TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/081489/08148900.038

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 6KB | 98 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as outdated as Gloria Steinem's aviator glasses.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 That assumption is no longer
valid.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.