Party of 1

Ross Douthat has a salutary column in Monday’s New York Times sex education. I have just about blogged myself to death about this and related subject matter since the launch of this site, so I will try to keep this brief.

The column is occasioned by the publication of new figures showing an increase in the teenage birthrate after 15 years of decline. The increase is being blamed on the Bush administration’s emphasis on “abstinence-only” programs.

Douthat thinks that most sex-ed programs, those based on contraception as well as those stressing abstinence, are ineffective. “What is taught in the classroom is vastly less important than the matrix of family, culture and economics: the values parents impart and the example that they set, the friends teenagers make and the activities they join, and the cross-cutting effects of wealth, health and self-esteem. (And, of course, the impact of entertainment: the MTV reality show ‘Teen Mom’ is far more absorbing than the average sex-ed curriculum, and probably more influential as well.)”

The takeaway: “We federalize the culture wars all the time, of course — from Roe v. Wade to the Defense of Marriage Act. But it’s a polarizing habit, and well worth kicking…. Don’t try to encourage Berkeley values in Alabama, or vice versa.” Amen and amen.

People need to get it through their heads that this form of government of ours was intended originally to work on a small scale. The fashion in which we have federalized, or centralized, some of these questions has tended to blow the lid off the system — although, mercifully, it has played out in such a way as to stop a bit short of that. This stuff ought to be addressed in such a way as to allow at least a tentative resolution of some of these questions. If you think that other matters, like health care or the deficit, are more important — just remember that the “culture wars” are hanging over and impacting everything else we are trying to do.

There’s probably no way to reverse the “federalization” of the abortion question. In my view, it would be better all the way around if the law more closely reflected public sentiment on the matter — which, in my judgment, lies somewhere between “pro-life” and “pro-choice” extremes. I’m not holding my breath waiting for such a thing to happen….

At DoubleX, Jessica Grose urges feminists not to get too bent out of shape over college football quarterback Tim Tebow’s pro-life Super Bowl ad for Focus on the Family.

As every sports fan knows, the really serious question is whether Tebow will be able to make it in the NFL….

This past Sunday’s New York Times Magazine brings a portrait of Robert P. George, professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University and devout Roman Catholic. The author, David D. Kirkpatrick, describes him as “this country’s most influential conservative Christian thinker.”

As a schoolboy, your humble servant can recall being told what a bright boy he was. However, I have to bow to the likes of Robert P. George. I have to wave the white flag; I cannot match the rhetorical and  polemical skills of such an individual. The education such people have received positions them to become past masters of casuistry.

As portrayed by Kirkpatrick, it is George’s position that the abortion issue gives Roman Catholic ideologues an effective veto over the political system. In Kirkpatrick’s telling, he admonished a gathering of Catholic bishops last spring to confine themselves to the “‘moral social’ issues like abortion, embryonic stem-cell research and same-sex marriage” — and shut up about the economic question. If this sort of instruction is to be taken at face value, we then are to understand the entire political system as nothing but a venue for referendum on abortion and associated issues — never mind that these issues were thrust upon a system in which it is the economic question by which the parties define themselves.

Taken at face value, the implication is that any and every position taken by conservative Republicans effectively is “baptized” — since those politicians also are pro-life, rhetorically at least. As much is revealed by George’s belittling remark that, up to a point, he will tolerate the bishops “making utter nuisances of themselves” on the economic question — “as long as they did not advocate specific remedies,” according to Kirkpatrick.

I think I can predict safely that the result will not be the victory of conservative Christian political stances, and certainly not the salvation of souls. Instead, what will happen is that Christianity will be rendered ever more partisan — and, as such, it may well contribute to the digging of its own grave. Those Catholics who find themselves under the jackboot of the unfettered market may find themselves branded as apostates if they speak out. George will find that he may indeed attempt to combine spiritual and political coercion if he wishes, but, while some people will local under in the face of such pressure, others will stiffen their spines and stand up for themselves.

What is it that George is attempting to achieve? Does he think that he can restore the situation as it was prior to the Protestant Reformation? (Readers may be flabbergasted, but in my checkered career I have run across ideologues whose invention, by all appearances, was to accomplish just such a thing.) Can he establish his dogmatic positions with sufficient objectivity that the American polity as a whole will accede to them? If he holds that there is an overriding spiritual obligation to bring such a thing about, what then is he willing to do to accomplish it?

