[Dialogue] Abortion: The Hysteria that Divides the US

[Harry Wainwright]

Published on Friday, June 1, 2007 by the Independent/UK
<http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2600479.ece>  

Abortion: The Hysteria that Divides the US

by Andrew Gumbel

Anti-abortion campaigners in the US will tell you their crusade is about the
sanctity of life. But really it is about upholding a singularly unhealthy
tendency in American public life - the exploitation of a divisive social and
ethical issue to further the ambitions of a single political party whose
agenda doesn't necessarily reflect the interests of the anti-abortion
campaigners at all.

Since 1973, when the Supreme Court handed down its Roe v Wade ruling and
asserted that women have a constitutional right to choose to end an unwanted
pregnancy, abortion has been the Republican Party's best tool for enlisting
grass-roots support, particularly among evangelical Christians.

At the time, the Republican party was broken - unable to muster a majority
in either house in Congress and beleaguered by the Watergate scandal that
was to prove Nixon's undoing. Key to its recovery was a new wave of
grass-roots organizing in conservative churches. Overturning Roe v Wade
became a mantra for this movement.

At almost every turn, however, the anti-abortion campaigners have had reason
to be disappointed. Roe v Wade remains on the statute books. Ronald Reagan
tinkered with the abortion laws, as George Bush has done since, but fell far
short of grass-roots expectations.

The problem is that the majority of Americans support the notion of a
woman's right to choose. So politicians are wary of doing anything to make
the issue blow up in their faces. Evangelical Christians may pray for Roe v
Wade to be overturned, but such a decision by the Supreme Court could easily
provoke a political backlash guaranteeing Democratic election victories.

The trick, for Republicans, is to raise the issue just enough to stir the
passions of their supporters without turning it into a liability. As the
political commentator Thomas Frank put it, they may talk the God talk but
they still walk a predominantly corporate walk.

The contradictions between the anti-abortion rhetoric and political reality
have been glaring. Republicans who talked about the sanctity of life in the
wake of Roe v Wade also supported the Vietnam War. Reagan may have rushed to
the defense of the fetus, but he also cut social programs to lower-income
families, including access to health care. Many ardent pro-life Republicans
have also supported the death penalty. As the Massachusetts Democrat Barney
Frank said: "For Republicans, life begins at conception and ends at birth."

C 2007 Independent News and Media Limited

Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org 

URL to article: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/01/1605/

 

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