January 23, 2004, 9:11 a.m.
Abortion Vulnerabilities
The country is changing. The Dems are not.

By Joel C. Rosenberg

Thirty-one years have passed since the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision. More than 43 million children have died. Yet even as the country's attitudes have shifted in favor of more restrictions on abortion, Democrats haven't shifted at all. Indeed, they have become extremists on the issue, and it may cost them, especially in the south.

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted last January found that 70 percent of Americans support a ban on partial-birth abortion. Younger Americans feel even more strongly that killing a baby in the process of being born is downright barbaric. A whopping 77 percent of Americans age 18 to 29 favor the ban on partial-birth abortion signed by President Bush last year. Perhaps even more interesting, 57 percent of obstetricians and gynecologists favor the ban.

Yet not a single leading Democrat running for president does.

Sen. John Kerry is rapidly emerging as the front-runner in New Hampshire. Should he win the Granite State primary next week, it's now conceivable that he could become an unstoppable force and run away with the Democratic nomination. But how would he fare in a general election against President Bush, particularly in the South?

Kerry is already perceived as a northeastern Massachusetts liberal who will have trouble selling his Ted Kennedy-endorsed "values" in the Bible Belt. The fact that Kerry has voted against the ban on partial-birth abortion five separate times certainly won't help.

Howard Dean is another northeastern liberal Democrat who would face serious trouble in the south, if he makes it that far. He's never had to vote on the issue in the Senate. But he's made it crystal clear that he opposes the ban on partial-birth abortion signed by Bush last year. Wesley Clark hasn't ever had to vote on the issue either, but he recently told a reporter he opposed any restrictions on abortion right up to the moment of delivery.

Sen. John Edwards is trying to position himself as the Democrats' great hope to win back the South, or at least gain back some much-needed ground. And even if he doesn't win the nomination, he's increasingly being touted as a strong vice-presidential candidate. But he's seriously vulnerable on the abortion issue.

As a moderate Senate candidate from North Carolina, Edwards opposed partial-birth abortion. "I think partial-birth abortions should be banned," Edwards told the Associated Press on September 19, 1998. "These are terribly gruesome procedures."

But the very next year, Edwards flip-flopped, voting against the partial-birth abortion ban in 1999. Now Edwards the presidential candidate strongly supports abortion on demand.

Sen. Joe Lieberman has called partial-birth abortions "horrific," "abominable," and "unacceptable." On the floor of the U.S. Senate in 1999, Lieberman bluntly told his colleagues: "When you hear the description of this procedure, it is horrific. It is abominable...And then I come back to my own personal opinion, which is every abortion, no matter when performed during pregnancy — this is my personal view — is unacceptable."

Talk, however, is cheap: Lieberman has voted against the ban six times.

Conventional thinking says pro-life Republicans are politically vulnerable on the abortion issue. But times are changing: Now it's Democrats who are radically out of step with mainstream America. And it may cost them next November.

— Joel C. Rosenberg is the New York Times best-selling author of The Last Jihad and The Last Days. He was a senior aide to Steve Forbes in the 1996 and 2000 elections.

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