Based only upon what I read in the New York Times Magazine, I cannot determine whether Robert P. George should be assessed as spiritually sincere, or as politically ruthless. I will concede this much: the dynamic described here by Kirkpatrick illustrates what a fateful turn was taken by the United States Supreme Court, and by this polity as a whole, when it opted to handle the abortion question in the way it has been handled since 1973….

Dr. LeRoy Carhart of Nebraska is placing himself at the center of the late-term abortion issue, moving to step in and fill the void left by the late Dr. George Tiller of Kansas, acording to the New York Times.

Dr. Carhart’s name is attached to two Supreme Court decisions dealing with the so-called “partial birth” abortion procedure….

Mark Lange on the Christian Science Monitor site: “We can’t give Roman Catholic bishops and the evangelical community the moral high ground. Not until they apply the same principled fervor to, say, the CIA’s deployment of unmanned drones…. Nor can we allow abortion-rights advocates to get away with framing abortion as a healthcare benefit like any other. It is not simply a ‘medical service.’ We know it’s different. Otherwise, we could reconcile medicine’s race to secure the earliest possible viability in the womb with an intervention that ends it altogether.”

Lon Jacobs in the Wall Street Journal discusses commentaries which “heap venom and ridicule on [Sarah] Palin for bringing Trig into the world.” Eyebrows will be raised by Mr. Jacobs’ position as general counsel for News Corporation, but he describes himself as a “pro-choice Democrat.”

At Politico, Former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, collaborating with Daniel Allott, cited “subtle but unmistakable eugenic overtones” in some coverage. Jacobs cites a commentary on the Huffington Post site which eventually was removed, which referred to the ex-Alaska governor’s “More Retardation Platform.”

Bauer and Allott discuss an essay by Nicholas Provenzo on the site of the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism, which describes itself as devoted to the “Objectivist” philosophy of Ayn Rand.  Provenzo insists that “it is crucial to reaffirm the morality of aborting a fetus diagnosed with Down syndrome.” He belittles the notion that “we need the mentally retarded to teach us how to better sacrifice our lives and divest ourselves of our self-interested ways….”

Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), whose father was the most outspoken pro-life politician in the Democratic Party, is under pressure to continue his father’s legacy.  For some months he has avoided taking a conspicuous position in public, instead working behind the scenes on abortion language in the emerging health-care legislation, reports David D. Kirkpatrick of the New York Times.

Casey: “This is a huge piece of health care legislation, and what I am trying to do is to recognize that we had a consensus about public funding for abortion, and we are trying to continue that.”

The ongoing debate over a health-care reform bill shows that the abortion issue is still with us, as shown by the infighting over the so-called “Stupak amendment.” Some progressive Democrats in the House may be prepared to torpedo any bill that has this restrictive abortion amendment attached, while their more conservative co-partisans may be unable to support any legislation that does not include it. So, now is as good a time as any for a more thorough treatment of the abortion issue itself.

Readers of this site may have noted that, in so far as I am a “progressive,” I see my main responsibility to be the economic question, rather than “issues like abortion and gay marriage” — a phrase which covers a number of other issues besides those two. After having been a rather reflexive “pro-choicer” in the immediate aftermath of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, I have become more and more uneasy with the commitment of liberals and progressives to a libertarian-permissivist position on these and other matters over the course of the past generation or so. Still, it has to be stipulated that the matter is an extremely complicated and sensitive one, and, furthermore, there may be little or nothing that we can do about it, one way or another. So, let me attempt here to give the issue the treatment it deserves on the merits, in so far as this can be done in a few paragraphs.

I don’t know how much I think of the views of Charles Krauthammer, especially on national security. There will be other opportunities to do with his views on that matter. I would like, however, to take a look for just a moment at Krauthammer’s views on an issue with which he is not so closely identified, abortion. His views were explicated by Jay Nordlinger in a lengthy feature in a recent issue of National Review (a subscription to which may be required for access). I’ll reproduce in full the paragraph in which Nordlinger deals with Krauthammer’s views on abortion.

