Abortion, prevention, and Dems … oh my

November 21, 2006

Slate’s William Saletan believes that Dems, after 12 years in the wilderness, bring a diverse caucus with competing ideas to the table, and could use “an idea” that can hold the party together. Oddly enough, Saletan recommends abortion — specifically, reducing the number of abortions — as the Dems’ signature social issue.

If ever there were an issue on which Democrats looked amoral, this is it. Abortion as birth control. Culture of life. If it feels good, do it. Republicans use this kind of language to make Democrats unpalatable even to voters who don’t think abortion should be outlawed. Polls show that Democrats can win these voters back. And there’s no better place to rebrand yourself than on the issue where you originally got branded.

The remedy is simple: Democrats are for reducing abortion without banning it. The most effective way, short of abstinence, is through birth control. Birth control isn’t about doing what feels good. It’s about taking responsibility. This is no gimmick. It’s a model for a new, more responsible definition of responsibility.

To be sure, Dems have been for reducing abortions without banning them for quite a while, but have been waiting for the GOP to catch up. For all their rhetoric and demagoguery, Republicans don’t seem to care much about reduction and/or prevention at all. They support banning so-called “partial birth” abortions, but only 0.08 percent of abortions are performed in the third trimester. They support parental notification, but there’s evidence that these measures don’t curtail the number of abortions either.

The Dems, on the other hand, have stepped up. The party is overwhelmingly pro-choice, but that didn’t stop Senate Dems, for example, from unveiling the Prevention First Act last year, sponsored by Harry Reid (pro-life) and Hillary Clinton (pro-choice), which aimed to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies and the resulting abortions by taking prevention seriously, through a combination of family-planning programs, access to contraception, and teen-pregnancy prevention programs. The legislation picked up 26 co-sponsors, all of them Dems. The religious right balked at the idea — Dobson famously said “there is no middle ground” on abortion — and Senate Republicans refused to even consider the bill, proving once again that there’s only one side of the political divide offering serious policy proposals to reduce abortions in this country — and it’s not the Republicans.

Of course, the GOP isn’t in the majority anymore, and the Dems’ efforts to reduce the abortion rate is about to begin anew.

As the WaPo’s E. J. Dionne Jr. noted today, 23 pro-choice and pro-life Democratic House members recently highlighted their support for a broad set of programs “aimed at reducing teen pregnancy, promoting contraception and encouraging parental responsibility. But it also includes strong measures to offer new mothers full access to health coverage, child care and nutrition assistance.”

The public debate usually ignores the fact that abortion rates are closely tied to income. As the Guttmacher Institute has reported, “the abortion rate among women living below the federal poverty level . . . is more than four times that of women above 300 percent of the poverty level.” The numbers are stark: 44 abortions per 1,000 women in the lower income group, 10 abortions per 1,000 women in the higher income group.

In other words: If you truly care about reducing the number of abortions, you have to care about the well-being of poor women.

There are moral and practical reasons for members of both parties, and combatants on both sides of the abortion question, to embrace this approach.

Liberal supporters of abortion rights should be eager to promote a measure that does not make abortion illegal but does embrace goals, including help for the poor, that liberals have long advocated.

I continue to believe that Dems have every reason to add this to their policy agenda. First, it’s an effective way to reduce abortions without limiting personal freedoms. Second, it improves access to health care. Third, it’s a political winner that doesn’t alienate either side (both NARAL and opponents of abortion right have endorsed prevention measures). Ardent pro-life voters aren’t going to start voting for pro-choice Dems because of efforts like these, but there are plenty of people in a murky “gray area” that will find this message appealing.

In the meantime, Republicans are going backwards. The congressional GOP has ignored prevention and reduction efforts for years, and worse, the White House has just appointed an opponent of birth control to run federal family-planning programs.

Dems have generally steered clear of even mentioning abortion for fear of pushing away pro-life voters and causing a rift within the party. Now, they’ve finally seem to have found a way to take a proactive, politically salient approach to the issue — which just so happens to put Republicans on the defensive. It’s about time.

Safe, Legal, and Rare.

I love this idea. It is good policy. It is good politics. Now that the adults are back in the drivers seat we can actually treat these issues as complex and multi-faceted. Is it the abortions that the right is opposed to or is it the law that legalizes them?

While Dobson et al rant on about baby killers, Dems can point to their legislation and say that prevented 1,000,000 abortions.

We need consistant and realistic public policy when it comes to healthcare. Puritanical rantings, abstinence, and banned procedures will fail when faced with education, access, and healthy options for Americans.

  • “Ardent pro-life voters aren’t going to start voting for pro-choice Dems because of efforts like these, but there are plenty of people in a murky “gray area” that will find this message appealing.”

    1000% agree, as I for one am one of those who believe that during the first trimester, the mother should have the absolute right of choice, but after the baby has undergone significant development, aborting a baby in the second and third trimester becomes a much tougher issue for me to accept.

