'Neither incompetent nor indifferent'
O'Steen, David N.
ANTI-ABORTION STRATEGY, A SECOND RESPONSE 'Neither incompetent nor indifferent' DAVID N. O'STEEN F OR THE PAST nine years as the non-Catholic executive director of one of the nation's oldest...
...In early 1982 the Hatch amendment passed the Senate subcommittee on the Constitution by a 4-to-0 vote, and passed the full Judiciary Committee by a vote of 10-to-7...
...In November the pro-life movement took another step forward when Congress passed the Smith amendment restricting the use of public funds to pay for abortions through federal employee health insurance plans -- again with the help of NCHLA...
...The new measure was now essentially an abortion funding bill with a preamble criticizing the Supreme Court's abortion decisions...
...solicitor general Robert Bork, a well-known critic of the 1973 abortion decisions, told on William F. Buckley's Firing Line how he considered the HLB constitutionally defective...
...It was certainly legitimate to ask the movement to consider any possible negative effect the anti-funding strategy might have...
...It was extremely unfortunate that the vote on the amendment had been delayed from its introduction in September 1981 until June 1983...
...Legal scholar and former U.S...
...Robinson would have been saying that the USCC was violating the requirements of its tax-exempt status by seeking to elect candidates to office...
...Meehan's insistence on blaming the Catholic bishops for a low vote count, when she and other pro-lifers were campaigning vociferously against said amendment, seems to overlook more immediately obvious targets for blame...
...At the same time the Court still contained six of the seven Justices who had specifically ruled in 1973 that the unborn child was not a Fourteenth Amendment "person...
...Screen THE CONEDIANS WOODY ALLEN, DUDLEY MOORE T HE FILM COMEDIAN is almost always a disguised aggressor, a schlemiel and victim who causes destruction in his wake through the clumsiness of apparent innocence...
...First, although I also think the memorandum from the USCC's Office of General Counsel critiquing the HLB should not have been leaked to the press, since it could be misused by pro-abortion senators in the manner Ms...
...He continually lets us know that performance is illusion, that he is really after all no one but himself...
...Supreme Court, would have been to forbid active state support of most abortions and allow the states to set some abortion restrictions if they wished to do so...
...A pro-life journalist covering the movement ought to have been aware of the Hatch amendment as part of a "longterm" strategy...
...His performances offer us that double awareness that movie comics mostly give us inadvertently of being at once within and outside the character...
...2. It is true that the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment (NCHLA) has worked primarily on a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court's abortion decisions...
...The 6-to-3 vote in the recent Akron abortion case did little to contradict the impression that the HLB would have failed before the Court...
...Actual legislation restricting abortion authorized by the amendment would require only majority support, not the two-thirds majorities that make it so difficult to enact a particular standard of protection into the Constitution, and these laws could prepare the nation for a more complete statement of principle, a full-fledged Human Life Amendment declaring all human beings' right to life under the Constitution...
...The bill declared unborn children to be' 'persons" only for the purpose of protecting their "due process" rights under the Fourteenth Amendment, and did not invoke the "equal protection" clause, which might have addressed private action...
...Henry Hyde again led pro-life forces in Congress to a victory on abortion funding last October -- with the usual effective help of the NCHLA...
...Danny Rose is the "beard," the pretend lover, the stand-in...
...Catholic Conference lobbyist James Robinson once referred to "the anti-abortion people" as "they" and seemed to call for an "accommodation" on the abortion issue...
...When Senator Hatch introduced his amendment in September of 1981 it was obvious that it fit the criteria for the "first step" amendment, and the Catholic bishops made it clear that, after ratification of the Hatch amendment, they would keep urging legislators to give the maximum protection possible to unborn children until their rights were fully secured...
...Their concentration on grassroots organization at the congressional district level has been of enormous benefit, not only to the amendment drive, but also to the growth and development of the pro-life organizational base across the nation...
...The question arose: Could something be formulated as a "fast step" toward full legal protection for human life which would be morally acceptable, politically feasible, and begin saving lives...
...Unfortunately, some supporters of the HLB were quick to interpret support for Hatch as though it were an attack on the HLB...
...The Hyde amendment itself was then up for Supreme Court review, and the bishops' staff did not want it endangered by adding a further legal complication...
...This is not because of an "obsession" with constitutional amendments -- it is because that is the major purpose of the organization's existence, as its name indicates...
...Thus a pro-life observer could be forgiven if he imagined that the HLB, even if passed by Congress, would be knocked down by the Supreme Court with some justices rejecting it as an attack on both their authority and the right to abortion, and others voting against its constitutional "activism...
...ANTI-ABORTION STRATEGY, A SECOND RESPONSE 'Neither incompetent nor indifferent' DAVID N. O'STEEN F OR THE PAST nine years as the non-Catholic executive director of one of the nation's oldest and largest right-tolife organizations, I have cooperated with what Mary Meehan calls "the Catholic bureaucracy" in supporting prolife legislation...
