Garance Franke-Ruta thinks its op-ed page is not pro-choice enough, and runs too many articles by men about abortion. I’m one of the men. But I didn’t write an op-ed for the Times about abortion. I wrote about the Right and the Harriet Miers nomination; one sentence of my op-ed touched on partial-birth abortion. Matthew Scully, another of the authors Franke-Ruta mentions, referred to abortion in one sentence of his own op-ed on Miers. Mark Roche is pro-life, but his op-ed made the pro-life case for John Kerry–which isn’t, I think, great evidence of a pro-life tilt to the Times op-ed page.
The Times has never had a regular columnist who is pro-life. When it runs op-eds that are actually about abortion, they are usually pro-choice. Consider its line-up on the anniversary of Roe this year. William Saletan had an essay on how pro-choicers could win by changing their message, and William Baude had an essay on the allegedly disastrous consequences of overturning Roe. Both of those op-eds were interesting and well-written. But one of them made the case for a pro-choice win on the movement’s biggest legal objective, and the other offered tactical advice to produce pro-choice political victories. Franke-Ruta’s methodology would dismiss both because Saletan is “abortion-ambivalent” and both authors are men.
Franke-Ruta ends by suggesting that the Times should have more women write about abortion, whether they’re pro-life or pro-choice women. I have no objection to that. But anyone who says that the op-ed page isn’t pro-choice enough is saying more about her own abortion views than about that page.