TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/081489/08148900.038

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 5.5 KB | 107 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 28

Can Pro-Choicers Prevail?


Feminists squabble over strategy for protecting abortion rights


    A Roman general once said he could live without a friend
but not without an enemy. The same assertion could be made about
the women's movement, which won just enough concessions in the
1960s and '70s to induce a sense of complacency. A new
generation of college-educated women, having never witnessed a
female Phi Beta Kappa being told to make the coffee, considered
radical feminism as outdated as Gloria Steinem's aviator
glasses. By the presidential campaign of 1988, George Bush could
flirt with the idea of recriminalizing abortion, knowing the
women's movement was not strong enough to retaliate at the
polls.

    Now the movement may be getting a jolt from a hostile
Supreme Court, whose ruling in the case of Webster v.
Reproductive Health Services permits the states to place new
restrictions on abortion. "Before Webster," says Susan Carroll,
a political scientist with Rutgers University's Center for the
American Woman in Politics, "there was a very real assumption,
especially among college students, that the battle was over."
That assumption is no longer valid.

    With one of feminism's most cherished gains in danger, the
ranks of women's organizations are swelling. In the months
since the Supreme Court decided that it would hear the Webster
case, the National Organization for Women and the National
Abortion Rights Action League each signed up 50,000 new members.
NARAL added $1 million to its coffers in July alone. NOW
President Molly Yard vows to make every politician confront the
question "Are you for the right of a woman to control her
reproductive life?" Says political analyst William Schneider:
"In abortion the women's movement has an issue that could enable
them to break into the mainstream."

    Maybe. But six weeks after the Webster decision, pro-choice
forces may be squandering their newfound energy in a
debilitating squabble. One divisive issue is whether to stage
another abortion-rights megamarch on Washington, like the one
that drew at least 400,000 to the nation's capital last April,
or to direct the energy and money required to mount such a
colossal demonstration toward the more productive but less
mediagenic grass-roots political organizing.

    Another conflict arose at NOW's convention in Cincinnati
three weeks ago, when delegates unanimously approved the notion
of starting a third party around the woolly notions of sexual,
environmental and economic freedom. Hearing that, NARAL
executive director Kate Michelman interrupted her vacation in
New Hampshire to criticize the third-party idea as
"counterproductive." A pro-choice strategist dismissed Yard's
notion as the "politics of `screw you.'"  Schneider agrees: "You
punish your friends without blocking your enemies."

    Yard brushes off the criticism as so much
"inside-the-Beltway mentality from people too closely tied to
the Democratic Party establishment." Though she complains that
she is "fed up" with both Republicans and Democrats, Yard has
toned down NOW's third-party talk, insisting that all she has
done is set up a commission to study the idea, a frequent
inside-the-Beltway prelude to deep-sixing it.

    The real cause of the infighting is that there is no
agreement on how to sell abortion rights to a wider audience.
While most polls show that a majority of Americans favor a
woman's right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, they also show
that a large segment of the public believes abortion is murder,
and it is difficult to build a political movement that can
accommodate those contradictory beliefs. Pro-choice adherents
range from those who believe in abortion on demand to those who
could support some regulations. The latter, larger group is not
likely to be drawn by NOW's call to expand the Bill of Rights
(one new amendment would guarantee abortion, another would
protect all sexual preferences).

    Pro-choice moderates are trying to deliver a more nuanced
message, stressing the idea that the realities of women's lives
can make abortion a necessary evil. But pro-choicers may have
to moderate still further to attract broader support. "Every
piece of data I've seen shows that parental consent (for a
teenager seeking an abortion) is where the yuppies come home to
the pro-life side," says Republican strategist Vincent Breglio.
"They say if you need parental consent to get your appendix out,
why not for an abortion?"

    Despite their feuding, pro-choice forces scored a victory
last week. Ignoring a threatened veto from George Bush, the
House of Representatives voted 219 to 206 to permit the District
of Columbia to spend public money for abortions, ending nine
straight years of House votes tightening control over such
spending. But Democratic pollster Harrison Hickman cautions
against reading too much into that triumph: "Pro-choicers have
to be very careful. Abortion does not cut clean; it cuts a very
jagged edge across parties and belief systems." Yet some
feminist leaders seem delighted by the prospect of returning to
the barricades. Addressing the National Women's Political Caucus
in St. Paul last week, former Congresswoman Bella Abzug
predicted that abortion will be "the Viet Nam of this nation for
young people everywhere," a troublesome analogy for those who
believe that abortion is a moral issue requiring thoughtful,
reasoned discussion, not bitter confrontation in the street.