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).
*************************************************
Copyright
2003 by the author, Matt Wetstein.