Republicans Miscarry Abortion
Barnes, Fred
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL. 23, NO. 1 / JANUARY 1990 Fred Barnes REPUBLICANS MISCARRY ABORTION However inept pro-life Republicans have shown themselves to be in running on their beliefs, there...
...She was exactly what the pro-life movement needs, a totally unappealing enemy...
...Then comes abortion day...
...That's what Goodman wanted to do as early as September, when Wilder began roasting Coleman on abortion...
...The extreme view that permits a parent to abort a child because it happens to be a girl and not a boy...
...The extreme view that abortion for any reason is all right...
...Saving unborn children—babies...
...Yet the game is winnable...
...This has become standard advice by now...
...vetoed a bill providing federal funding for such abortions for poor women...
...It won't be that easy...
...America would be a better place...
...Polls show the public is turned off by such selfish reasoning...
...3. Talk up weak spots in the pro-choice position...
...The CBS/ New York Times survey on Election Day discovered that pro-life and pro-choice voters roughly cancelled each other out...
...Everyone would hate her...
...Of these, slightly more voted for the pro-life Republican, Marshall Coleman, than for the pro-choice Democrat, Doug Wilder...
...Goodman crafted an ad with emotional wallop...
...People do not like chickens...
...Imagine if all pro-life GOP House and Senate candidates had responded to the abortion issue as did Coleman and Jim Courter, the GOP gubernatorial candidate in New Jersey this year...
...For now, pro-choicers are setting the terms...
...A sign was pasted on her sweater: "Abortion on demand and no apology for it...
...I say yes...
...The pro-life position is, by definition, the more caring one...
...It's his own position that matters, and he'll still have to take one...
...And guess what...
...Rule 101 in this business is, if you don't answer, it's true," says Robert Goodman, Coleman's media consultant...
...1 / JANUARY 1990 Fred Barnes REPUBLICANS MISCARRY ABORTION However inept pro-life Republicans have shown themselves to be in running on their beliefs, there are ways they can turn the abortion question to their advantage...
...Should abortions be performed because a parent wants a boy instead of a girl...
...I think Illinois Gov...
...But what is it that pro-lifers are for...
...So sympathy is mandatory...
...National Right to Life has one TV spot in which an unborn child is seen supposedly talking...
...But pro-life Republicans will jump ship in a hurry...
...A compassionate, concerned position will achieve this goal...
...Republicans are lucky the Webster ruling came in 1989, an off year...
...Besides, it won't work...
...They're "antiabortion...
...But too often pro-lifers sound as if they care only about the unborn child, not the woman...
...The pro-life movement and its allies will never triumph unless they go on the tube...
...The press has made an exception for pro-lifers...
...It had Wilder winning the election by 55-45 percent (he actually got a tad over 50 percent, Coleman a tad under...
...Then Campbell blathered on about abortion in unclear, unsuccinct fashion...
...Polls show that upwards of 90 percent of Americans believe abortions in cases of rape or incest should be permitted...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1990 15...
...It showed a happy young mother watching her baby's first step...
...4. Frame the broad abortion debate in a new way...
...This was effective, but not as powerful as Goodman's...
...Molly Yard called Wilder a wimp after he criticized abortion for birth control...
...That mindset is the big problem, andthere are two smaller ones...
...2. Be compassionate...
...At the end, the terror-stricken child is heard to say: "Mom...
...The idea is to convince women not to have abortions rather than to send the sheriff after her...
...Republicans are lucky the Webster ruling came in 1989, an off year...
...Abortion would be drastically curtailed or banned...
...They're in agony, afraid the abortion issue will drag them to defeat...
...The trouble is, Republicans aren't following it...
...Pro-life Republicans don't need to wring their hands...
...Yes, I've seen polls that show there really isn't a pro-choice advantage in elections...
...Shields asked, "If you're going to call the pro-choice people what they ask to be called, then don't the pro-life people deserve the same...
...o prevail, pro-lifers must showcase the victims, babies...
...Coming up with new terms for the debate is hard...
...Wilder pounded Coleman all the more on rape and incest...
...This may be too hokey, but it's on the right track...
...Lack of it will be detected, and resented, by voters, especially women...
