A Temporary Defeat
By Anne Conlon

William Buckley liked to remind conservatives (and liberals) that there were no permanent victories, no permanent defeats. Four years ago, after George Bush’s reelection, the press saw mighty hordes of evangelicals everywhere on the political horizon; the urgent question then was would the Democrats—and even the nation’s two-party system—survive? On January 22  (Roe v. Wade day), 2005, Hillary Clinton startled many supporters when, in an address to New York’s Family Planning Advocates, she declared that abortion was “a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women,” one that while “guaranteed under our constitution,” should “not ever have to be exercised or only in very rare circumstances.”

What a difference an election cycle makes! I’d venture the only reason we’re talking about failure on the part of the pro-life movement is because the Republican Party failed to keep the White House. Self-identified pro-lifers who voted for Obama, I suspect, were motivated to do so not by a desire to change the pro-life movement’s strategy so much as by a desire to repudiate the president (and party) that prosecuted—and in their minds botched—the war on terror. Pace Obama’s contention during his Saddleback chat with Rick Warren, the abortion rate under Bush continued the decline it began in the Clinton years when a Republican-led Congress did much to educate an abortion-illiterate populace about the horrors of partial-birth abortion. I wonder if Republican pro-life successes under Bush—the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act—were not all it took to assuage the consciences of the Obama “pro-life” brigades. After all, while polls tell us most Americans object to most abortions, they also tell us most Americans want to keep abortion legal.  That, I believe, is the territory Douglas Kmiec now occupies.

Does Kmiec really believe that Obama-style socialism will cure America’s addiction to abortion? There is nothing sad, tragic, profound, or complicated about the abortion decision for Barack Obama—indeed, under his leadership the word “rare” (vis-à-vis abortion) was removed from the Democratic Party platform. Like Pilate, Obama washes his hands of it; quite simply, there is no baby until a woman decides she wants there to be one. At which point Obama will “strongly support” the (now) mother-to-be with a plethora of government programs, including a national healthcare plan that will not only pay for abortions but most likely seek to coerce doctors (and hospitals) into performing them. (Meanwhile, government funding for abstinence programs will likely be cut.) But if a woman doesn’t want to be a mother, then she is a victim, and her pregnancy, says Obama, a “punishment.” To spare her such, he will federalize (via signing FOCA) the Roe/Doe regime of abortion on demand. Does he (or Kmiec) really believe that rescinding all state and federal regulations will lower the abortion rate?

One last thought: Obama’s seemingly obsessive self-identification with Abraham Lincoln has serious implications. He will have none of blue states and red states; it is his aim to form a more perfect union. For him “change” doesn’t mean a more civil discourse or “Can’t we all just get along?” It means revolution, or maybe more accurately, resolution.  I suspect that Obama believes (as I believe) that when all the other issues are peeled away the unresolved abortion question is the root cause of the country’s political divisiveness. He will do everything in his power to marginalize the prolife movement, enlisting General Kmiec and others to carry his argument that government largesse can eliminate most abortions deeper into pro-life territory.  The election of a ruthless abortocrat is a defeat for the pro-life movement, but not a permanent one.  The movement will fail only if it fails in its mission to keep the pro-life proposition before the American people. This is the civil rights struggle of our time. One new strategy for the next four years suggests itself:  That we make the case for how unLincolnian Barack Obama really is.

Anne Conlon is managing editor of the Human Life Review and editor of the monthly newsletter, Catholic eye.