Froma Harrop is a nationally syndicated columnist .
Roe v. Wade has been the law of the land for 33 years. Polls show that nearly two-thirds of Americans like it that way. This is a significant majority. But because it is a quiet group, as opposed to the anti-abortion faction, many politicians underestimate it. Republicans are now paying the price, and so will Democrats if they fall for the fiction that anti-abortion sentiment is growing and unstoppable.
What most Americans want is what Roe gives—open access to abortion in the first trimester, with increasing restrictions later on. As long as Roe stands, the legal debate centers only on what those restrictions may be. Some of them have been outrageous—such as the law forbidding military hospitals to provide abortions to women soldiers. It is true that even serious impositions have not aroused the general public. But meddle with the basic right, and the pro-choice giant will jump up and rearrange the political furniture.
Just look at South Dakota. The Coyote State’s normally gentle politics have turned angry since its legislature voted to virtually ban all abortions. From most media coverage of the action, you’d assume that the state was populated, border to border, by “pro-life” activists.
The polls show otherwise. Since Gov. Mike Rounds, a Republican, signed the draconian law, his job approval ratings have plummeted from 72 percent to 58 percent (even though he was never enthusiastic about the abortion ban). At least two prominent Democrats have jumped into the race to defeat him this November.
Democrats are lining up to run against the state lawmakers who voted for the abortion ban. That would include fellow Democrats who joined the anti-abortion camp. Julie Bartling, a Democrat, was the one of the bill’s sponsors. A Democratic lawyer is opposing her in the primary.
Pro-choice views cross into Republican politics as well. National polls consistently show a strong majority of Republicans favoring abortion rights.
The South Dakota law also appalled many Republicans in that state, according to news accounts. Republican state Sen. Brock Greenfield, a big supporter of the abortion ban, is being opposed in the primary by former Republican Sen. James Holbeck.
Other groups in South Dakota are vowing to resist the measure. The pro-choice forces are now collecting signatures to put the abortion matter before all the voters. All sides think they will succeed in placing a pro-choice referendum on the November ballot. And the Pine Ridge Indian reservation says that if the law goes into effect on July 1 as planned, it will open an abortion clinic on tribal land.
From a practical standpoint, abortion has been close to illegal in South Dakota for a long time. Only one clinic in Sioux Falls offers abortion services to the entire state. This means that a woman in Rapid City has to drive more than five hours for a medical procedure easily available in most of the civilized world. Anti-abortion activists have intimidated local doctors into not performing abortions—so Planned Parenthood has to regularly fly in medical personnel from Minnesota to provide the service.
The South Dakota law had bigger ambitions than merely ending reproductive freedom in one state. It was designed to be brought before the Supreme Court as a challenge to Roe v. Wade . Anti-abortion activists hope that the Court, with conservatives John Roberts and Samuel Alito aboard, will throw out the federally guaranteed right to abortion. If that happens, each state can write its own rules governing abortion, including South Dakota-type bans.
But ending Roe v. Wade would be a political Pandora’s box for Republicans. For starters, they could lose many suburbs that have voted Republican but are generally pro-choice. Virginia’s new Democratic governor, Tim Kaine, prevailed last November against an anti-choice Republican—thanks, mainly, to unexpected support from Virginia’s traditionally Republican exurbs.
The political aftermath of New Hampshire’s parental notification law provides another lesson in the dangers of forcing anti-abortion legislation onto a pro-choice public. The law required minors to obtain a parent’s permission before having an abortion. Actually, polls showed wide public support for the measure, which was regarded as a matter of parental rights rather than a restriction on abortion. New Hampshire is now a “purple state,” but even when it was Republican red, its libertarian culture was very pro-choice.
The law lacked an exception for medical emergencies, prompting a lower court to strike it down. Last January, the U.S. Supreme Court—which then included Sandra Day O’Connor and not Alito—agreed that the law had to ensure access to abortion for teens facing a medical crisis.
Even though the law did not challenge the basic right to an abortion, New Hampshire voters were so incensed by the mere appearance of an assault on reproductive freedom that they threw out three of its four sponsors from the state legislature.
Democrats do need to understand that the pro-choice majority encompasses a variety of views. Many who want to preserve reproductive freedom are also troubled by the large number of abortions performed in this country. Abortion rates are far lower in Europe (due in part, to superior health care systems delivering birth-control services).
But Democrats should reject the conservative proposition that freedom to obtain abortion causes the high abortion rates in America. Abortion rates have actually been declining since the mid-1980s. And they would be even lower today but for a falling percentage of poor American women with access to contraception, according to a newstudy from the Guttmacher Institute. The study found that, in 2001, 14 percent of poor women were not using contraception, compared with 8 percent in 1994. The institute blames the resulting rise in this group’s rate of unintended pregnancies on cuts in government family planning programs.
So when Hillary Clinton and other Democrats call for reducing the number of abortions in America, they strike a chord among many basically pro-choice people who want abortion kept legal but not regarded as casual. Many of these voters support Republicans for cultural reasons. Democrats can win them back.
No politician should confuse the anti-abortion noise with big anti-abortion numbers. The Democrats’ general support of reproductive rights puts them squarely with the majority. Democrats should remember that the pro-choice side only seems asleep at times. The political upheavals in South Dakota, New Hampshire and Virginia offer strong hints of forces that can be unleashed when the public sees its access to abortion seriously threatened.