...Lance Tarrance's poll in the Virginia governor's race found that only 11.8 percent of voters decided solely on abortion...
...This was too little, too late...
...You merely have to watch supposedly pro-life Republicans these days to know that...
...Then came the Webster decision, which awakened the pro-choice movement...
...truck driver who didn't want to say you'd voted for the white guy, that's how you'd respond to a pollster," says Republican consultant David Keene...
...One is the press...
...They could be insensitive politicians, abortionists, Molly Yard, or the woman I saw on the plane to San Francisco...
...There aren't but a few hundred abortions in these cases annually, but the national debate has concentrated on them, at least since President Bushbravely...
...The most important point a pro-life candidate must make is that he is compassionate," Devine said...
...Better to stick with the pro-life stand...
...These won't be produced unless pro-life Republicans demand them...
...What's required is a bit of political courage and imagination...
...But think what Roger Ailes, Sig Rogich, Charlie Black, Elliot Curson, and other Republican media experts might come up with if they joined Goodman in producing anti-abortion ads...
...Let's set the record straight," Coleman said in his spot...
...In a TV ad produced by Frank Greer, the best of the Democratic media consultants, Wilder said the choice is between a woman's right to decide something that affects her life and politicians' insistence on imposing a decision on her...
...Coleman's response was pathetic...
...He said he wouldn't propose a ban on these abortions, which of course he couldn't do anyway under Roe v. Wade...
...As long as the argument is framed this way, the pro-life position is a loser...
...And that, in turn, requires only one thing of Republicans: the courage of the anti-abortion convictions they've been professing all these years...
...If they make a vigorous effort, they can change public opinion, win (or stay in) office, and curb abortion...
...Until the 1984 Republican platform hearings, I'd never heard the argument against abortions in cases of rape and incest...
...National Right to Life aired one showing babies playing, while an announcer rapped Wilder for favoring unfettered abortion—on demand, for birth control, and in the late stages of pregnancy...
...If they waver and support some of them, they'll catch hell from pro-choice zealots and may switch back...
...That's a lot to ask...
...The fact is, women who have abortions are not criminals but decent people in a fix...
...The National Right to Life Committee also ran ads zinging Wilder, but it didn't have the money to air at saturation levels...
...The pro-life case must touch people's hearts...
...Representative Henry Hyde made it persuasively...
...There must be understanding...
...This seems obvious, but pro-life Republicans haven't done much of it...
...They talked about abortion as little as possible...
...It makes sense to force pro-choicers to answer for it—and for the excessive number(1.5 million) of abortions each year...
...At the GOP governors' conference, Carroll Campbell of South Carolina said it's a "mistake" for pro-life Republicans not to state their position "clearly, succinctly...
...Jim Thompson hit the nail on the head when at the Republican Governors' Conference on November 13 he said, "My belief is that most Americans would say we start with respect for a woman's right to choose, except in [certain circumstances], rather than saying we start with the notion that all abortions ought to be illegal, except in cases of rape and incest or the mother's life...
...It's a wholly owned subsidiary of the pro-choicers...
...Imagine if all pro-life GOP House and Senate candidates had responded to the abortion issue as did Marshall Coleman and Jim Courter...
...Pro-choice Democrats are unwilling to vote for pro-choice Republicans over pro-life Democrats...
...I'm not going to restrict abortions for rape or incest...
...But should a teenager seeking an abortion get the permission of her parents...
...5. Make the pro-Iife argument on television...
...Not many average voters, I'll wager...
...The antagonists are those who'd allow the lives of babies to be snuffed out...
...In the general election, both said their position on abortion was personal and that they wouldn't act on it as governor...
...I don't think a candidate has ever lost a race because of what was in his party's platform...
...Wilder dropped the subject, but Coleman failed to exploit the flip-flop...
...This is mandatory...
...They continue to switch, duck, and obfuscate...
...Prochoicers should be made to explain why they're against these reasonable restrictions...
...She'll suffer morning sickness, be uncomfortable for months, look bloated, and jeopardize her health (maybe her life, too), all for a child she thinks she doesn't want...
...I haven't got a perfect alternative...
