Ambivalent on Abortion

The reaction to this week's 5-to-4 Supreme Court decision upholding the 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act reminds us again of just how ambivalent most Americans remain on the thorny issue of legalized abortion. The most accurate formulation of the public's conflicted views is that voters are simultaneously pro-choice AND anti-abortion.

Majorities come to different decisions about the acceptability of abortion depending upon whether the question is "who is deciding" or "what is being decided." When asked whether a woman who seeks an abortion after consulting her conscience, clergyman and physician ought to face criminal prosecution, a big majority of people respond "no."

But when the focus instead is upon the surgical act being decided, in the case of the grisly procedure used in late-term, or partial-birth, abortions, an even bigger majority (including a majority of Democrats, according to the Gallup Poll) wants it outlawed.

Please do not take my word for this: A Gallup/USA Today poll asked a national sample: "Do you think abortion should generally be legal or generally illegal during each of the following stages (first three months/second three months/last three months) of pregnancy?" The responses are revealing.

During the first three months of pregnancy, 66 percent think abortion should generally be legal and just 29 percent would make it generally illegal. But in the second three months, 68 percent want abortion to be illegal and just 25 percent would legalize it. By the final three months, the results are lop-sided — 84 percent would make abortion that close to birth illegal, and only 10 percent would sanction such a late-term procedure.

To listen to the platoon of current Democratic presidential candidates, you could not detect awareness of any citizens' ambivalence. As soon as the Court decision was announced, there was a candidate stampede competing to be first to the nearest microphone and camera so as to vent alarm and outrage at this 'unprecedented assault on the constitutional rights of all American women,' etc., etc.

Apparently, in order to qualify as a "serious" Democratic presidential contender, one ought not publicly express any qualms, reservations or second-thoughts at the alarming number of abortions each year in the United States.

An abortion is not just a "medical procedure" like a tonsillectomy. Because the fetus — or unborn baby — is either a life or potential life, it ought not be a surprise that the Pew Research Center survey, last summer, found that 73 percent of voters believe that having an abortion is either "nearly always" or sometimes "morally wrong."

These same Democratic White House candidates, you might have noticed, had earlier been overwhelmingly mute when asked if future firearms massacres like the terrible tragedy at Virginia Tech might be averted by passing new federal laws to beef up the national database for conducting criminal background checks on gun-purchasers and banning the sale of large-capacity ammunition clips. Call them cautious, cagey or cowardly politicians. Nobody wants to risk getting the virile and vindictive National Rifle Association worked up, you know.

Probably more than any Democrat, Republican presidential candidate and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani has the most to lose politically by the Supreme Court decision. His statement ("The Supreme Court reached the correct conclusion in upholding the congressional ban on partial birth abortion") was designed to avoid further controversy.

Arguably the most ardently pro-choice candidate in either party, Giuliani, who backs a constitutional right to — and taxpayer funding of — abortion, faces some awkward questioning from the primary voters of the GOP, which in the last 30 years has only picked presidential nominees who were staunchly pro-life.

Who will be the first 2008 Democratic candidate to concede that the vast majority of the public supports a 24-hour "waiting period" before an abortion and the requirement that a minor seek the approval of a parent before obtaining an abortion?

It would be a sign of real independence and a welcome acknowledgment that American voters on abortion remain fundamentally ambivalent — both pro-choice AND anti-abortion.

To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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COPYRIGHT 2007 MARK SHIELDS