    That said, I’m all in favor of any program that helps limit unwanted pregnancies. The opposition of such programs is one (of many) social issues that the right wing nut bags have clearly skewed the GOP’s social agenda off the cliff. One can only hope that after this November’s loss, this turns out to be one of the issues that the more level headed moderates can steal back from the religious right.

  • The Republicans’ opposition to birth control is weird and alien to the American mainstream. Democrats should take every possible opportunity to remind people of it.

  • Nice, it will further highlight the rabid righties’ obsession with our private parts, rather than babies. Perhaps the Dems could refer to birth control as abortion prevention, which might cause Dobson to blow a gasket. Every undecided and every pro-lifer will have to ask why Dobson is so picky about how the precious fetus is saved and how he could be against things that take care of the precious fetus once its born.

    OK, some arseholes get their kicks blocking access to clinics and worse, but the more rational people will think about it.

  • A little known fact is that abortions actually go up during republican administrations due to the fact that fewer people can afford to have the children of unexpected pregnancies. Another thing fundamentalists need to have pointed out to them is the hypocrisy of saying that one belongs to a pro-life party which supports war.

    For the rest of us, I believe that money talks loudly on both sides of the aisle and we need to get back to pointing out (“its the economy, stupid”) that we are the “Robin Hood party” which aims to redistribute the wealth (jobs, health care, taxes, minimum wage) away from the greedy, lazy, corrupt top 1% (corporations and lawmakers) back to the hands of hardworking Americans.

  • Sex is sin. Abortion is murder. Executions and wars kill the guilty. Eliminate all abortions with one stroke rather than rather than just lower the number. Abstinence is 100% effective brith control. Tell people what they can and can’t do then you don’t have to convince them. Don’t coddle sinners.

    Why reasonable measures when you’ve got all these absolutes?

  • I was wondering CB if you were going to comment on E.J.’s editorial today. I thought it was a wonderful read.

    BC is right. Always bring up the Theocratic Reactionary attempts to criminalize birth control. Point out that this creates tons of unwanted pregnancies many of which just end up being wards of the state.

    I know it’s tongue in cheek Dale. Abstinence is 100% effective, but Abstenence Education is only 50% effective, and the 50% who can’t keep it in their pants enter the sexual arena unarmed with the knowledge to remain free of STDs and pregnancies.

  • I’ve got no quarrel with the Democratic Party continuing to advocate a policy it’s been advocating since at least 1992, but I think William Saletan is up to his old tricks of criticizing Democrats for not being conservative enough. He’s calling in this article for some front-page crusade on limiting abortions, but he ignores the efforts of Democrats for over a decade to walk exactly the line he demands now.

    “Safe, legal, and rare” has been with the Dems since at least Clinton in 1992, and they have often put forward this nuanced position–favor abortion rights while expressing moral concern about too many abortions. A good example was John Kerry’s reply in the 2004 presidential debates that while he was opposed to abortion on religious grounds he backed the constitutional right to choice for others. What did Saletan think of that answer?
    “I know something about abortion politics, so I can tell you how effective Kerry’s answer was. It was awful. He defended public funding of abortion, which most Americans oppose, while at the same time he managed to convey ambivalence about the legal right to abortion, which most Americans support.” (http://www.slate.com/id/2107963/)

    I fear that no matter how skillful some Democrats are at middle-of-the-road ju jitsu on abortion, Saletan will still fret that they just don’t get the vital center. That’s his shtick, and it is well illustrated in his article.

    Saletan starts by saying “Two years ago, after Democrats blew the 2004 election, I threw an idea at them: ‘Go back to being the party of responsibility.’ They ignored me, of course.”

    I’m surprised that Saletan thinks the recent campaign that emphasized accountability in Iraq, ending corruption in Congress, and making sure government policies help rather than hurt the middling masses apparently failed to talk about responsibility.

    The rest of the article contains the usual litany of clichés about Democrats:

    “Democrats hate talking about cultural issues,” this after years of confessionals about Dem. faith and Dem. families, and this year Harold Ford advertising in a church.

    “You have to do things that are hard for you, not just for the other party. For Democrats, the toughest test is spending restraint.” Yes, the party that balanced the budget is the one that can’t control spending!

    “If Karl Rove were a Democrat, he’d pull these ideas together under an ideological banner and beat the other party’s brains out. But most Democrats lack the skill or will.” Right, Karl Rove, super genius who just lost both houses by making the election all about Iraq.

    Even when Democrats say what Saletan wants, he doesn’t like it (see above Kerry, 2004): “Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of evangelical voters, ‘We, the Democrats, respect and value their faith and their values that they adhere to in their families and in their communities.’ Faith, values, values, communities, families, respect, values. People can tell when you’re babbling from a polling memo.”

    One might wonder who, for Saletan (other than himself) is the wise sage who sees through the claptrap? Bruce Reed and the Democratic Leadership Council, of course. This line of thought has to get beyond battling strawmen caricatures of Democrats and start looking at what the party really says before it deserves anyone’s attention.

