Wrong To Blame Republican Loss On Pro-Life Movement, Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: Abortion
Article Date: 09 Dec 2008 - 4:00 PDT

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Ross Douthat, senior editor of the Atlantic and co-author of the book "Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream," argues in a New York Times opinion piece that blaming the pro-life movement for the Republican Party's 2008 defeat is an unjustified, but familiar and frustrating, refrain.

According to Douthat, the "message" from many conservative leaders is "clear": that the Republican Party "would be back on its feet in no time" if it would "only jettison its position on abortion." Douthat adds that many abortion-rights opponents have taken advice that the antiabortion movement should focus on "helping human beings outside the womb as well as those within it" to "heart" and that the "culture of...protest that once defined the movement is largely a thing of the past."

Although abortion-rights opponents have shown that they can "change, adapt and compromise," the "question" is whether the antiabortion movement "can afford to compromise" on the "composition of the courts," Douthat writes. According to Douthat, there are "many middle grounds imaginable in America's abortion wars, from bans that make exceptions for rape and fetal deformities to legal systems modeled on the French system, in which abortion is available but discouraged in the first 10 weeks and sharply restricted thereafter" and the American public is "amenable to compromise." However, the antiabortion movement remains "essentially trapped" by the "inflexibility" of the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which, according to Douthat, prohibit serious legal restrictions on abortion.

Douthat adds that "as long as the Supreme Court remains closely divided," the antiabortion movement's "basic political task will remain the same. Not because pro-lifers are absolutists who reject compromise, but because any real compromise will always depend on overturning Roe." Douthat concludes, "Giving up on this goal would mean giving up on the movement's very purpose, while gaining nothing in return" (Douthat, New York Times, 12/7).

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