In a highly visible rift in the anti-abortion movement, a coalition of evangelical Protestant and Roman Catholic groups is attacking a longtime ally, Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson.
Using rhetoric that they have reserved in the past for abortion clinics, some of the coalition’s leaders accuse Dobson and other national antiabortion leaders of building an “industry” around relentless fundraising and misleading information.
At the center of the dispute is the Supreme Court’s April 18 decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, a federal law against a procedure in which a doctor partially delivers a late-term fetus before crushing its skull.
Dobson and many other antiabortion leaders hailed the 5 to 4 ruling as a victory; abortion-rights organizations saw it as a defeat. But six weeks later, its consequences have been, in part, the reverse.
“The Supreme Court decision totally galvanized our supporters” by raising the prospect that the court could soon overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 opinion that established a woman’s right to choose an abortion, said Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. “Both our direct-mail and online giving got a serious bump,” she said.
Among antiabortion activists, meanwhile, the decision in Gonzales v. Carhart has reopened an old split between incrementalists who support piecemeal restrictions and purists who seek a wholesale prohibition on abortions.
In an open letter to Dobson that was published as a full-page ad May 23 in the Colorado Springs Gazette, Focus on the Family’s hometown newspaper, and May 30 in the Washington Times, the heads of five small but vocal groups called the Carhart decision “wicked,” and accused Dobson of misleading Christians by applauding it.
Carhart is even “more wicked than Roe” because it is “not a ban, but a partial-birth abortion manual” that affirms the legality of late-term abortions “as long as you follow its guidelines,” the ads said. “Yet, for many years you have misled the Body of Christ about the ban, and now about the ruling itself.”
There’s no “split” on the moral teaching of the church. There will always be messy differences when it comes to forming and contending for public policy. But the church is not called to run the nation – simply to speak the truth (and TEC is an abysmal traitor to the universal church).
Here in South Dakota, a very strict abortion ban was defeated. Even some pro-life people voted against it because of its provisions (or lack thereof). But that was about policy, not about a change in moral perception.
How many times have we seen this right here? It has happened to me–instead of keeping focused on the ultimate goal, on which we all agree, we often attack each other over some perceived slight or detail. What a waste of time and resources.
As someone who was very much involved in the movement back in the early 80’s I can tell you there have always been yahoos in the pro-life movement who want all or nothing or else.
But politics doesn’t work that way. The Partial Birth Abortion ruling IS a victory. The right response is to rejoice, then get back to work to protect more unborn children.
The Supreme Court’s Carhart decision is a significant symbolic victory for the pro-life cause and raises the possibility that the Supreme Court will at least partially overturn Roe v. Wade. James Dobson rightly welcomes it. These quarrelsome critics err both in attacking Dobson and in branding the Carhart decision “wicked.” If the critics want to withhold support from any politician or proposal that stops short of a complete ban on abortion, let them do so. But they should not be attacking those who support incremental steps to protect the unborn.
These critics will never get a complete ban on abortion. We did not have a complete ban before Roe v. Wade: plenty of states had already fully legalized abortion. Polls have repeatedly shown majority support for allowing abortion in a variety of “hard cases,” including rape, incest, and serious fetal deformity. You can agree or disagree with that, but it is and will remain a powerful political reality. If you choose to disregard it, you’ll court the same sort of self-inflicted defeat we saw last year in South Dakota: zealots insisted on crafting a law that would have compelled rape victims to bear their rapists’ babies, and voters found that too much to bear even in a culturally conservative state. In any event, the easy availability of abortion pills and out-of-state abortions will allow any woman who really wants an abortion to get one.
The real battle here is for heart and minds. We need to convince people, particularly women of childbearing age, that abortion wantonly destroys human life. We also need to provide solid support for women who go forward with undesired pregnancies. Ayatollah-like advocacy of total ban plays right into the hands of the abortion lobby.
One more point about politics: Roe v. Wade polarized debate over abortion by (among other things) preempting the normal process of legislation. When politicians can actually make laws, they have to think through the practical and political consequences of their actions. By neutering the legislative process, Roe v. Wade turned abortion politics into special-interest kabuki. Politicians could take extreme positions secure in the knowledge that legislatures could do nothing much about abortion in any case.
All that will change if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Legislation will have practical consequences—and extremists will face consequences at the polls. Overturning Roe will over time create a new political equilibrium that will weaken extremists at both ends of the political spectrum.
In sum, absolutism will help defeat itself. It will alienate swing voters from the pro-life cause. It will also undercut the more fundamental struggle to persuade people not to have an abortion even when they have the means (as they almost always will) to get one.
The real battle here is for heart and minds. We need to convince people, particularly women of childbearing age, that abortion wantonly destroys human life. We also need to provide solid support for women who go forward with undesired pregnancies. Ayatollah-like advocacy of total ban plays right into the hands of the abortion lobby.
Well said, Irenaeus. The Supreme Court decision was an important step in the right direction – the undoing of something that should never have been done. An all-or-nothing attitude or an everything-now attitude won’t get much accomplished. And not to celebrate a success but use it as a cause for division seems churlish and ungrateful, at the least.
Irenaeus, thanks for your very thoughtful statement which I think summarizes the situation well. Some of the Democrat candidates in the forum on Religion and Politics last evening made the point that both pro-life and pro-choice groups need to stop fighting each other and work towards the common goal of reducing abortions through a variety of means: e.g., education, pre-natal and post-natal support, reducing teen pregnancies, minimum wage, etc.
The kind of stupid infighting described in this article serves no one well.
Bob, I think that is an excellent idea, too. Sometimes we cherish our political “sides” so much we lose sight of our goals. It’s sad when we fail to see a common goal for the partisan muck. (Did I notice from a link you posted on another thread that you’re in Berea? Kentucky?)
The debate is somewhat skewed. Those who hold out for an absolute ban on all types of abortion, in all circumstances, are often called extremists. Are those who oppose the ban on the very rare and gruesome practice of partial birth abortion similarly called extremists? Because of the moral nature of the debate, it is hard to do any political horsetrading.
The one compromise position that would seem evident, however, is to agree that it is a matter for the state legislatures, not the Supreme Court reading a supposed right into the emanations from the penumbras of the Constitution.
“The one compromise position that would seem evident…is to agree that it is a matter for the state legislatures.”
Vinnie [#8]: That’s what you’d get if you flatly overruled Roe v. Wade. But it wouldn’t by any means end the controversy. State legislatures would still need to decided what, if any, legislation to enact.
The most likely reason Roe v. Wade will be overturned, according to most legal scholars, is less due to the subject matter and more a result of quality of reasoning from a legal standpoint.