Yesterday's events marking the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade followed a familiar pattern, with pro-choice and pro-life activists marching and rallying to, respectively, defend or deplore the landmark Supreme Court decision establishing a constitutional right to choose. There was, of course, a new urgency to these events, given the strong possibility of an opening on the Court in the near future, and the Bush administration's implicit promise to social conservatives to pursue a Court that will reverse Roe.
But something unusual happened at a pro-choice rally in Albany, New York. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, while restating her strong and well-known pro-choice views, departed from the standard script by arguing for "common ground" on abortion based on a common interest in reducing unwanted pregnancies.
As The New York Times' Patrick Healy reported, "(Mrs. Clinton) called on abortion rights advocates and anti-abortion campaigners to form a broad alliance to support sexual education -- including abstinence counseling -- family planning, and morning-after emergency contraception for victims of sexual assault as ways to reduce unintended pregnancies."
Predictably, some right-to-life leaders denounced the speech, without coming to grips with any of the specifics of Sen. Clinton's proposal. And some members of her audience in Albany also seemed to experience cognitive dissonance at this departure from her assigned role in the Kabuki Theater of abortion politics. As Healy noted: "Several audience members inhaled sharply, for instance, when Mrs. Clinton said that 7 percent of American women who do not use contraception make up 53 percent of all unintended pregnancies. She also cited research estimating that 15,000 abortions a year are by women who have been sexually assaulted, one of several reasons, she said, that morning-after emergency contraception should be made available over the counter."
There's no question that Sen. Clinton's proposed "broad alliance" will be spurned by those on one side who are indifferent to the frequency of abortion, and those on the other who think taking a morning-after pill is morally indistinguishable from infanticide. But for the vast majority of Americans whose feelings about abortion rights range from "yes, but" to "no, but," her suggestions make a lot of sense. More importantly, Sen. Clinton is offering a stance that combines support for the right to choose with practical action to truly expand reproductive choice and the health and well-being of women, particularly the vulnerable women for whom abortion is what Clinton called "a sad, even tragic choice."
Her boldness and forthrightness on abortion should be contrasted with the remarks phoned in to the big Washington anti-abortion rally yesterday by President Bush, which revolved around a lot of vague talk about "compassion" and the "culture of life," along with self-praise about the administration's support for contrived and largely symbolic measures like the so-called "partial-birth abortion" ban (certain to be overturned by the federal courts). Also yesterday, Senate Republicans released a legislative agenda that includes the most contrived and symbolic abortion proposal yet: making it a federal crime to assist a minor in getting around state parental notification requirements by traveling to another jurisdiction. While Sen. Clinton spoke clearly about how to build consensus on reducing abortions (which are rapidly going up under the Bush administration after decreasing during the Clinton administration), the president spoke in a sort of code designed to reassure hard-core anti-abortionists that he'll do his part to overturn Roe, without stirring up the nation's pro-choice majority.
Sen. Clinton is essentially reviving the message that abortion in our country should be "safe, legal, and rare," as her husband famously put it in his 1992 campaign. Hardly anyone knows it, but this formulation was also embraced by the 2004 Democratic Platform. It's time for Democrats, and pro-choice Americans generally, to take it seriously, and make the case that abortion rights are completely consistent with -- and indeed, in the broader context of reproductive choice, call for -- action to reduce unwanted pregnancies.
