Semantics & style in an abortion campaign

...When asked by pollsters (Do you agree or disagree that the decision to have an abortion is a private matter that should be left to the woman to decide without government interference...

...Fran Avallone, state coordinator of Right to Choose, points out that 6 of the 46 assembly candidates (there were 160 all together) endorsed by the New Jersey Pro-Life Pac rejected that endorsement...

...Of their 46 endorsees, 34 won and another 6 rejected the prolife endorsement...

...In addition, prolife leaders say that they re-elected eleven prolife incumbent assemblymem-bers in the face of vigorous prochoice efforts to unseat them...

...Second, the prochoice position seems to have wide political appeal...

...The role of abortion in the assembly races is far more complex and harder to sort out...

...Close to a majority, 48 percent, said women should have the right to abortion in all circumstances...

...First, there was a strong resurgence of a broad-based prochoice movement which seemed to have caught the right to life movement unprepared...

...another 44 percent said abortion should be allowed in certain circumstances...

...Protestants 55 percent...

...hat does the New Jersey election show about post-Webster politics...

...Arguing that it was possible to be anti-abortion and prochoice, the Women's Agenda focused the basic issue on whether the government or a woman should decide to continue or terminate a pregnancy...

...It mobilized activists and volunteers...

...The Star-Ledger/E&gleton polls are conducted by Rutgers University's Eagleton Institute of Politics and the Newark Star-Ledger, the state's largest newspaper...

...It is also one of a handful of states continuing Medicaid funding of abortions-this as the result of a 1982 State Supreme Court decision...

...Prochoice advocates now estimate 40 or 41 members on their side in the new assembly in contrast to 27 in the current one...

...Other women worked in Democratic party committees as well as in organizations, such as the Women's Agenda, New Jersey Right to Choose, and the state chapter of the Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights (RCAR...

...Pro-Life Pac originally endorsed 54 assembly candidates, then revised that downward to 46 as some candidates began to back away from a prolife position...

...However, Catholics differ from other New Jerseyans in the case of a woman's desire not to have a baby...

...Many defined that issue not around the morality of abortion per se, but around a woman's right to decide whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term...

...Rita Martin, prolife director for the Diocese of Metuchen and former president of the New Jersey Right to Life Committee, says prolife groups are also pleased with the assembly election because only 70 percent of the Choice-Pac's 67 endorsed candidates won and because choice candidates in targeted districts were defeated by prolife candidates...

...in the new assembly the Democrats will have an eight-seat majority (44 seats to the Republicans' 36...

...In a postmortem on the election, Ken Connolly, Courter's campaign manager, conceded the campaign was dominated by the abortion issue to the detriment of his candidate...

...Even more than other Americans, they are ambivalent about the role of government...

...A significant number favor less government intervention in economic matters and personal lifestyle issues, but more government assistance to solve crime, drug, and environmental problems...

...and if the woman feels she cannot afford a child (52 percent...

...Prochoice leaders say the New Jersey race shows that the right to choose is a pivotal voting issue and that prolife officials and candidates are out of touch with public opinion...

...Several factors might explain why New Jerseyans are likely to land on the prochoice side when it comes to abortion policy...

...The poll also showed a close relation between how people felt about abortion and how they voted...

...During the campaign, however, Courter, aware of opinion polls showing the prochoice tendencies of New Jerseyans, tried to soften his stand by saying that, as governor, he would not propose restrictive legislation...

...Jerseyans also have a strong penchant for home rule and local control...

...National polls show that between the polar extremes of pro-abortion and anti-abortion, there is a large group of Americans who are against abortion on demand and who favor some but not all restrictions on abortion...

...They were churchwomen, community leaders, local volunteers...

...The front-runner Jim Florio campaigned throughout as a prochoice candidate...

...Janice Ballou, director of the Star-Ledger IEa.g\eton poll, emphasized how much New Jerseyans differed from the nation on this point: "Compared to national polls that show less than 3-in-10 Americans support legal abortion in any circumstances, this state has close to a majority who favor this position...

...They organized Choice-New Jersey, a coalition of thirty-five groups, which coordinated statewide efforts to inform voters of the candidates' positions on abortion policy...

...Perhaps because they essentially agreed with it...

...By framing the issue in this way and labeling their opponents antichoice (not prolife), the prochoicers made the right to decide the moderate, mainstream position in the New Jersey elections...

...their man waffled...

...A typical example of this approach can be found in the newsletter of the Women's Agenda...

...That is hard to know...

...only 5 percent said abortion should not be allowed in any circumstances...

