BEARING RIGHT: HOW CONSERVATIVES WON THE ABORTION WAR

Vol. 13 No. 12 (December 2003)

BEARING RIGHT: HOW CONSERVATIVES WON THE ABORTION WAR, by William Saletan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003. 327 pp. Cloth $29.95. ISBN: 0-520-08688-0.

Reviewed by Matt Wetstein, Division of Social Sciences, San Joaquin Delta College. Email: mwetstein@deltacollege.edu

As chief political correspondent for the on-line magazine SLATE, William Saletan gets to frequently sound off on political issues and candidates. In this book, Mr. Saletan provides an analysis of abortion politics that draws richly from the campaign battles of the past 18 years. In doing so, he weaves a narrative that one might expect from a solid political writer: the writing is lively, he provides good character studies of key players, and makes an interesting argument about a topic many of us think has been covered all too well already.

Mr. Saletan's main argument in the book is that the abortion discourse promoted by the pro-choice movement since 1986 has helped the movement to win some key victories. But it has also forced the terms of debate to one that centered on the issue of government intrusion on the privacy interests of a woman, her family, and physician. Relying on focus groups and polling, strategists working for the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) ultimately settled on the theme "Who Decides?"-implying an "us" versus "them" message that would sell well to women, conservative men, and anyone interested in limiting government's potential power. According to Mr. Saletan, the beauty of the "who decides" theme was its "plasticity:"

Each person could read into it what he or she preferred. Feminists could take it as an affirmation of women's right to control their bodies. "You" meant each woman; "them" meant fundamentalists and sexist legislators. Conservatives could take it as a rebuke to big government. "Them" meant nosy, corrupt politicians and bureaucrats; "you" meant families and communities (p.68).

Yet the decision to win political battles on the "who decides" theme ultimately meant that the pro-choice war might be lost if the language could be usurped more skillfully by the opposing side. Mr. Saletan's book points out that after initial successes for pro-choice candidates like Governor Douglas Wilder in Virginia in 1989, the tide did begin to turn. Pro-life candidates began to exploit the language of "who decides" to criticize liberal Democrats who would have government pay for abortions, or wherever Democrats would interfere in the parental decisions surrounding a minor's abortion.

Using evidence from a variety of sources, Mr. Saletan does a skillful job of demonstrating how the initial NARAL strategy came to haunt it at every turn. Abortion opponents turned the "who decides" theme around and exploited its plasticity. Politicians and pro-life groups advanced the argument that government should not interfere in a parent's right to counsel a daughter about abortion, and the Supreme Court endorsed such laws if they contained a judicial bypass for a minor. Conservatives were successful at convincing voters (even pro-choice ones in Michigan) that taxpayers should have the right not to finance abortions for poor women (pp.131-32). Whereas most Americans were uncomfortable with the abortion on demand position of the pro-choice camp, and similarly with the complete abortion prohibition stance of the pro-lifers, the middle ground occupied by many voters allowed for some regulation and restriction of abortion, and those positions tended to run contrary to the interests of NARAL and pro-choice forces.

In the end, Mr. Saletan's analysis and critique of the pro-choice strategy may seem a little too harsh to readers who tend to sympathize with that side of the debate. In truth, activists and politicians who had to grapple with the abortion issue through the late 1980s and early 1990s must have felt they were being buffeted by ever-changing wind speeds and storms. I would contend that once ROE v. WADE was decided, pro-choice activists more often than not faced a defensive struggle as opponents attempted to chip away at the sweeping right that the Supreme Court endorsed in 1973. Forced to respond to a number of attacks from different angles, it is not surprising that NARAL and other abortion rights activists settled on a strategy that would win votes and help stem the tide. From the liberal perspective, who but the most hard-core defender of women's rights can blame them for politically expedient decisions in the face of a series of passionate fights?

Mr. Saletan is not only critical of those on the left. He also notes the tendency of politicians on the right to move from extreme ground on the abortion issue to a middle position when political expediency comes calling. This is demonstrated well in his discussion of Vice President Dan Quayle's responses to personalized questions about abortion in the 1992 campaign (pp.150-52). In a July 1992 interview with Larry King, Mr. Quayle was forced to assert that if his adult daughter consulted him about a problem pregnancy, he would "counsel her Éand support her in whatever decision she made," and that support would be extended even if she chose an abortion (p.150). The position clearly diverged from the Republican Party plank on abortion, but fell squarely within the middle ground that many Americans endorsed in public opinion polls.

Mr. Saletan's subtitle for the book (How Conservatives Won the Abortion War) might have been better chosen. The book is useful in demonstrating how the terms of debate about abortion have shifted to advantageous ground for conservatives because of the focus on issues of parental involvement and government funding, but this does not mean, "conservatives have won the abortion war." Indeed, if they had truly prevailed, the issue would not continue to rest on the front burners of national and state politics. Perhaps it is better to say that conservatives have been skillful in exploiting the rhetoric of abortion discourse to shift away from the bright line liberalism of abortion on demand in the first trimester of a pregnancy. Having said this, one wonders how the country could have moved much further to the left after ROE.

BEARING RIGHT is clearly intended for a general interest audience, and Mr. Saletan has done a good job writing for that audience. What is particularly attractive about the research here is that the footnotes draw on a long list of newspaper articles and news sources dealing with abortion politics in the states, and on interviews and internal documents from key organizations like the National Right to Life Committee (NRLC), NARAL, Family Planning Perspectives, and National Organization for Women (NOW), among others. Occasionally, Mr. Saletan relies on interviews with key players. I found his analysis of internal focus groups and polling reports particularly insightful. Readers of the LAW & POLITICS BOOK REVIEW will be pleased to know that Mr. Saletan turned to primary source documents like oral argument transcripts and briefs when analyzing court cases like HODGSON v. MINNESOTA and PLANNED PARENTHOOD v. CASEY.

If there is one criticism to convey, Mr. Saletan's reliance on political journalism and interviews with key players does steer him away from some of the social science literature on abortion politics, and because of that, a few notable sources are missing from his bibliography. This is not a damning criticism because the book was clearly meant to be a behind-the-scenes account of abortion politics and the strategies engaged by groups and politicians to frame the issue in the public arena. While the work might have been informed by some of the multivariate work on abortion attitudes that has been undertaken in the academic realm, the treatment of the voluminous source material that is cited is first-rate. In summary, it is safe to say that Mr. Saletan has done some impressive work here, and the book will be valuable to social science and law scholars who want to know the inside scoop on the abortion battles of the last two decades.

CASE REFERENCES:

HODGSON v. MINNESOTA, 497 US 417 (1990).

PLANNED PARENTHOOD OF SOUTHEASTERN PENNSYLVANIA v. CASEY, 505 US 833 (1992).

ROE v. WADE, 410 US 113 (1973).

*************************************************