If you've ever wondered about the difference between
Europe and America on abortion, then this is a
fascinating article.
JDG
Abortion in America
The war that never ends
Jan 16th 2003 | WASHINGTON, DC
>From The Economist print edition
The United States did not deal with abortion as Europe
did. As a result, the issue divides the country as
bitterly as ever
ANNIVERSARIES don't get much more controversial than
this. On January 22nd, America will mark the thirtieth
anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that
declared abortion a constitutional right.
Anti-abortionists will march in Washington in their
thousands, carrying gruesome photographs. Supporters
of abortion rights will retort that Roe v Wade, the
decision in question, was one of the great milestones
in the long march for women's rights�a heroic decision
that has saved thousands of women from death by
coat-hanger or back-street butchery. The two sides
will end the day even more polarised than ever.
Since 1973, about 75 countries have liberalised their
abortion laws (the most recent being Switzerland and
Nepal last year). In most countries, that was enough
to settle the debate. Not in America.
The Supreme Court's ruling immediately created a
furious backlash. State legislatures passed laws
restricting the rights of minors to obtain abortions,
usually by requiring the consent of one or both
parents. In 1976 Henry Hyde, an Illinois congressman,
sponsored legislation eliminating Medicaid funding for
abortions except in extreme cases (such as rape,
incest or where a woman's life was endangered by her
pregnancy). Some extremists took to blowing up clinics
and shooting abortion doctors (who, in turn, took to
coming to work wearing bullet-proof vests).
There are no signs that the debate is quietening down.
One of George Bush's first actions on coming to office
was to reinstate a rule barring overseas recipients of
American development funds from using their own money
to advocate or provide abortions. The day after the
2002 mid-term elections, Trent Lott, then poised to
resume the leadership of the Senate, promised to ban
partial-birth abortion, a late-term and particularly
grisly procedure. The battle over abortion reaches the
obscurest sides of life. The Centre for Reproductive
Law and Policy has filed lawsuits against the states
of Florida and Louisiana for allowing the sale of
�choose life� licence-plates but not �pro-choice�
ones.
Why does abortion remain so much more controversial in
America than in the other countries that have
legalised it? The fundamental reason is the way the
Americans went about legalisation. European countries
did so through legislation and, occasionally,
referenda. This allowed abortion opponents to vent
their objections and legislators to adjust the rules
to local tastes. Above all, it gave legalisation the
legitimacy of majority support.
Most European countries provide abortion free. But
they have also hedged the practice with all sorts of
qualifications. They justify abortion on the basis of
health rather than rights. Many European countries
impose a 12-week limit (America, by contrast, allows
abortion up to about 24 weeks and beyond, and many
abortion-rights advocates seem to oppose any
restrictions.) Frances Kissling, head of Catholics for
a Free Choice, also points out that the Europeans have
been careful to preserve a patina of disapproval. Even
in England, the country with the most liberal abortion
laws in Europe, women have to get permission from two
doctors.
America went down the alternative route of declaring
abortion a constitutional right. (The only other
country that has done anything comparable is South
Africa.) A seven-to-two majority of justices struck
down state abortion laws on the grounds that
reproductive rights are included in a fundamental
right to privacy which�rather like freedom of speech
and freedom of religion�is guaranteed by the
constitution.
It would be hard to design a way of legalising
abortion that could be better calculated to stir up
controversy. Abortion opponents were furious about
being denied their say. Abortion supporters had to
rely on the precarious balance of power on the Supreme
Court. Legalisation did not have the legitimacy of
majority support. Instead, it rested on a highly
controversial interpretation of the constitution
(abortion rights are clearly not enshrined in the
constitution in the same plain way that free speech
is). By going down the legislative road, the Europeans
managed to neutralise the debate; by relying on the
hammer-blow of a Supreme Court decision, the Americans
institutionalised it.
