By every conceivable measure, America is rejecting the pro-abortion movement’s absolutist regime of abortion on demand.
“Is your state next?”
– NARAL email after passage of the South Dakota abortion ban
They lost the Congress in 1994.
They lost the presidency in 2000 and failed to recapture it in 2004.
They watched helplessly as President George W. Bush reinstituted Ronald Reagan's Mexico City policy defunding international abortion providers; ended federal abortion counseling funding; signed the Born Alive Infants Protection Act; opposed the destruction of embryos for stem cell research; challenged Oregon's doctor-assisted suicide act; backed abstinence education, crisis pregnancy programs and parental notification laws; extended state health care coverage to “unborn children” (yes, that’s the wording of the law); and signed a federal ban on partial-birth abortion.
They railed hysterically against the President's overwhelmingly qualified choices of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court — the latter a replacement for retiring pro-choice Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. They stood despondent at the probability that these would not be the President’s last nominees.
And with South Dakota's recent enactment of the most pro-life law in America — one that's certain to end up in the U.S. Supreme Court and invite a revisiting of 1973’s Roe vs. Wade — pro-abortion activists find themselves shell-shocked. From their perspective, it's been a nightmarish decade, and George W. Bush is the absolute worst President they could have possibly imagined.
Yes, by every conceivable measure, America is rejecting the pro-abortion movement’s absolutist regime of abortion on demand.
The proof is in the pudding. For more than a decade, the number of abortions performed each year has been declining. Vast numbers who were “pro-choice” before the partial-birth abortion debate have come to see the pro-life light, and — for the first time since Roe — a clear majority of America’s women reject the idea of a legal “right” to kill one’s own child.
And now comes a USA Today article demonstrating that pro-abortion extremism is in even more trouble still. Based largely on data from the Alan Guttmacher Institute, it calculates what's likely to happen if Roe v. Wade is overturned and abortion becomes a state-by-state issue again.
The results are stunning, and stunningly better than most pro-lifers think.
Only 16 states are likely to continue abortion on demand — any time, any place, for any reason — after Roe. As you might expect, they include every state on the West Coast and almost every state in the Northeast, but only a third of the U.S. population.
By contrast, 22 states containing half of all Americans either already have enacted or are overwhelmingly likely to enact either complete or near-complete abortion bans, recognizing that the unborn child is a person, deserving of basic human rights like any other. Another 12 states are toss-ups. Once Roe is overturned, all of them could be "in play" for pro-life forces. And this two-thirds of America’s population is just four states shy of the 38 necessary to change the United States Constitution, recognizing babies as fully human just as the 13th Amendment recognized blacks.
Come to think of it, the Republican Party — founded one hundred and fifty years ago this June — enacted the 13th Amendment too.
The USA Today map suggests an immediate state-by-state strategy, pushing the envelope relentlessly, protecting preborn life "to the maximum extent consistent with federal law" in the words of several states’ pro-life constitutional amendments, designed to trigger upon Roe’s demise.
Pro-lifers should fight right now for these "Unborn Child Amendments" everywhere they can, and for laws like South Dakota’s as well. Win or lose, just fighting the fight will rally the troops, force pro-abortion groups onto defense — spending precious time and treasure just to stay even — and raise the public awareness necessary for future, ultimate victory.
Now — with Roe on the ropes — is the time to pursue this strategy in earnest. We must: not just to ensure real post-Roe change, but also to lay the groundwork for what once seemed utterly impossible — a federal constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to life.
An uphill battle? Of course. An impossible one? Not any more.
And that’s just the point. Why, precisely, are we on defense, on this or any other issue? Election after election, Americans have spoken. They want conservative government. They want meaningful change. And if they’re angry at their Congressional leadership, it’s because they no longer see a willingness to take on the big issues of principle and fight.
This fight is far from over; but pro-lifers have come a lot farther than most anyone thinks. The left is on the ropes; and we know what to do. It’s time to go finish the job.
I agree that most americans on both sides of the political isle are more traditional and conservative than is previously believed. The issues that they really differ on is based more on the blue-collar vs white collar issues, Dems vs Reps, etc. Most Americans want conservative government, wherein they are allowed freedom to persue thier dreams WITHOUT government interferrence. The abortion issue should haved NEVER been an issue in the first place. The state rights should have been respected since the begining. It is only the extreme polices of a handful that pushed that to the forefront. It was their own selfishness, that really made abortion an issue.
This is a test.
I have been sensing this optimism concerning Roe since GW won the 2000 election. I choose to save this optimism however, the Supreme Court will still vote for Roe. Until the balance of this court changes, the law stays the same. I believe the GOP loses its majority in the Senate in the the mid-term which all but guarantees any future appointee with pro-life tendencies will never make it out of committee. I pray I am wrong, but I believe no dramatic change will occur in the abortion debate until the Supreme Court overturns Roe. We need a miracle in the mid-terms to maintain our curent majority.
1. These battles tend to see-saw, and it wouldn’t be the first time we jumped to the conclusion of a battle half won.
2. Sandra Day-O’Connor, John Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter were also appointed by Republicans, touted as “reliably” conservative, and were hotly contested by the left as dangerous to the “established” right of abortion. Instead of reversing Roe v. Wade, they support “established” law and reinterpretating the Constitution to suit each new fad.