...senators are Democrats, but it went Republican in the last three presidential elections and has had a liberal Republican, Thomas Kean, as governor through the 1980s...

...Catholics are virtually indistinguishable from Protestants in supporting legal abortion during the first trimester in cases of rape and incest, fetal deformity, and when a woman's physical health is endangered...

...Since the Democrats already control the senate, which was not up for election in 1989, the gubernatorial and assembly elections put them in control of state government...

...Operation Rescue, which has been active in the state, may have sensitized voters to the burdens to women that would follow upon restrictive legislation...

...It is no accident that the Libertarian party is relatively strong in the state and regularly fields candidates in statewide elections...

...Overall, Florio took 63 percent to Coulter's 37 percent...

...The public policy issue was defined as choice, and nothing else...

...Obviously some incumbents lost...

...Kean has expressed reservations about the wording of the bill...

...of those who want to tighten the rules, 54 percent...

...No surprise prolife leaders minimize the issue...

...Working froma 1981 League of Women Voters' statewide survey, Roberta Francis, former director for women's issues of the League, drew a sharp distinction between the legality and morality of abortion...

...A majority of Catholics also approve of legal abortion in the first three months if the woman is under 18 (52 percent...

...They included members of groups such as the League of Women Voters, Soroptimists, PTA, YWCA, the Junior League, business and professional women's clubs, and chapters of the American Association of University Women...

...The Eagleton poll also found some differences in intensity of conviction between Catholics and Protestants, and this is undoubtedly a reflection of the ambivalence Catholics often feel about the issue...

...Debra Dodson, a political scientist with the Eagleton Institute's Center for American Women and Politics, thinks the abortion issue affected the election in three ways...

...A Star Ledgerf Eagleton poll also showed that a large majority of Catholics (73 percent) and of Protestants (78 percent) agreed that the abortion decision is a private matter...

...Once again prochoice and prolife advocates have differing interpretations...

...She acknowledges, however, the basic shift: the current assembly had a prolife majority, while the new assembly has only a prolife bloc...

...No surprise that prochoice leaders emphasize the importance of the abortion issue...

...They were Democrats and Republicans, working women, grandmothers, mothers, and daughters-the kind of civic-minded women who sit on school boards, participate in local government, and keep New Jersey's small communities going...

...The Democrats also gained control of the state assembly, winning 44 seats to the Republicans' 36...

...How important was the abortion question in this election...

...This is especially true in New Jersey, where many representatives come from one-party communities...

...Who were these women...

...In addition, 3 prochoice Democrats were first-time winners...

...Though there was a difference of twenty-six percentage points, and though the candidates were treated in the press as representing clear-cut choices on abortion, there are different interpretations of the significance of the abortion issue in the outcome...

...it shaped the way the candidates ran their campaigns...

...Events since the election confirm the new assembly's alignment...

...The contrasting national figures (Boston Globef WBZ-TV poll, March 1989) are respectively 25 percent...

...It appears that a well-organized prolife movement was overtaken by the protest reaction against Webster that swept the state and brought about a resurgence of prochoice activism...

...Protestants 61 percent...

...Perhaps the citizens of this most densely populated state in the nation are especially sensitive to issues of privacy-the kind of zonal privacy that the Supreme Court cited in Roe v. Wade to shield a woman's sexual and reproductive life from public intervention and scrutiny...

...Why did Jersey voters-or at least a majority of those who went to the polls-accept this semantic framework...

...in March 1989 and again in September, a large majority of New Jerseyans (80 percent and 77 percent) agreed that the abortion decision should be left to the woman...

...Prolife advocates judge that chances of passage are better with the current assembly than the new one...

...and finally it influenced the vote itself...

...New Jersey prochoicers seemed able to draw on a broad range of people concerned that Roe might be reversed, mobilizing across class, race, gender, and party lines...

...In upholding a Missouri statute restricting abortion {Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, July 1989), the Court signaled a shift in the debate from national to state politics, from courtrooms to legislatures, and from judicial appointments to election campaigns...

...Thirty members of the new assembly are counted prolife and there is insufficient information to categorize the other 9 or 10...

...She concedes that "the new assembly is not as good as we want or as good as the old one...

...The Garden State is of particular interest because Catholics are the largest single religious group in the state: 41 percent (3,160,054) out of a population of 7.5 million...

...and of those who want to ban abortion, 47 percent...

...Moreover, the Star-Ledger/Eagleton poll data indicate that, at least in New Jersey, those who favor some restrictions on abortion are more likely to support a woman's right to decide than to support or vote for candidates who want to ban abortions completely...

...State branches of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) focused on the race for governor...