A second reason is the continued importance of
religion in American life. The Pew Global Attitudes
Project recently revealed that six in ten (59%) of
Americans say that religion plays a �very important�
role in their lives. This is roughly twice the
percentage of self-avowed religious people in Canada
(30%) and an even higher proportion when compared with
Japan and Europe. To find comparable numbers, you need
to look at developing countries.
When Americans say �very important�, they mean it.
America, in Robert Fogel's phrase, is in the middle of
a �fourth great awakening� to religion. Churches that
insist on passionate commitment to Christ are growing
at the expense of more moderate congregations.
Religious organisations also provide many of the
social services that the state provides in Europe.
One result of America's religiosity is its relative
conservatism about sex. Thirteen states still have
anti-sodomy laws. The Bush administration favours sex
education based on abstinence. Many of the noisiest
opponents of abortion also oppose easy access to
contraception. Puritanical America has higher rates of
both abortion and unwanted pregnancy than many
European countries with more liberal attitudes to sex
education.
The third reason why abortion is so controversial is
the American fondness for arguing about fundamentals.
Europeans routinely turn moral issues into technical
ones�and then hand them over to technocratic elites.
America is a country of fundamentalists, thanks to its
constitutional tradition, its legal culture and
perhaps its Puritan heritage. For Americans, abortion
can never be just about health. It has to be a clash
of absolutes: the right to choose versus the right to
life. Add to that the openness of the American
political system, which makes it impossible to hand
controversial questions over to technocratic elites,
and you have the making of an endless argument about
fundamentals.
The party divide
Roe v Wade did as much as anything to make American
politics what it is today. Up until the 1960s,
politics was defined by a combination of economic
class and the legacy of the civil war. The
Republicans, like Europe's conservative parties, were
rooted in the business and professional elites; the
Democrats were rooted in the trade unions, the urban
political machines and ethnic minorities, mostly Irish
and Italian. White southerners of all classes also
voted Democratic (a legacy of Republican opposition to
slavery). Those most opposed to abortion�Catholics and
southerners�were almost all Democrats.
But from the mid-1960s onwards values started to trump
class. Abortion was not the first issue that redefined
politics: that honour goes to civil rights. But it was
certainly one of the most powerful. Roe helped to
drive millions of northern Catholics and southern
evangelicals into the Republican Party. (Republicans
dubbed George McGovern the triple-A candidate:
amnesty, acid and abortion.) It also persuaded
Catholics and evangelicals to put aside their
long-standing enmity in order to form a common front.
The term �moral majority� was first used by Paul
Weyrich, an arch-traditional Catholic, in a
presentation to Jerry Falwell, a leading evangelical.
American politics is now deeply coloured by both
religion and abortion. Regularity of church attendance
is a much more reliable predictor of voting intentions
than income. Anti-abortion groups such as the Family
Research Council (FRC) and Focus on the Family are
among the most powerful components of the Republican
coalition. The Democratic Party is so intertwined with
NARAL Pro-Choice America, the rebranded National
Abortion Rights Action League, that all the party's
prospective presidential candidates have been invited
to dine at its headquarters on January 21st to
celebrate the anniversary.
There are still pro-choice Republicans (like Colin
Powell) and anti-abortion Democrats. But they are
swimming against the tide. Some 84% of state
Democratic platforms support abortion (the rest have
no position), while 88% of state Republican platforms
oppose it (none support it). The Republican Party
threw away its chance of wresting the governorship of
California from the hugely unpopular Gray Davis when
it chose an anti-abortion candidate, Bill Simon, over
Richard Riordan, the popular former mayor of Los
Angeles.
The abortion debate is also responsible for one of the
most obvious confusions in the political debate.
Republicans usually oppose government regulation in
the name of free choice. Grover Norquist, the head of
Americans for Tax Reform, even goes so far as to call
the Republicans the �leave-us-alone coalition�. But on
the most sensitive subject of all�reproductive
rights�conservatives are now on the side of government
control. The Democrats are no more coherent: a party
that will do anything to protect a woman's right to
choose an abortion will not support her right to
choose a public school for her child.
