Newsweek: The GOP's Abortion Anxiety

[question everything]

The GOP's Abortion Anxiety

The pro-life movement is on a roll. So why are the Republican Party's top guns suddenly so shy on the subject?
By Howard Fineman and Evan Thomas
Newsweek

March 20, 2006 issue -

(snip)

But a recent flurry of activity on abortion is making Republican politicians nervous. With states moving to restrict abortion and the Supreme Court drawing closer to the day when it might actually reverse Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision guaranteeing a woman's right to an abortion, GOP leaders see big political risks.

They may be in the awkward position of getting more than they asked for. The South Dakota law, for instance, would allow abortions only to save the life of the mother, not in cases of rape or incest. That is further than most Americans want to go. By a roughly two-to-one margin, polls show, people want to uphold the basic abortion right enshrined in Roe v. Wade, even if they approve of some restrictions, like parental notification. "I'm pro-life, but you can't wear the thing out," says Clarke Reed, the legendary architect of the GOP in Mississippi. "I'm worried about it." With reason: his own state legislature is moving in a direction similar to South Dakota's.

"Republicans are going to be the ones who look like extremists," says former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, who lost his seat in 2004 after being beaten up on the abortion issue for years. That does not mean, however, that Democrats are rushing to call attention to the Republicans' dilemma. In the upcoming midterm elections, the Democrats don't plan to spend a dime on ads highlighting the abortion issue, according to Rep. Rahm Emanuel, the savvy Chicago pol who heads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He wouldn't spell out the reasons, but a top party staffer (who declined to be quoted out of deference to his bosses) told NEWSWEEK: "These guys are gun-shy because they're used to getting clobbered on the issue."

(snip)

Some of the Republicans' most ardent right-to-lifers are not embracing the South Dakota law. "It could backfire," says Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, if the courts strike it down—a near certainty, since the Supreme Court still lacks the votes to reverse Roe (and Justice John Paul Stevens, widely viewed as the vote that would maintain a 5-4 majority in Roe's favor, does not show signs of slowing down, despite being 85 years old). Virginia Sen. George Allen, a former governor, is firmly anti-abortion. But he told NEWSWEEK that if a similar bill had come through his own state's legislature, he would have vetoed it.

(snip)


With Martha Brant

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11786788/site/newsweek/

[babylonsister]

1. This is getting too close for comfort, especially w/the new

judges, and I still can't believe this has become a major issue so soon.:(

[blondeatlast]

2. I told every fence-sitter I knew (MANY) that we weren't voting for

president last November, we were voting for the Supreme Court.

[question everything]

3. Yes. I have been saying this since 1988 when a fellow Democrat

co-worker said that she did not feel as bad about Bush as she did about Reagan. Of course, Bush was considered by some as a moderate, compared to the rabid new Republicans from the South who took over what used to be a genteel Northeastern country club party.

And then, he did appoint David Souter so perhaps she was right.

And this is why I am still so angry about those who voted for Nader in 2000. Yes, it was Gore's to lose, but Nader helped.

[radio4progressives]

9. False Dichotemy and Cogitive Dissonence..

Nader helped Gore to win...

What will be your excuse in 2008?

[Warpy]

4. The fundies, like poisonous snakes, were just waiting for new

USSC judges to be seated to strike. They've dreamed about doing this for decades.

What they haven't done is think it through. For instance, think of the expense to corporations when more of their female workforce, those cheaper pars of hands, are out on maternity leave. Think about all those unwanted babies needing to be fed, clothed, immunized, housed, and educated. The cost of keeping a kid in an orphanage was $50,000/year back in the heady days of the Contract On America when they first proposed snatching children away from mothers on welfare and raising them in orphanages away from the pernicious influence of their mothers. We all know that after the first year the supply will vastly outstrip the demand for even squeaky clean white infants. They haven't considered the additional burden on a broken healthcare system of increased birth and birth complications and increased numbers of butchered women from illegal abortion.

They, especially the Democrats who are enabling them, haven't thought through to the backlash from women and from prochoice men, especially men who now find themselves stuck with 18 years of child support payments because the girlfriend couldn't get the abortion they both wanted.

This is quickly going to become the same disaster it was in pre-Roe days. This time there will be an obvious target for rage, and if the Democrats don't stop pushing antichoice and antiwoman candidates, they're going to get caught in the crossfire.

[AndyTiedye]

5. The Democratic Leadership Just Wants The Whole Abortion Issue to Go Away

Reid is opposed to abortion anyway, so he would regard a surrender on the issue to be a small price to pay.

[babylonsister]

8. "I" want it to go away, or remain the same. This possibility of

reversing Roe v. Wade is unnerving and could be disastrous!

[LastDemocratInSC]

6. The abortion issue is the "tie that binds" the wackos to the Repugs

I didn't read the article and it may point this out, but I'll say it anyway.

If the right-wing gets any degree of satisfaction from the Court with regard to abortion then the tie that binds them to the Repugs will be loosened. I believe that by any measure the interests of a typical right-wing voter are better addressed by the Democratic Party than by any other party. Take away the abortion issue and the primary issue becomes economics in our neo-Gilded Age.

I work with religious conservatives who are home-schooling their children for religious reasons. As a result of having just one income they are living on the fault-line of paycheck-to-paycheck family economics. They are far more vulnerable than the typical 2-income family.

I know that many argue that we Democrats should move to the middle on abortion rights in order to capture more of those vulnerable voters. I'm not sure this is necessary. It is, however, absolutely necessary that we make our party attractive for economic reasons. The pool of voters who are being screwed by Republican economic policies is larger than ever. We've got to make the Party attractive to them independent of any stance on abortion rights.

[AndyTiedye]

10. We ARE the Middle on Abortion Rights, 60% Agree

We are on the right side of the issue, but there is no electoral reward in being right.
Caving in is even worse that fighting them on the issue, but the truth is that this issue
hurts us, and will continue to hurt our party, no matter how we play it. We should expect
our stand on the abortion issue to cost us most of our present lead in the polls.

Banning abortion is an extreme right-wing position,
but the extremist right-wingers are running the show.

For the Repubs, it is a tie that binds them absolutely,
no matter how badly the get screwed economically.
There are very few, if any single-issue voters on our side of the issue.

Many Dems want to just surrender and hope that way the issue won't hurt them anymore.

It doesn't work that way.
Once the reich overturns Roe, they'll go after Griswold v. Connecticut.
Lawrence v. Texas is on the hit list too.

We still have to fight them on the issue, no matter what it costs our party,
even though there is little chance of winning.
Caving in would not pick up any votes and would only further demoralize our base.

[annabanana]

7. They know it is a minority opinion...

simply put. Most people agree, "Safe, Legal and Rare".