...Political analysts usually watch New Jersey as a "swing state" in presidential elections and regard it as a barometer of the mood of the national electorate...

...To summarize, the New Jersey election experience suggests that "respect-for-a-woman's-right-to-decide-free- from-govern-ment-interference" has the potential for evoking consensus on this issue as much as, if not more than, the "against-abortion-on-demand" stance...

...The result is that incumbents usually win...

...abortion was second, along with the environment (22 percent...

...New Jersey prolife forces also drew volunteers from a coalition of twenty groups, including New Jersey Right to Life Committee, Eagle Forum, Knights of Columbus, Christian Action Council, Concerned Women of America, and Citizens Concerned for Life...

...Jim Courter has long opposed abortion: he signed a congressional amicus brief in the Webster case asking the Court to reverse Roe v. Wade...

...Opinion polls show the state to be largely prochoice...

...Barely two weeks after election day, a prolife assembly member introduced a parental notification bill in the lame-duck assembly...

...The first lesson of the New Jersey campaign is the political power of women (and men) who are willing and able to translate strong convictions about the abortion issue into effective political organizing...

...Among New Jersey Catholics, the figures were 43 percent, 47 percent, and 6 percent...

...The second lesson springs from the first: the prochoice position has strong political appeal when it is framed as preserving a woman's right to choose...

...53 percent, and 19 percent...

...According to the exit poll, of those who support easy access to abortion, 68 percent voted for Florio...

...Incumbency is usually the single most significant factor in the outcome of state legislative contests: many voters are not particularly interested in these races (many do not even know the names of their assemblymembers, much less those of their opponents), and the media rarely pay attention to them...

...Generalizations about patterns of response to Webster among the fifty states are premature, but a careful look at New Jersey, one of the few that had statewide elections in 1989, may provide some early clues to the nature of post-Webster abortion politics...

...Jersey voters are independent-minded: its two U.S...

...Choice-Pac focused on the assembly race and raised $200,000 in four months in order to run voter-identification projects in selected districts ($ 183,000 was raised in-state...

...A Pro-Life Pac was formed fourteen years ago and its county-by-county organization of phone banks and volunteers has been in place for some time...

...Was it over the abortion issue...

...In the November gubernatorial election, Democratic Congressman James J. Florio defeated Republican Congressman Jim Courter for the governor's seat...

...Finally, the New Jersey experience suggests that the common prolife characterization of the opposition as "radical feminists"-narrow, class-based, and extremist-is clearly erroneous and should be revised...

...And in this, they may differ with the views of their fellow Americans...

...She also says that in the course of the campaign 4 others clarified their position in a prochoice direction...

...Protestants 61 percent...

...Auto insurance rates-New Jersey has the highest in the nation-mattered most (32 percent) to the 1,653 voters who participated in a New York Times/CBS exit poll...

...furthermore, no legislator's position has been tested by a vote since 1982, when the last abortion bill came before them...

...Prolife leaders, on the other hand, do not see the gubernatorial race as a referendum on the abortion issue because Courter softened his opposition to abortion and confused voters about his position...

...But even with a prochoice governor and state legislature, prolife legislators and activists will continue to press for restrictions, and presumably they will also be working in 1991 to gain control of both houses of the legislature and again in 1993 when governor and assembly are up for reelection...

...According to Connie Butcavage, president of the Pac, prolife forces "won at the ballot box" in the assembly races but lost in the pre-election jockeying for identification as prochoice or prolife...

...the man who held their views won...

...A Star-Ledger/Eagleton poll shows that Jerseyans diverge from national polls in significant respects...

...After Webster, he voted last August against Medicaid funding of abortions in Washington, D.C...

...In the current assembly, the legislators' positions on abortion have not been along party lines...

...Whereas a majority (53 percent) of all voters approve of legal abortion in this case, Catholics are evenly divided between those who oppose and those who approve (47 percent...

...Prolife advocates hope to get the bill through the legislature and send it to Governor Kean before the legislative term ends in early January...

...Pro-Life Pac raised $20,000 (of which $10,000 came from the National Right to Life Committee...

...But in this election there was a shift: the current assembly has a two-seat Republican majority (41...

...This is a new development in abortion politics...

...In her analysis, Florio's prochoice position helped add several points to his victory margin while Courter's ever-changing position on abortion policy diverted attention from his stand on other issues and made it difficult for him to close the gap with Florio...

...If the New Jersey experience is any indication, prochoice organizations can call on a broad range of men and women who are not activists or extremists on the issue, but who have reached the conviction that decisionmaking about abortion should be left to individual women...

...he declared immediately after Webster that, as governor, he would veto any legislation to restrict abortion...