Litmus Tests, Slippery Slopes
The New York Times is concerned about the future of the Republican Party again, so I guess we should all pay close attention. A Times editorial proclaims that the idea of withholding campaign money from defenders of "partial-birth" abortion is just awful. It would "essentially banish pro-choice Republicans and destroy any semblance of a 'big tent' approach." Why the Times thinks pro-choice Republicans can't vote to ban the grisly partial-birth operation is obscure. Why the newspaper worries about the size of the Republican tent is even more obscure, since the paper hardly ever endorses the candidacy of anyone in it.
Still, the Times has much to tell us. For instance that "antiabortion groups have grabbed this issue because it is easier to fight a single procedure than to attack constitutionally protected abortion rights in general." In editorials and news reports, the Times tirelessly uses words like "grabbed," "seized upon" and so forth to indicate that partial-birth abortion (code words: "certain late-term abortions") is not an issue in itself but merely a skirmish in a war against Roe v. Wade.
To arrive at this position, it is necessary for Times employees to avoid reading their own newspaper. Polls show that between 54 percent and 71 percent of Americans say they oppose partial-birth abortion. The Times's own poll, released last Friday, shows that a great many people are surprisingly hazy about the partial-birth issue--a majority didn't understand it or hadn't heard about it (45 percent didn't understand Roe either). But another number in the Times poll is even more surprising: Only 15 percent of Americans support any form of abortion at all for any reason during the second trimester (13 to 26 weeks). Partial-birth abortions are done in the second and third trimesters.
"Whittle away." The Times found that since 1989 support for generally available legal abortion has dropped from 40 percent to 32 percent. In general, as the Times headline indicates, the PUBLIC STILL BACKS ABORTION, BUT WANTS LIMITS, POLL SAYS. The poll must come as a revelation at a newspaper where a five-day wait for a handgun is a "regulation" but a one-day wait for an abortion is a "restriction," one of the "barriers" and "obstacles" that "whittle away at the edges of Roe v. Wade."
This language is borrowed from Kate Michelman and other abortion fundamentalists who will fight to the end against the sort of reasonable regulations that the American public wants to see. To its credit, the Times has published a poll showing how far from the mainstream the fundamentalists are.
They see a ban on partial-birth abortions as a direct attack on Roe. But Roe says nothing about anyone's right to dispatch a fetus/baby during the birth process. In fact, as Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School points out, the ban was once envisioned as a reasonable act that could begin to heal the wounds of the abortion wars by bringing pro-life and pro-choice people together on commonground.
It's sobering to learn that so many Americans are not up to speed on the partial-birth issue. But a majority of those who follow the discussion have long since decided where they stand. They oppose it as a barbaric act. The Times poll introduced the "M" word: Half of Americans think all abortion is murder. Some of us who oppose abortion are not willing to go that far. But partial-birth abortions are outstanding candidates for "M"-word status. If you kill a fetus/baby that is halfway out of the birth canal, visible and moving, about 3 inches away from being declared a constitutionally protected human being, you are not really conducting an abortion. You are involved in a birth followed by a homicide.
A broader issue lies behind the partial-birth dispute. It isn't the fate of Roe v. Wade; it's the future of infanticide. Some straws in the wind: Peter Singer, the animal liberationist, published an article, KILLING BABIES ISN'T ALWAYS WRONG, citing babies with severe handicaps. Michael Tooley, a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado, thinks parents should have "some period of time, such as a week after birth" during which infanticide is permitted. A number of pro-choice theorists believe that newborns are not yet persons and should not have the rights of fully formed human beings.
Joseph Farah of the Western Journalism Center wrote an Internet article warning readers to "Pay attention. . . . The seeds of a movement are being planted." One seed burst into flower in the Times November 2 Sunday magazine. An article by MIT psychology professor Steven Pinker titled WHY THEY KILL THEIR NEWBORNS argued that infanticide is immoral but normal in many societies and perhaps biologically based. People think of birth as the boundary that defines personhood and rights, he wrote, but "to a biologist, birth is as arbitrary a milestone as any other."
This does indeed look like the rise of a movement committed to the moral and legal defense of killing after birth. By blurring the line between abortion and infanticide, partial-birth abortions obviously play into the hands of these people. So a ban on the gruesome procedure is all the more urgent.
This story appears in the January 26, 1998 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.