Abortion Foes Must Win Over Hearts
Republican presidential hopeful Robert Dole discovered this month that politicos should never talk casually about abortion. Dole told “Meet the Press” moderator Tim Russert that he no longer supports a human life amendment to the Constitution, which would ban abortion categorically.
“I think there have to be some exceptions … the life of the mother, rape or incest.”
Dolephobes pounced immediately. Fellow presidential contenders Patrick Buchanan and Phil Gramm accused him of apostasy. “Bob Dole may be the current front-runner for the Republican nomination,” Buchanan thundered in a press release, “but I will fight him every inch of the way between here and San Diego to make sure our party never abandons its unqualified support for the innocent newborn. … The lines are drawn. Let the battle begin.”
Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition took a less Churchillian line, but expressed dismay at what others described as a reversal in position by Dole.
But Dole got a bum rap. He hadn’t changed a thing. He still wants the repeal of Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, and he supports a constitutional amendment that would protect the life of the unborn except in the above-cited instances. He has held those positions for years.
A bevy of organizations, frustrated by the fact that Roe took the abortion issue out of people’s hands, have devoted themselves to cheap theatrics - patterned more after Abbie Hoffman than Mother Teresa.
‘These antics seek to shock Americans into understanding that a fetus isn’t just an undifferentiated lump of tissue. Yet these vivid exhibits are less likely to transform skeptics into believers than they are to make passers-by want to toss their cookies.
Fortunately, technology has succeeded where these would-be revolutionaries have failed. Any mother can see as early as the second month that her baby-to-be has such things as bones, brains and a beating heart. George Weigel of the Ethics and Public Policy Center notes that the simple sonogram has forever destroyed the abortion advocate’s claim that a fetus is just a blob with no inalienable rights.
The recent congressional vote to ban partial-birth abortions - a procedure in which doctors deliver all but the baby’s head, then suck out the brains and kill the fetus while it remains technically within the womb - illustrates a broader trend toward admitting that at least in some cases, an abortionist commits murder. This is a crucial concession because it leads to the overwhelming question: At what point, if any, does the operation cease to kill a living human being?
But Americans don’t yet want to explore that question because most of us are ambivalent hypocrites on the issue. Many folks say that they don’t want to impose the burdens of parenthood on youngsters who just made a mistake in a moment of youthful passion. This position may seem compassionate, but it places convenience over conscience.
If abortion foes don’t build a serious moral case for their position and demonstrate their compassion by helping out young mothers (and fathers), they never will build the political consensus necessary to overturn Roe.
This leads to a critical point. Abortion is at heart a moral issue, but Americans eventually address it in the political arena. If pro-lifers hope to put an end to the holocaust in our operating rooms, they first must mount a sustained appeal to conscience - a new civil-rights movement based on the principle that life is sacred.
Pat Buchanan may want instant results, but it’s not in the cards. Abortion opponents will have to win their battle the old-fashioned way - by winning converts in the court of public opinion and building a crusade like the one that finally bumped off Jim Crow. The constitutional amendment will take care of itself at that time - and not a moment before.
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