ABORTION POLITICS….In the New York Times yesterday, Ross Douthat made the case that hardline views on abortion didn’t have much to do with the Republican defeat in November. I think he’s basically right about that. Abortion just wasn’t a high profile issue this year.
However, then he goes a step further, arguing that conservatives aren’t really so very hardline on abortion these days anyway. “Compromise, rather than absolutism,” he says, “has been the watchword of anti-abortion efforts for some time now.” Steve Benen replies:
The evidence of conservative willingness to “compromise” on abortion is surprisingly thin. In 2005, for example, pro-life and pro-choice Democrats crafted the Prevention First Act, which aimed to reduce the number of abortions by taking prevention seriously, through a combination of family-planning programs, access to contraception, and teen-pregnancy prevention programs. Dems sought Republican co-sponsors. Zero — literally, not one — from either chamber endorsed the measure.
What’s more, this year, pro-life activists in South Dakota and Colorado forced strikingly inflexible anti-abortion measures onto their statewide ballots. Both lost, but it was a reminder of the movement’s “absolutism” on the issue.
There is, of course, another side to this as well. As Ross himself points out in his piece, the Supreme Court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade means that “the pro-life movement is essentially trapped.” He takes this to mean that pro-lifers can’t offer any genuine compromises because Roe doesn’t allow them, but there’s more than a whiff of disingenuousness to this. After all, does anyone really believe that the pro-life movement wants to overturn Roe (and Casey) merely in order to open the door to European-style compromise on abortion law? Anyone care to sound out James Dobson on that notion?
The truth is more prosaic: pro-life activists have done exactly what you’d expect them to do. They’ve pushed for the most restrictive possible laws they can get away with, and in many states they’ve succeeded in making abortion de facto unavailable. If Roe were overturned, compromise would be the last thing on their minds.
