Politicians Seek 'Common Ground'

By Ken Concannon
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 3/10/05)

Last November’s presidential and Congressional elections produced a milestone in the three-decade abortion war. The other side blinked. For the first time in over 30 years, the losers in a nationwide election publicly admitted that their handling of the abortion issue contributed to their defeat. They couldn’t, however, bring themselves to admit that their position on the issue was wrong.

But they did admit to being insensitive to viewpoints expressed by the pro-life community, and failing to properly explain their abortion position to the American electorate. They actually talked about "building bridges" to a pro-life community they once considered to be a fringe element of the extreme right wing. They blinked.

They blinked so much in fact that New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, the leading contender for the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination, has been described by political pundits everywhere as "moving to the right" on this issue. In a speech delivered on Jan. 24 to a group of New York state family planning providers, Clinton told the shocked pro-choice assemblage "that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic, choice to many, many women." She even talked about seeking "common ground" with pro-lifers.

So impressed were some representatives of the pro-life community with Clinton’s "common ground" gesture that the Christian Defense Coalition, a pro-life group, is now seeking to meet with her to discuss the abortion issue. Whether she has agreed to meet with the pro-life representatives is not known at this time.

Overlooked in all the "Hillary’s moving to the right" talk are her opening comments in her Jan. 24 speech:

"I am so pleased to be here two days after the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, a landmark decision that struck a blow for freedom and equality for women. Today Roe is in more jeopardy than ever, and I look forward to working with all of you as we fight to defend it in the coming years."

Somebody once said that politics is "the art of compromise." One could also say that it’s the art of finding "common ground" with the political opposition, something that would be hard to do if the opposition is pro-life and you’re an ambitious politician who vows to defend the Roe decision. That decision leaves no room for compromise, common ground or bridge building because it wraps the extreme pro-abortion position in a tight Constitutional knot that can only be broken by a Constitutional Amendment or a Supreme Court reversal.

Consider, for example, partial-birth abortion, a late-term procedure that clearly crosses the line between abortion and infanticide. The medical profession can find no valid medical reason for this procedure, and when polled, at least 70 percent of the American public agrees that it should be banned. In November 2003, despite opposition from liberals in the Senate, including Sen. Clinton, a ban easily passed through both houses of Congress, and was signed into law by the president. Given the national abhorrence of this procedure, and the senator’s supposed desire to find "common ground" with those opposed to abortion, the senator could conceivably compromise a little, and change her position on the ban.

It wouldn’t make any difference even if she did. Shortly after the ban was signed into law, a federal judge in California declared the ban unconstitutional. The primary objection to the ban was its failure to allow the procedure to be performed for so-called "health" reasons — even though the procedure is generally considered by the medical profession to be dangerous to the physical health of the mother. (An abortion practitioner in Kansas who runs an abortion mill that specializes in this gruesome procedure recently killed two of his patients in late-term abortions and is currently under investigation by the state’s attorney general.)

The problem is that the Roe decision, which guided the judge’s thinking on the constitutionality of the ban, defines "health" differently than the medical profession does. It uses the definition of health included in Doe v. Bolton, issued by the Court the same day as the Roe decision. According to Doe, health means "physical, emotional, psychological, familial and the woman's age" — in other words "anything."

Any politician seeking "common ground" with the pro-life community must be willing to abandon the primary obstacle to compromise, the Roe decision. So long as politicians like Clinton continue to worship at the altar of Roe, human lives will be sacrificed, and talk about "common ground" will be no more than political posturing.

Copyright ©2005 Arlington Catholic Herald.  All rights reserved.