"It is now clear what the true agenda of the anti-choice members. . .
really is," Sen. Tom Harkin said today. "They want to criminalize choice."
That's right: When anti-abortionists have their way, nobody will ever be
allowed to exercise choice again. Not over who to marry, what careers to
go into, what flavor ice cream to eat. Nope. You're having butter praline.
Gary Bauer and the Pope have decided for you.
That Harkin (who himself briefly opposed abortion at the start of his
congressional career) couldn't bring himself to use the a-word points to
the silver lining in a minor pro-life defeat today. The defeat was that
passage, by a vote of 51-48, of a nonbinding resolution declaring, "It is
the sense of the Congress that Roe v. Wade was an appropriate decision and
secures an important constitutional right and such a decision should not
be overturned." Eight Republicans (Ben Nighthorse Campbell, John Chafee,
Susan Collins, Jim Jeffords, Olympia Snowe, Arlen Specter, Ted Stevens,
and John Warner) voted for it; two Democrats (John Breaux and Harry Reid)
voted against it.
Pro-lifers will be demoralized by this vote, which demonstrates that they
cannot get the Senate to endorse their principal political objective even
with the Republicans in power. But Roe remains constitutionally laughable,
and no vote of the Senate-or the Supreme Court-can change that.Pro-choicers who take the Constitution seriously are embarrassed by Roe.
Theirs is a respectable position. But they have almost no political power,
as this vote shows. To put it another way, the vote shows once again that
pro-choicers are so committed to abortion that they are willing to shred
the Constitution to promote it.
And how great a victory is it for them, really, to get 51 votes? It has
been almost 29 years since Roe v. Wade, 29 years since the Supreme Court
overturned the abortion laws of all fifty states and presumed to settle
the issue once and for all. Seven years ago, the Court said that
protestors should "put down their placards," shut up, and go home; the
Justices had spoken, and abortion-on-demand had become woven into the
fabric of American life. Even so, almost half of the Senate says no.
Compare this to another landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education, that
worked a vast social change and inspired bitter resistance. Can anyone
imagine half the Senate voting against Brown in 1982? The debate over
abortion has not been ended by the Court's decrees.
But then, Harkin's resolution, like his quote, doesn't mention "abortion."
It mentions Roe, a decision most voters don't know much about. Whenever
the debate shifts from abstraction and case law to the reality of what is
done in abortion, the pro-abortion side starts losing. That's why Harkin
offered his resolution: as a distraction from the bill banning
partial-birth abortion, which passed 63-34.
