Why Pro-Choice Failed
FRUM, DAVID
Why Pro-Choice Failed by David Frum THE PLAN MUST HAVE SOUNDED CONVINCING when political consultant Roger Stone presented it to Senator Arlen Specter. A majority of the Republican party, possibly...
...A majority of the Republican party, possibly up to 70 percent, favors legal abortion...
...If a president appoints Supreme Court justices who think Roe wrong and want jurisdiction over abortion returned to the states, by and large pro-abortion Republicans won't complain...
...Teenage girls can obtain abortions without their parents' knowledge or consent...
...wives can abort without their husbands' knowledge or consent...
...Arlen Specter's suspension of his presidential campaign Wednesday, just a month after an equally miserable showing by California governor Pete Wilson, leaves Malcolm S. Forbes, Jr...
...In other words, there's plenty of room for the scope of the abortion right to shrink before American law reaches what pro-abortion Republicans regard as the core of the matter: the legality of abortion in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy...
...Under the sinister influence of the Christian Right, the leading candidates for the Republican nomination have declared themselves pro-life...
...So a glittering opportunity beckons for a candidate who can position himself as both pro-abortion and fiscally conservative...
...For 16 years, the prediction has been falsified...
...Senator, you're White House bound...
...And so should the pundits and consultants who are tempted to take those candidacies seriously...
...How can the pro-life minority continue to control the party over their objections...
...Mothers may abort at any time, even as late as the eighth month of pregnancy...
...For 16 years, non-conservatives have been gleefully anticipating an imminent Republican mutiny against the dominance of the pro-life minority...
...They tend not to see abortion as an inalienable right that women must possess in order to achieve their full personhood...
...In any case, because pro-abortion Republicans see abortion as a compromise, rather than an inalienable right, they tend not to get particularly excited about the exact boundaries delimiting abortion...
...Right now, American abortion law must rank somewhere near China's as the most permissive on earth...
...The top four Republican vote-getters of 1988-George Bush, Bob Dole, Pat Robertson, and Jack Kemp-all professed pro-life opinions, as did candidates Reagan and Bush in 1980...
...Republicans in favor of legal abortion think about abortion very differently than pro-choice Democrats...
...That means, first of all, that unlike liberals who want to see a broad right of sexual privacy judicially inserted into the Constitution, pro-abortion Republicans feel little enthusiasm for the Roe v. Wade decision that created the abortion right...
...And Forbes is hardly a standard-bearer for abortion rights...
...The truth of the matter is that pro-abortion Republicans don't object very strenuously...
...as the only candidate for the Republican nomination who has not promised to do his best to outlaw abortion...
...Why do Republicans who want abortion to remain legal (I agree with them) tolerate this...
...Pro-abortion conservatives think of abortion as a right equivalent to advertising: It can be regulated in all sorts of ways before any important liberties are threatened...
...they think instead that, on balance, legal abortion produces less human misery than outlawing abortion would...
...Presidential candidates who hope that their support for unrestricted abortion will compensate for other personal and ideological deficiencies should keep that fact in mind...
...In 1996, as it has in every year since 1980, the allegedly pro-choice Republican membership will nominate a pro-life candidate and adopt a pro-life platform...
...Pro-choice liberals think of abortion as a right equivalent to prayer:Any limit on it threatens women's fundamental liberty...
Vol. 1 • December 1995 • No. 12