...They seemed unlikely to acquiesce to being overturned by a simple congressional majority and thereby implicitly diminishing their authority to interpret the Constitution...
...It is as if his acts are separated from his intention arid are therefore fortuitous, almost magical -- the manifestations of unadmitted wishes...
...The Life Amendment Political Action Committee, LAPAC, advertised that it was "totally opposed" to the Hatch Amendment...
...Commonweal: 180 I recount this history for two reasons...
...Forgiveness...
...They avoid endorsing particular constitutional theories as though they were moral principles, and they do insist on a careful legal analysis before they support any legislation...
...The "beard" wins the heroine ultimately, though not before going through a series of testing ordeals...
...Woody Allen's new bitter-sweet film, Broadway Danny Rose, is a comedy about mythmaking...
...Jerry Lewis is the prototype -- he tends to create havoc by being oblivious -- though all the great comedians from Chaplin and Keaton to Woody Allen share in this quality...
...But if her recommendations were actually followed, then those predictions would stand an excellent chance of becoming reality...
...It was clear that two-thirds of the Senate would still not support a traditional Human Life Amendment, which would recognize the unborn child as a Fourteenth Amendment "person" and seek to forbid abortion except to save the mother's life...
...NCHLA II II DAVID N. O'STE~N is executive director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, and director of the Comminee for a Pro-Life Congress...
...By the time this bill was tabled, following a long and bitter filibuster, there was neither the time nor the receptive attitude necessary for debate on a constitutional amendment, and Senator Hatch therefore had to withdraw his amendment until the following year, at which time a modified version of the amendment received 49 votes...
...If he had used the pronoun "we" instead of "they" here, Mr...
...His point was that the elite institutions of our society (as represented by the Senate) are on a collision course with the will of the people (as represented by the House), and that the former would have to "accommodate" itself to the latter...
...They do not get involved in legislative battles where the primary controversy is over procedural or constitutional technicalities rather than over a substantive issue of public policy...
...Those words, taken out of context, are from an April 1979 speech to the National Meeting of Diocesan Attorneys...
...Senator Hatch could not see himself advancing a theory of constitutional law that he rejected with regard to other issues as Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution...
...The "personhood" provision had now been dropped...
...Gallagher's expression of caution was hardly "inept" or imprudent...
...1. It is true that the Catholic bishops are very cautious about endorsing specific pieces of legislation...
...N s. MEmtAN seems to overlook a few facts in her effort to paint supporters of the Hatch amendment as spoilers undermining the HLB...
...The personal manager's philosophy, which he attributes to one of his folk-wise uncles, is "Acceptance...
...The efforts of NCHLA, along with those of the National Right to Life Committee, are essential to the success of the nation's pro-life movement...
...Under the leadership of its talented executive director, Ernest Ohlhoff, the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment has become one of the nation's most effective pro-life groups...
...Meehan states that U.S...
...The support of the Catholic bishops' conference was necessary, though not sufficient, if such an amendment were to pick up momentum in Congress...
...At some point, Danny Commonweal: 182...
...That is what I call "lobbying against" pro-life legislation, and since 49 sonators ultimately voted for the Hatch amendment, it is an excellent example of "distancing" oneself from one's supporters in Congress...
...Yet by the time the National Conference of Catholic Bishops testified in support of the Hatch amendment in November 1981, it had already been endorsed by many National Right to Life groups, including my own, which were then also supporting the Human Life Bill...
...Robinson's speech included a very enlightening analysis of one reason why the Senate, in 1979, was so much more pro-abortion than the House of Representatives...
...3. Ms...
...In the end, he voted in favor of the HLB in the Subcommittee on the Separation of Powers (and in favor of a later version on the floor), but also suggested that some kind of constitutional amendment mightbe drafted that would avoid the bill's possible constitutional problems...
...Here, as elsewhere, what Ms...
...The practical effect of the HLB, if upheld by the U.S...
...He said that House members directly represent constituents' views, while senators tend to see themselves as representing the major institutions of their state...
...Yet a clear majority of the Senate, like a clear majority of the American public, as measured by Gallup and other polls, did claim to oppose the present policy of abortion on demand...
...Contrary to its image in the media as legislation that would "make all abortions murder," the HLB would in fact have not forbidden a single abortion at any stage of pregnancy...
...No distinction is made between masochism and benevolence...
...Given this internal opposition, and the fact that constitutional amendments (including 23 of the 26 which are now part of our Constitution) routinely fail on a first vote, the miracle is that 49 senators united on this repudiation of the abortion "right...
...Further complicating matters, this version of the HLB was actually introduced as an amendment to another amendment, a "court-stripping" measure on school prayer...