Roe has left the American legal system hopelessly
politicised. The Democrats destroyed Robert Bork's
chances of sitting on the Supreme Court in part
because of his presumed views on abortion. Abortion
politics are even poisoning the appointment of
lower-level judges (despite the fact that they have
almost no discretion over abortion), creating ever
more vacancies on the bench and denying many eminent
lawyers the promotion they deserve. The Senate
confirmed 95% of Ronald Reagan's circuit-court
nominees in his first two years, and 86% of Bill
Clinton's; so far, it has confirmed 53% of Mr Bush's.
The abortion debate has more practical implications,
too. The number of doctors willing to practise this
branch of medicine is declining, in part because of
fear of violence. It took years for RU486, the
�abortion pill� that is common in Europe, to make it
to the United States. Mr Bush, sensitive to pressure
from the Christian right, severely restricted
embryonic stem-cell research in the United States, a
decision that some scientists think could cost America
its lead in a vital area of research.
Abortion politics have also had a marked influence on
foreign policy. Since the 1970s, America has
introduced strict rules governing the distribution of
family-planning assistance to developing countries. In
1973 Jesse Helms, an intractable former senator from
North Carolina, introduced an amendment to the Foreign
Assistance Act prohibiting the use of federal money to
support abortions overseas. In 1984 the Reagan
administration imposed the �Mexico City Policy�
prohibiting overseas NGOs from receiving American
funds if they performed or promoted abortions, even if
they did so with their own money. (This has since
become the subject of much symbolism: one of the first
things Mr Clinton did on coming to office was to
abolish this rule, and one of the first things Mr Bush
did was to reimpose it.) In December last year the
head of the American delegation caused a stir at a
United Nations conference in Bangkok when he declared
that America �supports the sanctity of life from
conception to natural death�.
A future of stalemate
Where is abortion politics going? The abortion-rights
camp believes that their position is as perilous as it
has been for 30 years. This is the first time since
1973 that the president, the leader of the Senate and
the leader of the House have all been opposed to
abortion.
Many anti-abortionists are also quietly convinced that
they are winning the battle for people's minds. They
have highlighted rare practices like �partial-birth
abortion� that most people find repugnant: the name in
itself is a propaganda coup. They are busy building
what they call a �coalition of the vulnerable�,
arguing that, if people are prepared to dispose of
inconvenient fetuses, they will start disposing of
inconvenient old people, sick people and poor people.
According to a Gallup poll, the proportion of the
public who believe that abortion should be legal in
all cases has gone down from 34% in 1992 to 24%.
Anti-abortionists have also relentlessly whittled away
at abortion rights. Every year new legislation
restricting abortion is introduced in statehouses
across the country. A long queue of anti-abortion
bills is awaiting consideration in Congress. The Child
Custody Protection Act makes it a crime for anybody
other than the parent to transport a minor across
state lines in order to have an abortion. The Unborn
Victims of Violence Act (which is similar to bills
introduced in many states) creates a new offence:
killing or injuring a fetus during the commission of a
federal crime. The Bush administration has made
fetuses eligible for the State Children's Health
Insurance Programme, and directed the Advisory
Commission on Human Research Protection to consider
embryos as �human research subjects� on a par with
children.
Abortion foes are also convinced that science is on
their side. Medical advances are making it possible
for younger and younger fetuses to survive outside
their mothers' bodies. Modern sonograms are so
powerful that they can delineate tiny fingers and
toes. Parents-to-be take photographs of their future
offspring and keep them along with their other baby
pictures. Ken Connor, the head of the FRC, says that
three-dimensional ultrasounds are �windows on the
womb� that undo the logic of Roe v Wade. �People
recognise immediately that an unborn child is a
child.�
There are several problems with this argument. The
biggest is that most Americans want to preserve
abortion rights. They don't celebrate abortion. They
recoil at partial-birth abortion. But they want no
return to the back streets. Their attitude was
perfectly captured by Mr Clinton when he said that he
wanted abortion to remain �safe, legal and rare�.