3. The swing away from abortion may be less than you think. Many people see partial-birth abortion as an aberration from the general practice of abortion than abortion itself the evil. They view PBA as ‘separable’ from abortion, and think they can get the lid back on Pandora’s Box without going back to “the bad old days of young women dying in back alley abortions”. I know people who agree PBA is a crime, yet persist in seeing abortion as otherwise okay. I recognize these people as the mainstream than either the pro-life or pro-abortion faction; and, although they currently favor curbing the extremes of abortion, they are not committed pro-lifers. If I were to guess, I would say most of these vague-conservatives support a restriction on PBA, but would not be enthusiastic for a complete ban on abortion.
4. Many who now vote conservative do so for other issues than abortion. Some have become conservatives only since 9/11 and in the context of defeating terrorism. Others have been and remain fiscal conservatives with no particular tendency for or against abortion. Only social conservatives, as a group, are strongly anti-abortion. Some who have abandoned liberalism have gone as far to the right as they once went left, but, overall, I find most people never shift their positions more than a little.
5. There is a risk to pushing the pro-life program too far, too fast. Societies resist change, sometimes even when the benefits are obvious. It is a normal to resist any change, even when it is to put things back in good order. There’s an entrenched mentality in this country that Roe v. Wade is the settled law that the pro-abortion faction and media insist it is. These middle voters are loathe to ‘stir up’ trouble they believe best left alone. They see the left has its radicals, but are equally convinced pro-life advocates are just as (or even more) infested by people who routinely break the law and threaten the peace to have their way. With the liberal media painting who we are, many who ought to favor the pro-life position are persuaded into thinking pro-lifers raving, often dangerous, lunatics, and that reversing Roe v. Wade is a dangerous precedent. Never mind it is abortion that is the pernicious novelty, it is far easier to paint a pro-life advocate the reactionary than prove a ‘feel-good’ liberal program is the real path to ruin.
I am heartened by the consolidation I see in conservative ranks and the cogent policy we’ve devised. In the late 1960’s, conservative policy consisted mainly in thwarting progressives and protecting vested interests. The interests are still with us, but we now have solid and well considered ideas how we want to reshape and revitalize our society. Taking Roe v. Wade out of our national policy and returning respect for life to our national ethos is a big part of that. However, I do not kid myself we are there or close to there yet, and neither should you. The forces of unreason are strong among us, the media and government are vested in abortion, abortion is a thriving business with undue political influence, and we have 2½ generations of youth indoctrinated in the supposed “right to abortion on demand” whom we must persuade they have joined in a murder pact.
I agree with this sentence in the first comment:
“…wherein they are allowed freedom to pursue their dreams WITHOUT government interference.”
The issue is that people don’t simply want the national government to not interfere, but the state governments as well. No Government interference instead, we want the national government to protect us from the interference of the state governments.
Over and over polls have shown two things- that most people are against abortion on a personal level, but believe it is a personal decision that each individual needs to make on their own.
Why is THIS issue one where the Conservatives are all for “Big Government” controlling peoples lives, instead of simply letting individuals make this moral, ethical decision on their own?
That’s what pro-choice means. Pro-choice is NOT pro-abortion. Pro-choice is pro-individual freedom, and pro-individual rights.
That’s a weak argument. To say that one is not pro abortion, but merely ‘pro choice’ is such a croc. Why then do we allow the Federal government to intervene at all. We should abolish all forms of government and live in an anarchy modeled society. The fact is, that abortion is murder, and as we (both state and federal) have outlawed murder, it only stands to reason that the protection of an unborn child should be paramount to a female wanting to murder her child out of laziness and whorish behaviour. Less than two percent of women who get abortions are raped or suffer from incest, so women use it as contraception…which makes it that much more deplorable. My own thinking is that killing the baby does not unrape a woman so therefore should not be a viable option. “right to choose” huh…what about right to life!
The argument in favor of banning abortion which states that an unborn child has a right to life represents a logical fallacy on several levels.
To begin, let me illustrate a hypothetical example. If every human on earth is given equal rights to live as they choose than it might at first appear as if things were hunky dory in the world. However, all it takes is one guy with words for weapons and entire populations could be oppressed. When ask to stop this tyrannical rampage, all he would have to say is that he has chosen a life where he may oppress other people. And therein lies the paradox. By grnating one demographic group certain rights, the rights of others must often be comprimised.
And so back to abortion. In arguing that an unborn child has a right to life undermines a woman’s right to maintain her health, life, and future, as childbirth certainly can have adverse effects on health, can result in death, and often ruins the livelyhood of yound mothers who never got the chance to establish themselves financially.
The argument that the young mother should have been more responsible and taken more care to prevent pregnancy also creates a pardox. It is no secret that the lower classes have a higher percentage of unwanted pregnancy. As outlined above, outlawing abortion would create a higher population of lower class citizens since the inevitable births would stop their parents from becoming educated and established. It would also likely lead to a huge population of orphins and bastard children. Because of this increase, there would be a larger lower class, and therefore more unwanted pregnancy. This is called a positive feedback loop, and would cease only when a strick two class system (haves and have nots) evolves.
So, if abortion is to be outlawed, then perhaps governmental programs to support the legions of unwanted and uncared for children should also be enacted, or do they not have a right to oppourtunity to go along with their right to life?
-Joseph Basile