“Readers may want to know Krauthammer’s position on abortion — it is slightly complicated. The first thing to say is that he is for legal abortion. But other things follow. ‘Life begins at conception,’ he says,  ‘there is no doubt about that.’ That is simply  ‘a biological truth.’ But ‘personhood,’ in his view, is something else: a social construct and a legal category. And society has to determine, in some fashion, when the fetus is imbued with this ‘personhood.’ ‘I would outlaw all third-trimester abortions,’ continues Krauthammer. ‘I’ve seen abortions, as a medical student, and they are quite horrible. I detest them at any level, and I would outlaw them in the third trimester. That really is a human being, that really is murder — and partial-birth abortion is barbarism.’ In the middle stage of pregnancy, abortion is a ‘grave moral sin,’ Krauthammer believes, and ‘you should not do it lightly’ and ‘you should feel bad about it.’ But he would not outlaw abortions at this stage. And he has no qualms whatever about abortion in the early stage.”

My point would be that if we remove the Supreme Court from the picture, and allow the public to express itself on the matter, abortion law might look something like this. I don’t know whether my own views would match precisely those of Krauthammer. I might hold out for restrictions  only at the very end of pregnancy — so-called “partial-birth” abortions. Furthermore, it may be that, with legalized abortion having been the status quo for so long, that minimal restriction might be all that the public would be willing to stomach, at least at first. The point is that the public expresses ambivalence in the extreme about abortion. Some surveys require a forced choice between “pro-life” and “pro-choice ” views — and they may suggest a pro-choice majority, or at least a plurality. However, most surveys that I have seen that provide for a middle option, yield a large percentage of respondents who take that option. So, maybe the fairest characterization of public opinion on the matter is that there are activist camps on either side of the question, with a large number of indifferent or ambivalent people in between.

A constitutional amendment on the matter, or a reversal of the Roe v. Wade decision, is not in the cards for the intermediate to long term, in my judgment. Failing that, an attempt could be made  to get an abortion statute through Congress, setting a single nationwide standard — presuming that that is indeed what we want to do.  The problem, of course, is that there will never be a good time to introduce such a thing. The political system wants to sidestep the matter.  There will always be economic or national-security matters that are more pressing. I would argue, however, that ongoing damage is done by allowing the matter to continue to fester. Note that Barack Obama has pressed ahead with health-care reform, even though now may not be a good time to do so. The economy is struggling, and the deficit has grown to alarming proportions. Obama’s attitude has been that, indeed, it is an awkward time to press ahead with such a thing — but there may never be a good time to resolve this matter that has been lingering over the system for 40 years or more. I could argue that the situation regarding abortion is more or less the same.

Could such a statute pass? Who knows? Perhaps a coalition of Republicans and “blue-dog” Democrats could do it. If it were to pass, would it resolve anything? Would it help to undo the political damage that I would say this matter has caused to the political system? Certainly, nothing you could do on the matter will please everybody. But, in my judgment, such a thing could only help, given that it would express more nearly than the status quo public sentiment on the matter.  Looking at the matter from the perspective of the Democrats, I would remind them that we have just fought an election in which income and wealth bore very little relation to the vote. In the present situation we we cannot have a debate on the economic question or a matter like health-care reform without hemorrhaging away the support of large numbers of low-to-moderate-income voters who are religiously devout. Republican conservatives, with their mega-churches and their “tea party” movements, look like far more of a grassroots phenomenon than do progressives, driven as they are by the attitudes of college-educated, public-sector professionals. If this situation is to be reversed, one thing that might be required is for some Democrats to come forward and moved to settle the abortion matter, at least provisionally. They could then point out that Republicans have done little more than harvest votes on the matter since 1973.

If such a statute passed, what would the Supreme Court make of it? I don’t know if anyone can say. Justice Anthony Kennedy is the “swing vote” on the Court for the time being. He voted with Justice O’Connor to uphold the “central holding” of Roe v. Wade, but broke with her later in a somewhat acrimonious fashion over the “partial-birth” issue. If he were willing to vote to uphold such a statute, what would the four more conservative justices do? Justices like Scalia and Thomas might be tempted to uphold it, since it least it would move the country closer to their political preferences on the matter. On the other hand, their constitutional views are such that they might feel compelled to vote to strike such a statute down as unconstitutional, since in their view Congress might lack the authority to legislate in this area. All one can say is that the Constitution protects the autonomy of the justices, and history shows that they can be unpredictable.

