Pro-life stance paid off for GOP: though not touted as a hot-button topic in the 2002 midterm elections, the abortion issue appears to have played a key role in shifting control in the Senate

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 24, 2002 | by Jennifer G. Hickey

"Swing voters generally have been more influenced on the choice side-soccer moms, left-leaning independents and parents of young children," contends Zogby. However, he adds, two factors could move voters to the life side: any action by the courts on the state or federal level and the entire issue of late-term abortions.

And the courts already are active. On Nov. 27, U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy granted a temporary injunction blocking the government from enforcing new campaign-finance restrictions that would have prohibited Hawaii Right to Life from airing political ads leading up to the Jan. 4, 2003, special elections. And less than a week earlier Madison County, Ill., Associate Judge Clarence Harrison ruled pro-life activists could continue to protest outside the Hope Clinic for Women, while barring them from doing so on the property of the clinic or alleging that the doctor was engaged in body-part trafficking. The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by a clinic patient who alleges protesters were responsible for her premature delivery. The Illinois case involves questions of what limits may be placed on antiabortion protesters similar to those which were at issue in the Supreme Court arguments delivered on Dec. 4 in Scheidler v. the National Organization for Women.

JENNIFER G. HICKEY IS A WRITER FOR Insight