Fred Barnes, in a Weekly Standard article, Safe, Legal, and Stigmatized writes:
Pro-lifers are winning, but very gradually and incrementally, and they're not winning what they had hoped to. Their goal is to overturn Roe v. Wade, which would let each state decide its own abortion law, or to ban abortion outright by constitutional amendment. The prospect of either of those outcomes happening is nil at the moment. Instead, there's a new consensus in favor of sharp restrictions on abortion. This is why Kate Michelman of NARAL looks perpetually stressed. This is why Faye Wattleton, the former head of Planned Parenthood and now president of the Center for Gender Equality, finds it "disturbing" that women are becoming more conservative and religious. It means more of them support these restrictions.
Why is this so? The folks over at OpinionJournal's "Best of the Web" Today (under the heading "Today's Choice Is Tomorrow's Voter"--scroll down) opine:
Hmm, what could account for this sudden shift? Here's a thought: An 18-year-old in 1990 was born in 1972, before the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide. An 18-year-old in 1996 was born in 1978. If a woman got pregnant in 1972, in most states she didn't have a choice but to carry the child to term. In 1978, by contrast, every woman who gave birth in America did so because she chose to--often because of moral qualms about abortion. Kids born in 1978, in other words, came from homes with more conservative views on abortion--and their own views reflect their upbringing.
The power of unintended consequences? Interesting to think about.
And one more thought on abortion from Frederica Mathewes-Green:
Thirty years ago, when I was an idealistic college student, I volunteered at a feminist newspaper called "off our backs." The Roe v Wade decision happened the first month I worked there. Our editorial said it didn't go far enough, because Roe requires a woman to have medical reason for abortion in the third trimester.
I thought abortion rights were going to liberate women. Since men never get pregnant, abortion would give us equality in the workplace. And since unwanted children would be aborted, it would eliminate child abuse. Roe v. Wade looked like the first step toward a wonderful new world.
Thirty years later, I'm not so sure. I've heard too many friends say, "I had to have an abortion, I didn't have any choice." I never thought about how abortion would impact other choices. But it changed the pressures a pregnant woman feels. Continuing an unplanned pregnancy can inconvenience a lot of other people ... her parents, her boss, the father of the child. Since Roe, a woman is expected to go away and deal with the problem privately. One woman told me, "I felt like everyone would be there for me if I had the abortion ... but not if I had the baby."
That must be how the numbers got to be so high ... over forty million abortions since Roe. About one for every four live births. It certainly didn't end child abuse. Since the seventies, reported child abuse cases have shot up dramatically, not declined. Yet the mothers of every single person under thirty could have chosen abortion. In that sense, every child today *is* a wanted child. But a child can be wanted enough during pregnancy, and not so wanted a few months later when they're crying in the middle of the night. Roe established a dangerous principle, that a child is the property of her parents; it teaches that she only deserves to live as long as they want her.
I thought future generations would thank us for winning abortion rights. But now I hear from young people who oppose abortion. They call themselves "Survivors." The mean that all of them could have been legally aborted. A lot of their generation was.
For people like me, over fifty, abortion meant liberation. For young people like them, under thirty, abortion means violence. We were idealists back then, and thought Roe v Wade would create a wonderful new world. Now I think it was a tragedy.
Posted by Clifton at January 27, 2003 12:46 PM