...A child's first step is a remarkable thing," says the voice-over...
...Devine, a smart pol, spoke persuasively about this need in a speech to Western Republicans last October...
...If a candidate ducks the issue, he creates a character problem rather than just an issue problem," says Donald Devine, who runs Citizens for America...
...The answer from the media is no...
...Shortly after the Mobilize for Wom- en's Lives rally in Washington on November 11—the one where Pete Seeger performed "This Land Is Your Land" as a pro-abortion song—I boarded a plane at Dulles Airport for San Francisco...
...Thank goodness Virginia asks for something a lot more reasonable...
...The other problem is rape and incest...
...A woman caught my eye as I waited for takeoff...
...Another National Right to Life commercial shows a woman watching her daughter in a ballet, a child she almost aborted...
...Doug Wilder holds this extreme position on abortion...
...If you were a Fred Barnes is a senior editor of the New Republic...
...T o be blunt, the deck is stacked against the pro-life position...
...That's how we got, among others, Native American, Negro, black, African American and gay...
...Even Lee Atwater, the Republican national chairman, endorses it...
...The choice should be presented as one between protecting the lives of babies and allowing crazed feminists to pursue a cruel whim or abortionists to make money or politicians to take the amoral way out...
...They should always keep in mind what they're asking a woman to do...
...I've got five pieces of advice on how to achieve these goals: 1. Don't switch or duck or obfuscate...
...You'd be surprised how many haven't heard the pro-life side argued aggressively or the pro-choice side dissected critically...
...Both took strong 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1990 pro-life positions in the primary...
...My suspicion is that the people who lied about having voted for Wilder, who is black, then lied about what motivated their vote...
...Wilder did this brilliantly in his campaign...
...Mark Shields, a semi-liberal columnist, has noted that "we have an unwritten American law that we basically call people what they want to be called...
...Pro-life activists are willing to try...
...The goal is not to send someone to jail, but to state the moral understanding of the community in the law that abortion is wrong in most circumstances...
...Then there are the restrictions on abortion, permitted under Webster, that pro-choicers are committed to blocking—parental consent for abortions on women under eighteen, notification of husbands, a waiting period between the time an abortion is requested and when it's performed, "informed consent" (explaining what an abortion involves so the woman knows what she's getting into...
...The Mason-Dixon exit poll in Virginia got a different result—Wilder won 62-38 percent among voters for whom the abortion issue is "very important'!---but that poll is dubious...
...Dropping the anti-abortion language from the Republican platform won't help either...
...In Virginia, Wilder hammered Coleman relentlessly for a pro-life position that makes abortion legal only to save the mother's life...
...She wasn't ugly, but she looked mean, arrogant, selfish, and utterly unfeeling, a Me Decade lefty...
...Polls aside, the pro-life movement is losing...
...It would have been a wipeout...
...Who, except pro-life diehards, is going to side with politicians...
...Many of them sense, correctly, that there's a pro-choice mood in the country...
...But it would never happen if those who hold an extreme view on abortion have their way...
...Pro-life Republicans will be vulnerable unless they defend their position on TV...
...Coleman came close to beating Wilder because, after hesitating for weeks, he finally attacked Wilder's abortion stand on TV...
...Well, Virginia may have asked, but Coleman never ran this ad...
...Television is the only medium for reaching most voters...
...If an opponent airs attack ads on abortion, that's all the more reason togo with a counter-attack...
...I say no...
...I can't think of an issue on which reporters have been more slanted or willing to let their personal feelings influence their reporting...
...Pro-choicers are for allowing some pretty awful things—abortions in the second and third trimester, abortions if the child isn't of the gender the parents want, abortions in clinics that aren't as fully equipped and safe as hospitals, repeat abortions by the same woman, abortions for reasons of momentary inconvenience...
...I knew she'd been to the pro-choice rally...
...Opposing abortions in instances of rape or incest—Bush would allow the abortions but opposes taxpayer funding of them—is not a way to make yourself popular...
...People are queasy about abortion, but most don't want a ban...
...If this woman could be cast on TV and in the press as the symbol of "abortion rights," the battle would be over...
...This ad is better...
Vol. 23 • January 1990 • No. 1
