Wednesday 3 July 2013
Wendy Davis offer a word of warning for Democrats
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Wendy Davis offer a word of warning for Democrats
The pro-choice side won the last battle in the abortion wars. It’s
overconfident about the next one.
Governor Rick Perry has summoned the Texas parliament for a
second special meeting to pass legislation regulating abortion. The bill was
set to pass at the end of the first special session, but a shouting mob
disrupted the state Senate so it couldn’t act. That mob was inspired by a
filibuster against the bill led by Senator Wendy Davis, who has now become a
heroine to social liberals across the country and may run for governor herself.
The bill would ban abortion after five months and make abortion
clinics follow the same safety standards as ambulatory surgical centers (a
requirement several other states have imposed). Supporters of the bill say the
standards follow the recommendations of the Philadelphia grand jury that indicted
Kermit Gosnell for killing infants at his clinic. (Gosnell was convicted and
sentenced in May to life in prison.) Opponents say only five clinics in the
state would be left open. When pressed they admit the other clinics could
change their practices to comply with the law, but say it would be costly.
A Shift
Davis’s activism illuminates a larger shift
in the politics of abortion, and it poses risks that Democrats are
underestimating. Her filibuster came just days after the U.S. House passed its
own bill, on an almost party-line vote, to ban abortion five months after origin,
except in cases of rape or when the mother’s life is threatened.
Liberals have been viewing these
controversies in light of the 2012 campaign, when two pro-life Republicans sank
their U.S. Senate campaigns and put their whole party on defense by saying they
divergent abortion even in cases of rape, and saying it in clumsy ways.
Democrats are using every Republican gaffe to call that history to mind, and
sometimes taking Republican comments that aren’t gaffes out of context for the
same purpose.
This strategy might succeed in reducing the
popularity of pro-life politicians, as liberals hope. Some Republicans are
bound to say stupid things, and many take positions out of step with the
public. Journalists, who are excessively pro-choice, will find these comments
outrageous and newsworthy while largely ignoring the equivalents among
pro-choice Democrats. (In neither 2008 nor 2012 did the mainstream press accurately report PresidentBarack Obama’s
record of conflicting legal security for some infants who survive abortion.)
But in 2012, most Republicans reacted to the
comments opposing abortion in cases of rape by denying that they held such
views and then trying to change the subject; their nervousness made them look
like they were hiding an extremist agenda.
This time, Republicans actually have a retort:
legislation that highlights how pro-choice Democrats are out of step with the
public. Most Americans think abortion ought to be legal in cases of rape, but
they also think it should be illegal in the second and third trimesters of
pregnancy. The Gallup Organization has never found more than
27 percent of the public supporting legal second-trimester abortion.
The last time Republicans fought a national
election when specific pro-life legislation was at issue was in 2004. Republicans
had passed a popular ban on partial-birth abortion. Most Democrats opposed it,
but had a hard time justifying their stance. After losing the election, many
Democrats -- including their presidential candidate, John Kerry -- said the acuity that they were extreme on abortion
had contributed to their defeat.
Democratic Extremism
The country’s views on abortion, as measured
in polls, haven’t changed much since 2004. (If anything there has been a slight
movement in the pro-life direction.) And Republicans once again have specific
legislation that doesn’t include their least popular stands and highlights
Democratic extremism.
Most Democrats haven’t considered the possibility
that the politics of the issue have thus moved back in favor of Republicans.
One warning sign came when John McCormack, a
writer for the traditionalist Weekly Standard, asked Democratic House leader
Nancy Pelosi why she condemned Gosnell while also seeking to keep late-term
abortions legal. Instead of answering, she sputtered about how the question offended her as a
Catholic and a mother. Democrats who come from less uniformly liberal districts
will have to do better.
Defending late-term abortions is going to be
especially hard for Democrats from red states, such as Davis, to sustain
politically. Davis won’t keep the Texas bill from passing, and the odds are
against her becoming governor. She can still look forward to a relief prize: a
star-studded play about her greatness. Broadway loves defeated Texas liberals.
(Ramesh Ponnuru is a Bloomberg View newspaper
columnist, a visit fellow at the American enterprise Institute and a senior
editor at National Review.)
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