...Lightning strikes" and "guerrilla tactics" may sometimes be necessary to force Congress to confront the abortion issue, but even a Protestant can find something ludicrous in the image of a "guerrilla bishop...
...At the start, a group of comedians sit around a table at the Carnegie Delicatessen trading anecdotes about the old days .Their gossip occasions an extended anecdote -- a story, the film itself -- about Danny Rose (Woody Allen), a borscht-belt comedian turned agent...
...23 March 1984:181 Ms...
...Such a measure would not be subject to court approval, and would cut the issue clearly on the question of whether or not abortion should be restricted at all, rather than on a point of constitutional theory in addition to abortion...
...There was precedent for this in the way our nation dealt with slavery: It took the practical step of freeing the slaves Fn'st, and only later was the Fourteenth Amendment enacted as a statement of the former slaves' rights as legal "persons," followed by the Fifteenth granting the right to vote...
...Danny Rose, who calls himself a personal manager, handles (takes care of really) a comic collection of losers, including a blind xylophonist, a one-armed juggler, an old couple who fold balloons, a one-legged tap dancer and -- his main attraction -- an overweight vainglorious saloon singer named Lou Canova...
...It is unwarranted to construe non-endorsement of a particular piece of legislation by USCC as evidence of "opposition...
...Without feeling the need to always take their approach, I respect their decision as it applies to them...
...Some pro-life activists seized upon a brilliant article published in winter 1981 by Washington attorney Stephen Galebach, who proposed a "human life statute" to recognize the unborn child as a legal person by Congressional declaration...
...Meehan describes, it is clear that one did not have to look far to find similar concerns with the bill outside of the USCC...
...The idea behind this plan was simple: If the short-term goal was to grant legislative power to restrict or prohibit abortion, why not do so straightforwardly by means of a constitutional amendment...
...W HICH BRINGS me to the central accusation against the Catholic bishops: their allegedly unprincipled support for the Hatch amendment and "opposition" to the Human Life Bill...
...NCHLA is aiding the drive to secure language guaranteeing the neutrality of the ERA on abortion...
...lobbyist Mark Gallagher did warn other pro-lifers in 1975 that Congressional polarization over funding might delay progress on a constitutional amendment and divert resources away from it...
...Galebach appealed to a number of Supreme Court decisions, most notably Katzenbach v. Morgan, in which the Supreme Court had deferred to Congress's fact-finding abilities to decide whether particular legal situations involved civil rights violations...
...Meehan's claims of the bishops' "incompetence...
...Meehan, NCHLA's part in this campaign was late in coming and grudging when it came...
...In September, as the Hatch amendment approached a longawaited opportunity for Senate floor debate, Senator Helms put forward another proposal...
...after falling far short of the 60 votes necessary to invoke cloture...
...She described the statement as "absolutely true" and referred to the Hatch amendment as "totally pro-abortion...
...As Ms...
...But even these restrictions would be subject to court review, and the courts could balance the "due process" rights of mother and unborn child in various situations...
...To see pro-life groups directly "lobbying against" pro-life legislation in Congress, one must look to others in the right-to-life movement for their celebrated campaign against the Hatch 'amendment...
...Meehan sees as the USCC "opposing" or "lobbying against" pro-life legislation was really (a) pointing out legal or tactical problems to others in the 23 March 1984:179 pro-life movement, or (b) choosing not to pursue a particular strategy itself because of such problems...
...In this and earlier articles Ms...
...I N THE MEANTIME other pro-life activists (none of them Catholic bishops) had come up with a plan known as the "two-amendment strategy" early in 1981...
...Every National Right to Life group supporting Hatch also supported the HLB once it was endorsed by NRLC, including those which had earlier expressed concerns...
...When a modified version of the HLB finally came up for a vote on the Senate floor in the fall of 1982 my organization asked for, and received, the affh-mative votes of both senators from Minnesota...
...Nevertheless, some supporters of the HLB launched a campaign against the amendment and the bishops, claiming that Hatch supporters in the pro-life movement were "selling out" pro-life principles...
...Allen is a more complicated case because he is his own director and he tends to be more self-conscious as an artist...
...A "human life bill" (HLB) was introduced in Congress by Representative Henry Hyde and Senator Jesse Helms, in January of 1981...
...Meanwhile, pro-life Senators with conservative constitutional views, such as Orrin Hatch of Utah, were also in a bind...
...How often could they please all of the pro-abortion side and part of the pro-life with one vote...
...It is the thesis of the movie, as naked a statement as Allen has offered us...
...The more selfdenying Danny Rose is, the more we're asked to admire his nobility...
...As for whether the bishops should dismantle their pro-life lobbying effort and whether NCHLA should be "shut down," I'm sure the National Abortion Rights Action League would be very pleased at the prospect of the nation's largest pro-life church quitting the effort and the highly successful pro-life organizational development and lobbying programs of NCHLA being abandoned...
