February 14, 2006
Bridging the Divide on Abortion
By E.
J. Dionne Jr.
NEW YORK -- For many staunch supporters and opponents of abortion
rights, the search for a third way on the issue seems like so much
phony political positioning.
But the
truth is that politicians are already engaging in strained positioning
on abortion. They know there is a large ambivalent middle ground
of public opinion that is uneasy with abortion itself and also
uneasy with a government ban on the procedure. So they fudge.
No one has
been more masterful at holding his pro-life base and appealing
to the middle than President Bush. He speaks regularly of his
support for a ``culture of life'' but never says he would overturn
Roe v. Wade. In Congress, supporters of abortion rights
in both parties will signal their moderation by opposing partial-birth
abortion or favoring parental notification laws for minors seeking
abortions. Whatever their merits, such laws do little to cut the
abortion rate.
But there
is a new argument on abortion that may establish a more authentic
middle ground. It would use government not to outlaw abortion
altogether, but to reduce its likelihood. And at least one politician,
Thomas R. Suozzi, the county executive of New York's Nassau County,
has shown that the position involves more than soothing rhetoric.
Last May,
Suozzi, a Democrat, gave an important speech calling on both sides
to create ``a better world where there are fewer unplanned pregnancies,
and where women who face unplanned pregnancies receive greater
support and where men take more responsibility for their actions.''
Last week,
Suozzi put money behind his words. He announced nearly $1 million
in county government grants to groups ranging from Planned Parenthood
to Catholic Charities for an array of programs -- adoption and
housing, sex education and abstinence promotion -- to reduce unwanted
pregnancies and to help pregnant women who want to bring their
children into the world. Suozzi calls his initiative ``Common
Sense for the Common Good'' and, as Newsday reported,
he was joined at his news conference announcing the grants by
people at both ends of the abortion debate.
This is
a matter on which no good deed goes unpunished, and Suozzi was
immediately denounced by Kelli Conlin, executive director of NARAL
Pro-Choice New York, for the grants that went to abstinence-only
programs which, she insisted, do not work.
As the National
Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy has argued for years, the best
approach to the problem involves neither abstinence-only nor contraception-only
programs, but a combination of the two. But the merits of the
issue aside, it's unfortunate that Suozzi's initiative is caught
in the crossfire of this year's campaign for governor of New York.
Suozzi is expected to challenge state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer,
the front-runner for the Democratic nomination. NARAL strongly
supports Spitzer, who opposes the ban on partial-birth abortion
which Suozzi -- otherwise an abortion rights supporter -- favors.
Still, it's
a good sign for the long run that in an interview on Monday, Conlin
was careful to praise most of Suozzi's grants program -- ``the
vast majority of it we are totally in agreement with'' -- adding
that ``prevention is the key.''
Nancy Keenan,
the president of the national NARAL group, is also stressing prevention.
Her organization ran an advertisement last year explicitly inviting
the ``right-to-life movement'' to join in an effort to ``help
us prevent abortions.'' Usually, NARAL's allies refer to abortion
opponents as ``anti-choice,'' so the conciliatory language itself
was a welcome departure. At the federal level, NARAL is pushing
for a bill promoting contraception introduced by Senate Democratic
Leader Harry Reid, an opponent of abortion.
Right about
this point, I can see my friends in the right-to-life movement
rolling their eyes and insisting that all this prevention talk
is a dodge. Maybe so, but my question to them is whether they
honestly think that their current political strategy, focused
on knocking down Roe and making abortion illegal, will
actually protect fetal life by substantially reducing the number
of abortions.
Even if
Roe falls, legislatures in the most populous states are
likely to keep abortion legal. And if a ban on abortion were ever
to take hold, does anyone doubt that a large, illegal abortion
industry would quickly come into being?
I have more
sympathy than most liberals with the right-to-life movement because
I believe most right-to-lifers are animated not by sexism
or some punitive attitude toward sexuality but by a genuine desire
to defend the defenseless. Surely that view should encompass efforts
to reduce the number of abortions in our nation. That's why I
hope Tom Suozzi finds imitators, and allies on both sides of the
question.
©
2006, Washington Post Writers Group