Support for the status quo is strongly reinforced by
the fact that Roe v Wade is now 30 years old. Most
women of child-bearing age have grown up with Roe as
the law of the land.
Scientific advances also cut both ways. The
morning-after pill can be used to induce abortion
almost immediately after conception. Stem cells offer
the potential of curing Parkinson's disease. The
anti-abortion movement's insistence that a tiny clump
of cells constitutes life just as much as a
24-week-old fetus makes it look both extreme and
uncaring. Several leading Republicans, including
Utah's Orrin Hatch, have broken with the anti-abortion
movement over embryonic stem-cell research.
Abortion is now better regulated than ever before.
Many of the restrictions on abortion rights imposed by
anti-abortionists have had the paradoxical effect of
making the practice more acceptable. More than half of
all abortions are now performed in the first eight
weeks of pregnancy, up from under 40% in 1973, and 89%
in the first 12 weeks. A report just released by the
Alan Guttmacher Institute also shows abortions at an
all-time low of 21.3 per 1,000 women aged 15-44,
compared with the 1980-81 peak of 29.3.
Lastly, Republican presidents are terrified of pushing
the abortion issue too far. They are happy to throw a
few bones to the religious right (which is why
development aid is such a convenient target). But they
realise that challenging the central principle of Roe
would doom them with moderate voters�particularly
women. In his confirmation hearings, John Ashcroft,
the attorney-general, was following White House
instructions when he described Roe as �the settled law
of the land�. �The Supreme Court's decisions on this
have been multiple, they have been recent, and they
have been emphatic,� he said.
Emphatic indeed. The court reaffirmed Roe's central
principle�that states cannot ban abortions�as recently
as 1992, by a five-to-four majority, in the case of
Planned Parenthood v Casey. In doing so, it cited the
need for stability in the law. In 2000, the same
majority struck down Nebraska's ban on partial-birth
abortion. And even if the court should revisit the
case, there is little chance that it will reverse
itself and make abortion illegal. The most that
anti-abortion justices such as Antonin Scalia argue
for is taking the decision away from the Supreme Court
and handing it back to the legislatures. The betting
is that almost all legislatures would uphold the right
to abortion.
Is there any chance that the opposite will happen�and
that abortion will become as uncontroversial in the
United States as it is in Europe? Not really. The last
30 years of abortion politics have seen the creation
of two pressure groups with a vested interest in
keeping the debate as fierce as possible. Ken Connor
of the FRC is thoroughly connected to the Republican
establishment. And the best way for Kate Michelman,
the head of NARAL Pro-Choice America, to shake the
liberal money trees is to insist that Roe is on the
verge of being overturned. There is no chance of
America becoming �European� in its attitude to
abortion.
There is also no truth in the predictions that
abortion is about to be banned. The practice has
become too much of a safety-net for middle-class women
to be marginalised, let alone removed. Debates will
flicker on the margins as opponents of abortion
grapple with the potential of stem-cell research to
cure terrible diseases, and as supporters grapple with
the full horror of what it means to abort a fetus at
28 weeks. But, for the most part, the prospect is
stalemate.
Roe v Wade may have liberated many women; yet it has
also trapped America in an irresolvable clash of
absolutes. The one safe prediction is that the issue
will continue to shape the war between left and right
for years to come�and that the fortieth anniversary of
Roe v Wade will be just as acrimonious as the
thirtieth.
=====
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John D. Giorgis - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"First... to clarify what we stand for: the United States must defend liberty and
justice because these principles are right and true for all people everywhere. No
nation owns these aspirations, and no nation is exempt from them."
-US National Security Strategy 2002
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