    Dionne, on the other hand, makes a good point. Tie the moral debate over abortion to a moral debate over poverty and move away from ideological terrain that the religious right owns towards ground that liberals own. Getting the politicians to talk about people below the poverty line might even be considered the responsible thing to do.

  • The Republicans’ opposition to birth control is weird and alien to the American mainstream. Democrats should take every possible opportunity to remind people of it.

    BC has it exactly right. And the Prevention First legislation is a great way to do this. Its about time we start using birth control as a wedge between the social conservatives and the rest of the (sane) country.

  • Part of reducing abortion is talking about sex in school.

    This gets a lot of people up in arms.

  • And sorry, but the Republicans have also tried to reduce abortions among poor women by not providing additional welfare funding and by paying for norplant contraception during the 1990s.

    Nothing in this program looks like anything but typical liberal stuff and there’s no spinning it otherwise.

  • “Dobson says there’s no middle ground on abortion.” That makes me immediately believe that there must be a middle ground on abortion.

    In crafting strategy on this issue, I think we first have to understand where people are coming from. For evangelicals, abortion and contraception and abstinence are all the same issue (indeed, I think everything ultimately relates back to abortion for them). I think Dale hit it right on the head – Sex is sin and abortion is murder. There is no way to discuss these issues rationally with evangelicals. But I do believe that,thankfully, they make up a small percentage of the electorate.

    The issue for most Americans, however, is more personal: they don’t want their teen-aged daughters getting pregnant or their teen-aged sons getting someone pregnant. Having to choose between keeping the baby, giving it up for adoption or getting an abortion is an emotional roller coaster that very few teens, if any, even the most precocious, are equipped to deal with. The pain comes from the loss of innocence which can never be regained. But there’s also the loss of the potential life, which cannot be denied. Dems/Liberals all too often try to deny that there is any moral ambiguity in getting an abortion, which I think is a mistake.

    So although I do like Safe Legal Rare, I think that we also need to recognize the inherent moral conflict in the pro-choice position. If it’s Safe and Legal, why should it be Rare? When we answer that question, I think we’ll be closer to having a social policy that most Americans will accept. They may not love it, but they’ll accept it and maybe we can move past this divisive issue (apart from the moral absolutists).

    For myself, I do have “moral issues” with abortions. But although there is the loss of the potential life, I believe that it is more immoral for any government or any person to be able to dictate what someone can and cannot do with their own body. But that said, what about 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions – if it’s Safe and Legal and the woman’s body, why should there be any restrictions at all? Again, the moral aspect pops up.

    Moral absolutes make life easy but I think that evangelicals are different than most in seeing abortion as a moral absolute. But just because I disagree with them does not mean that there is not a moral issue involved. Denying those moral issues creates a false position that I don’t believe anyone would support.

    Safe Legal Rare does give people a viable alternative. Education is of course imperative since every bit of research that I’ve seen shows that kids who get sex ed are less likely to have sex, let alone get pregnant. But, alas, I feel that when we rely on Americans getting educated on a particular issue, our expectations are so rarely met.

  • I wish things like the Prevention First agenda were what Democrats were talking about as their first priority when they take control, rather than things like Rangel’s draft proposal and gays in the military; see TPM for a good point on the issue of issue drift.

  • My first thought about the Republical /evangelical stand on abortion is that it isn’t the baby that they want to protect…no, they just want to stop everybody from having any sex at all that isn’t expressly for creating a new human being…that’s what god said and that’s that! They want to get into everyones bed room and control what every one does…or doesn’t as the case may be. It isn’t really abortion they want to stop…it is pleasurable sex! If every one understood that almost everyone would be on the oposite side…or maybe not.

  • George Arndt,

    On abortion, the right focuses on ideology and fear, and dems focus on real solutions.

    It would seem to me that you need not employ the qualifier “On abortion” for the rest of your statement to be accurate. Taxes? check. Homeland Security? Check. Energy? Check. I could go on and on.

  • Access to health care (and contraception) is as important as education, if not more so. I remember going to my “alloted” (free visit, free medications) doctor back in Poland, asking for a prescription for the pill. The pompous ass wouldn’t give it to me, because I wasn’t 18. He wanted me to bring one of my parents with me to approve (helloooo? At 16.5 I’m gonna let my parents know what I’m up to on that front?).

    Had to go to the Planned Parenthood and pay for the visit and the pill. So OK, I could, just about, afford it — both my boyfriend and I worked when we could (“rough” cleaning — windows, floors, etc) — but not everyone my age did; teenagers working for pin money was an almost unknown concept in communist Poland. So, in essence, the self-righgteous moron was setting me up as an abortion-potential. Which, he’d have had to perform, for free, if I’d brought a parent with me. And it’s certain-sure that both my parents, when faced with my having a baby before I finished college (never mind highschool), would have *clamored* for me to have it.

    There’s a difference between being against abortion (which *is* a big issue, psychologically) and being against people having responsible sex.

  • There’s like, a lot of common sense in that post and the comments. I think I’m feeling a little dizzy.

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