EDITORIALS

By Dave Andrusko

Coming to Grips With Abortion

As the Democratic Party attempts to extricate itself from the debris of the 2004 elections, many party leaders and strategists - - even failed presidential nominee John Kerry - - have talked about the need to address abortion. An early story on this matter brought attention to a closed-door post-election meeting of a number of party activists at the headquarters of the AFL-CIO.

According to Newsweek's Debra Rosenberg,

"When Ellen Malcolm, president of the pro-choice political network EMILY's List, asked about the future direction of the party, Kerry tackled one of the Democrats' core tenets: abortion rights. He told the group they needed new ways to make people understand they didn't like abortion. Democrats also needed to welcome more pro-life candidates into the party, he said. 'There was a gasp in the room,' says Nancy Keenan, the new president of NARAL Pro-Choice America."

We can hope and pray that, indeed, the party will "welcome more pro-life candidates into the party." But if virtually everything else that has been said post-November 2 can be trusted, the long and the short of it will likely be nothing more than finding "new ways to make people understand they [Democrats] don't like abortion." In a word, words.

That's not only not enough, it's an insult to our intelligence. Does the following, taken from the Democrat's 2004 party platform, really suggest the party "doesn't like abortion"?

"Because we believe in the privacy and equality of women, we stand proudly for a woman's right to choose, consistent with Roe v. Wade, and regardless of her ability to pay. We stand firmly against Republican efforts to undermine that right."

This is a very thinly disguised insistence on abortion on demand and the obligation of the government to frisk your pockets to pay to take the lives of unborn children. No member of the Abortion Establishment needs "gasp" yet.

Only occasionally in this reevaluation process has the advice and counsel of the patron saint of pro-life Democrats, Pennsylvania Gov. Bob Casey, been given a hearing, and never, to my knowledge, by party honchos. Bill McGurn, a columnist for the New York Post, has written eloquently about the late Gov. Casey, including in the January issue of the journal First Things.

He calls to our attention this powerful (and prophetic) passage, which appeared in Gov. Casey's 1996 autobiography, Fighting for Life.

"Many people discount the power of the so-called 'cultural issues' - - and especially of the abortion issue. I see it just the other way around. These issues are central to the national resurgence of the Republicans, central to the national implosion of the Democrats, central to the question of whether there will be a third party. The national Democrats may, and probably will, get a temporary bump in the polls - - even, perhaps, one more national election victory - - from their reactive strategy as the defenders of the elderly and poor who rely on Medicare and Medicaid. But the Democrats' national decline - - or better, their national disintegration - - will continue relentlessly and inexorably until they come to grips with these values issues, primarily abortion."

Alas, the likely response to yet another round of defeats for the party of abortion is as obvious as it is bound to fail. They will do two things. First, they will employ religious "buzzwords," which will sound hollow coming from people who either don't believe in what those words stand for or are uncomfortable making such an argument publicly.

But rhetoric only takes the party so far, so, the next step will be to baptize issues they want to run on as "moral issues" equivalent to, and indeed superior to, abortion. This will become a drumbeat, only it can't work.

Disagreements over how to preserve the environment or the best way to improve Social Security are prudential questions of judgment about which men and women of good will can and do differ. Differences over abortion are of another magnitude and fundamentally different.

Writing in the September 24 issue of Commonweal, Kenneth Woodward unloaded a devastating critique of Mario Cuomo, the most famous "personally opposed but" pro-abortion politician of our time. In the course of his essay, Woodward reminded us that abortion is "evil"; that defending the unborn's human rights is "a matter of public [not private] morality"; and that "the abortion dispute is a disagreement over the scope of social justice."

In other words, abortion is intrinsically evil; it is not private but a matter of huge public consequence about which we must all take a stand; and just as we would any other instance of child abuse, we absolutely must oppose abortion as a matter of justice towards the weakest among us.

The other editorial that begins on page two is an elaboration of one simple point: seeing is believing. There is so much attention paid to the unborn child in ultrasounds, medical news reports, and commercials, it's growing increasingly impossible to subscribe to the old pro-abortion orthodoxies.

Pro-abortion Sen. Minority Leader Tom Daschle is now a private citizen in South Dakota. For years and years, he had papered over the contradiction between his militant support for abortion in Washington and his insistence back home that he was practically a pro-life stalwart.

For example, as McGurn writes, "As Senate Minority Leader, Daschle told a Democratic audience that Roe v. Wade was 'sacred ground'; he also orchestrated the filibusters that during President Bush's first term prevented pro-life judicial nominees from even receiving an up-or-down vote - - and then complained during his reelection campaign about being called 'pro-choice.'"

In 2004, the truth finally won out. People saw Daschle for what he was.

As the party that defends any abortion for any reason at any point in pregnancy, Democrats are rightfully paying a huge political price. Democrats were smartly chastened by the electorate two months ago. They understand that they must do something.

The question, obviously, is whether to rethink and reconsider or fabricate and falsify. While the odds are long, it is true the party's attention is fully focused.

We can hope this allows the remaining pro-life Democrats in Congress to establish a beachhead in an alien culture. The party of Bob Casey deserves at least this, and much, much more.

Dave Andrusko can be reached at dandrusko@nrlc.org.