PERSPECTIVES ON THE POLITICS OF ABORTION by Ted G. Jelen (editor). Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1995. 216pp. Cloth $49.95. 

Reviewed by Mark A. Graber, Department of Political Science, University of Maryland.
 

Compromise is the buzzword in recent works on abortion. Pro-choice and pro-life zealots, we are told, should tone down their rhetoric, recognize the legitimacy of rival claims, and search for common ground. PERSPECTIVES ON THE POLITICS OF ABORTION begins in this accommodating spirit. Carol Maxwell's introductory essay proclaims that "[b]oth pro-choice and pro-life proponents might benefit by reconceptualizing and then reconstructing their arguments in ways that would encourage a convergence of interests and, one hopes, a tolerant attitude toward each other" (16-17). "The public is open to compromise" (13), Maxwell writes, but her proposed "compromise" is puzzling. In her view, we should "eliminate contention over abortion's legal status" by accepting legal abortion (16), while providing safer abortion services as well as "[s]olving problems such as the need for child care, fair and adequate remuneration, employment opportunities, reliable long-term birth control, family support, protection form familial violence, changed attitudes and policies regarding adoption, and alternative gender constructions" (17). In short, pro-life forces should abandon their effort to criminalize abortion in return for pro-choice forces acknowledging what they have always acknowledged, that abortion choices ought to be as free from personal or economic constraint as possible. Inspired by the Maxwell essay, I asked my spouse to go to a football game which I love and she detests in return for our going to a basketball game which I love and she can stomach. This proposal was not a big success.

The essays that follow in PERSPECTIVES share this "compromising" spirit. All are respectful to pro-life positions. There is virtually none of the mudslinging that mars most works on abortion. Moreover, each contribution is extremely well written and thought provoking. Clyde Wilcox offers an excellent analysis of public opinion on abortion. Mary Segers details at great length Catholic involvement in the pro-life movement. Eileen McDonagh offers a clear article length version of her controversial new defense of abortion rights. Even the weakest article in the collection, L. Kent Sezer's history of privacy law, offers a very readable, if too long, introduction to the historical underpinnings of Roe v. Wade. In the manner of good conference discussants, Patricia Fauser, Jeanne Lewis, Joel A. Setzen, Finian Taylor, and Ted G. Jelen conclude the volume with an intelligent critique of the previous essays. The result is a very stimulating set of essays that will benefit both scholar and student. What no contribution offers, however, is any hint that pro-choice forces should abandon any territory they presently hold or claim. Instead, PERSPECTIVES offers different terms under which pro-life forces might surrender with honor.

The McDonagh (and Sezer) essays call on opponents of legal abortion to surrender in the face of new arguments demonstrating that women have a human and constitutional right to terminate their pregnancies. "Abortion is a form of self-defense against the massive bodily intrusion of a fetus," McDonagh claims, and "[t]he law recognizes the justifiable use of deadly force in situations where a person's life is in danger [or] where there is massive bodily invasion" (41). In her view, "[i]f or when a fertilized ovum intrudes upon a woman's body without her consent, she not only has a right of decisional autonomy to make choices free of State interference, she also has the right to State assistance to help in defense of her bodily integrity" (43). This argument may prove more persuasive than previous pro-choice advocacy, although the past history of new defenses/critiques of abortion rights suggests caution. Even if McDonagh has tightened Judith Thomson's (1971) famous defense of abortion rights, persons who did not buy the original will probably object for similar reasons to the new, improved version. Perhaps a future collection of essays dedicated to finding common ground on abortion will include a piece suggesting that no one has produced an airtight argument on abortion. Instead of arguing, as McDonagh and other pro-choice advocates do, that all abortions should be legal and funded, that essay might explore what preferred abortion policies pro-choice and pro-life activists could most easily abandon in an effort to reach an acceptable compromise.

Wilcox provides an firm basis for such a compromise when he correctly notes that most Americans are situationists who believe that some abortions should be banned and that some regulations on that procedure make sense. His essay is particularly good detailing the nuances of public opinion on abortion and noting how both the Democratic and Republican party platforms are out of the mainstream. Instead of suggesting how public opinion offers a basis for compromise, however, Wilcox concludes by giving reasons why Republicans might consider adopting a more pro-choice position on abortion in order to win more elections. The GOP would no doubt gain some votes in national elections by abandoning their fairly rigid pro-life platform for the reasons Wilcox suggests. Still, given that most abortions fall into the categories that situationists would ban (i.e., family too big, abortion would interfere with mother's education or job), one may wonder why Democrats do not abandon their fairly rigid pro-choice platform. Perhaps Democrats need not move because, as Wilcox points out, proponents of legal abortion tend to be quite affluent. Further investigation might reveal that the increased financial contributions a rigid pro-choice position commands compensates for any deviation from public opinion. Thus, Republicans may be in trouble on abortion less because their position is more out of the popular mainstream than the Democratic alternative, but because abortion is the rare issue where elite resources are massed behind the Democratic position.

Segers would be quick to point out that the pro-life movement also enjoys significant elite support, in particular the support of the Catholic hierarchy and all the resources that hierarchy commands. Her essay does a wonderful job detailing the institutional advantages the Catholic Church enjoys in public debate and how Catholic authorities have sought to deploy those resources in the abortion controversy. Moreover, Segers details numerous problems that have resulted with Catholic pro-life lobbying. In her view, a Catholic church more attuned to democracy and membership needs would cease pro-life lobbying and work instead to "support social programs designed to help women, families, and children" (123). Readers who will easily believe that Segers knows more political science than Cardinal John O'Connor of New York, however, may question those passages where Segers seems to suggest she knows more Catholic theology than the Cardinal. Particularly puzzling is her claim "that using sermon time to exhort a captive audience of congregants to sign political pledge cards is coercive of conscience and disrespective to Catholic citizens" (121). Walking out of services may be rude, but no one is obligated by law to attend a Catholic church or any other religious service they find politically offensive. The American religious landscape is littered with congregations formed of people who didn't like what was being said at the sermons in their previous place of worship. Segers has chosen voice rather than exit, but at the very least non-Catholics would benefit from a more detailed explanation of why pro-choice Catholics do not simply form more sympathetic congregations.

Still, Republicans and Catholics would be well advised to find some means for accommodating a future that is likely to be pro-choice. Elites rarely lose in American politics and American elites are increasingly lining up behind the pro-choice movement. 

Seen from this perspective, the McDonagh, Wilcox, and Segers essays offer good excuses for Republicans, Catholics and other pro-life organizations to back off and go into some other line of work. This surrender, however, may not be unconditional. Signs point to a disturbing 1990s "accommodation" where mainstream Republicans moderate their attacks on legal abortion and mainstream Democrats moderate their defenses of welfare rights. In this new political universe, politics is increasingly a contest between the party that fights to the death on welfare while caving on abortion, and the party that fights to the death on abortion while caving on welfare. Soon the only constitutional welfare right poor people may enjoy is the right to a state funded abortion. Perhaps a future PERSPECTIVES ON THE POLITICS OF ABORTION will discuss this phenomenon.