite different when equivalent words are used by such as A. M. Rosenthal, the distinguished columnist for the New York Times. Mr. Rosenthal was so much affronted by the presidential veto that he said it actually makes it difficult for him, in dealing with foreigners, to defend Mr. Bush. What do you say to them? "They ask you if the President of the United States really means it when he says a poor girl raped by her father should not be helped to get an abortion."

The vetoed measure, and the discussion surrounding it, beg for the application of reason. And the application of reason is very difficult when the emotions are greatly stirred. But here are a couple of rules Mr. Rosenthal, and others bowled over by Mr. Bush's decision, should remind themselves of.

The first is the old saw that hard cases make bad law. That axiom is not an entirely comfortable fit here, because what Congress was discussing was the authorization of money for abortion under various circumstances--not the act itself. Still, it is illuminating to ponder the use of the truly melodramatic example in order to test one's belief in a principle.

For instance: "Do you believe in lying?" Answer: No. "Would you lie to the KGB if they came to your house at midnight and asked where your son was?" Answer: Everybody, with the possible exception of Sissela Bok and Immanuel Kant, would lie--with untormented conscience.

Another example: "Do you believe in capital punishment?" Answer: No. "Would you hesitate to execute Adolf Eichmann notwithstanding that he was the principal architect in the execution of six million Jews?" Answer: You are overstretching my opposition to capital punishment. Israel forbids capital punishment, but it nevertheless hanged Eichmann when it got hold of him. Few people have wasted their time condemning Israel for hypocrisy.

Now Mr. Rosenthal makes a huge case against George Bush on the basis of the "poor girl raped by her father." Before doing that, one should ask antecedent questions, the first of them being, surely: Is there a problem today that significantly afflicts girls in that position, who want an abortion but can't afford one? I tried to do a little research into the question (how many people are we talking about?) and got absolutely nowhere at all.

For relief, I read the debate in the Congressional Record, and, to my surprise, there was not a single allusion to the plight of the daughter pregnant by her father--almost the whole of the debate dealt with the question of abortion for victims of rape. Congressman Henry Hyde led the opposition to an extension of federal funding of abortion. He did, actually, the opposite of citing a hard case as an unreliable guide to evaluating a law. He gave the name of Ethel Waters, the great black singer in whose name they dedicated a park in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Miss Waters is the daughter of a 12-year-old rapee, and all the world is grateful that she was not aborted, even as we are grateful that the fourth child of a syphilitic father and a consumptive mother, with two tubercular older sisters, was not aborted, else we'd be without Ludwig van Beethoven.

But I'm-glad-we-didn't-abort-Shakespeare is no more creditable an argument than Mr. Rosenthal's complaint about the hypothetical victim of her father's lust. The question facing Mr. Bush wasn't: Do you sympathize with the woman who is the victim of rape or of incest? but rather: Should federal financing of abortion be expanded? On this he has taken a principled position. And those who denounce him for acting according to conscience must wonder how it is that no abortions--zero abortions--were legal up until a couple of decades back; and during that period, Mr. Rosenthal had no serious problem in discussing U.S. policies with foreigners.

It is always a question of perspective. Thomas Jefferson had to engage in civil conversation with foreigners even on days when he had written home to discuss the disposition of his slaves. We can't know what will be the ethical consensus, a generation from now, on the question of abortion. But Mr. Bush's veto will not stick out like the Dred Scott decision.