...But once the pro-life movement decided to move ahead with this strategy, Mr...
...I was an early supporter of such an approach...
...As Ms...
...Senator Helms finally withdrew the "Super Bill" from consideration in August 1982, stating that it might have received only 35 votes in the Senate...
...Gallagher quickly became a most knowledgeable and sophisticated lobbyist on this issue...
...The National Right to Life Committee endorsed the Hatch amendment that December (they had endorsed the HLB the preceding August) and of the four major national pro-life political action committees in the country, including our Committee for a Pro-Life Congress, three supported both the HLB and the Hatch amendment...
...The HLB ran into a problem with regard to both the Senate and the Supreme Court...
...This legendary Danny Rose is a zealous promoter of the improbable, a one-man Salvation Army for crippled performers...
...In both bodies, some" conservatives" most likely to support the purpose of the bill were also "strict constructionists" who rejected the expansive theory of civil rights on which the bill's defenders relied...
...Shortly after the Hatch amendment was introduced, the president of the American Life Lobby included in a mailing a statement, attributed to a "leader in the pro-life movement" which said," As for those stubborn enough or stupid enough to tolerate the destructive cowardly anti-life Hatch amendment, they are simply committing sabotage against the movement, and no longer have a right to be considered pro-life...
...This was quite an achievement, since no constitutional amendment on abortion had been approved even at subcommittee level for a decade...
...4. Finally, it is true that the USCC expressed misgivings about the "Bauman amendment," which was offered as a second-order amendment to the Hyde amendment to insure that states could set their own restrictions on abortion funding above and beyond the restrictions set by Congress...
...The main action concerns Danny Rose's attenuated attempt to deliver Lou Canova's girl friend, Tina (played in bravura fashion by Mia Farrow), to a showcase performance of the alcoholic singer at an out of town club performance Canova's wife is also attending...
...There are several myths at play including, to a certain extent, the ugly duckling who is really a swan...
...Second, I wish to point out that the effect of the bill under the best of circumstances would have been to permit, but not require, legislation restricting abortion -- the very thing for which the Hatch amendment (and its supporters) have been so severely criticized by some pro-bill, anti-Hatch partisans...
...Robinson remarked that the pro-life movement was becoming more politically sophisticated, and that some groups were getting directly involved in political campaigns to elect pro-life candidates to public office...
...The NCHLA's single most important departure from this has been its central role in passing the "Hyde amendment" restricting federal funds for abortion every year since 1977...
...Meehan writes positively about LAPAC and the American Life Lobby and apparently sees nothing incongruous in this...
...Ironically, some of the most effective lobbying on behalf of the HLB was later done by people who also supported the Hatch amendment...
...I believe they see the teaching of moral principles as their primary function in the public debate...
...Love...
...Meehan notes, the bill was finally tabled by a vote of 47-to-46...
...Dire predictions of the decline or demise of the pro-life movement after the defeat of the HLB and the Hatch amendment have proven as inaccurate as Ms...
...But after almost eleven years Senator Hatch had succeeded in having the Senate to vote on the "right" to abortion itself for the first time, thereby giving pro-life political action committees a most significant scorecard...
...In March 1982 as the Hatch amendment was picking up momentum, Senator Helms introduced a new version of the HLB, the "Super Bill" (as some called it), which retained the section declaring unborn children to be due-process "persons," but added various provisions on federal funding of abortion and other matters...
...And one can reasonably expect that some more permanent form of abortion funding restriction, as well as other legislation, will claim the attention of the Bishops' Committee for Pro-Life Activities and NCHLA until another opportunity comes along for consideration of a feasible measure to overturn Roe v. Wade...
...Although the character has a sense of irony, has Allen's sense of irony, the film has no discernible irony towards Danny Rose's self-effacing behavior...
...For example, at least five senators who had either voted with the right-to-life movement on funding votes or who had previously indicated support for an amendment to reverse Roe v. Wade, and all of whom also had some pro-life group in their state actively lobbying against Hatch, not surprisingly voted against the amendment...
...According to Ms...
...I have encountered neither the incompetence nor the indifference to the pro-life cause that she claims exist...
...The psychological advantage the pro-life movement enjoyed following the sweeping election victories of 1980 largely evaporated after the economy-dominated election of 1982, and the Senate felt no urgent need to rid itself of the abortion issue when the vote finally came...
...S INCE Tills VOTE, the USCC and NCHLA have gone back to their usual work on pro-life legislation...
...Meehan notes, the Reagan administration has issued new regulations to protect handicapped infants -with the strong support of the USCC...
...and he did not want to vote against any pro-life initiative, particularly one introduced by pro-life friends like Helms and Hyde...
...Both measures were conceived in the wake of pro-life gains in the 1980 senatorial elections...
Vol. 111 • March 1984 • No. 6