I want to get the matter resolved, insofar as it is possible to do so, so that we can shift this political system back to a focus on the economic question without having a well-nigh intractable matter foisted upon it. I want it resolved in a way that reflects public attitudes, which is the way a democratic system is supposed to work. Furthermore, since the political system needs to respect the place of “civil society” organizations such as churches, I don’t want people to feel that such institutions are being pushed to the margins, or that their most deeply felt attitudes are being belittled or disrespected. People need to be permitted to express themselves effectively on the matter, whereas since 1973 many of them feel they have not been permitted to do so. At the same time, if and when it becomes possible to put in place a legal regime on abortion that is more reflective of public attitudes, I hope that people will reflect and think carefully about what they want to do, rather than rushing to put a regime of draconian restrictions in place.

A total or partial reversal of Roe v. Wade by either legislative or judicial means would amount to “turning back the clock.” That will provoke visceral opposition in some quarters — while others would say that if recent times reflect deterioration, decay or decadence — then, why not turn back the clock?

There is reason to believe, however, that “turning back the clock” is not something to be done casually. Not every aspect of the way we live these days is attractive. Not every trend is positive. But, there does seem to have been some bona fide improvement — as summarized by the psychologist Steven Pinker in his 2002 tome, The Blank Slate: “Customs that were common throughout history and prehistory — slavery, punishment by mutilation, execution by torture, genocide for convenience, endless blood feuds, the summary killing of strangers, rape as the spoils of war, infanticide as a form of birth control, and the legal ownership of women — have vanished from large parts of the world.”

It’s ironic that he places “infanticide as a form of birth control” on his list — since at least the very latest-term abortions look like a sort of borderline infanticide. On the other hand, the “back-alley abortion,” in the estimation of many, belongs on the list of barbaric customs related above — not to mention being tantamount to a sort of reversion to “the legal ownership of women.” There will be visceral resistance if the possibility of bringing back such a thing is raised — just as there is visceral resistance to abortion itself. There is room for feelings of ambivalence about any legal regime for abortion. Restrictions may prevent some “borderline infanticides,” but at the same time there are liable to be quite a few “back-alley abortions,” with lives lost as a result.

There is a good deal of cynicism in the middle and on the left side of the American political spectrum about the pro-life movement. The cynical view is that the movement has delivered and a number of votes to forces hostile to the economic interests of those casting these votes, without  accomplishing anything of note on the abortion issue. Furthermore, while many pro-life voters may be of low to moderate incomes, it will be questioned whether anything is to be accomplished politically by contemplating restrictions on abortion in order to win back their votes. The same attitudes and temperament that prompt them to vote pro-life on the abortion issue may also dispose them to the right of center on the race issue, the tax issue, and other pocketbook issues. So, the seriousness of the issue and of the pro-life voter is called into question. For a single state to enact a regime of draconian restrictions on abortion might render it an economic pariah, with investment and employment driven away — and few if any states have put themselves out on a limb to indicate a willingness to do this. Were one or more states to do so, the pro-life movement might be taken more seriously. In the meantime, the movement appears to be comprised in the main of affluent suburbanite evangelicals who cast their pro-life votes and then go about living their affluent lifestyles. Of course, the proposal I am making presumes that the issue has become a national one, since the nation functions as a single economic unit with population and economic activity moving constantly across state lines — and so it is presumed that we want to resolve the issue on a national level, given that it has indeed become a national political issue for a generation or more.

All I would say, then, is that if the opportunity ever arises for the public to express itself on the abortion issue in a way that has been precluded by Supreme Court decisions, I hope that the conservative, religiously devout people of the country will think carefully about what they want to do, without letting their hearts get ahead of their heads. Be careful what you wish for — you might get it.

If you and I bring about restrictions on abortion, and then someone’s daughter dies in the aftermath of a “back-alley” abortion — well, they’re going to come after you and me….

Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post: “The Stupak amendment is not worth killing health reform over…. Women who lack insurance still obtain — and, if the amendment survives, still will be able to obtain — abortions….”

“Restrictions on abortion coverage approved in the House version of the health-care bill likely will affect the affordability of the procedure for only a small minority of women,” reports Stephanie Simon in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal.