This commentary from a former Clinton administration official in the May 1st edition of the Wall Street Journal is instructive in showing just how wildly out of touch the current field of Democratic presidential candidates are with most Americans when it comes to the issue of partial-birth abortions and the recent US Supreme Court decision to uphold the ban on those abortions.
Out of the Mainstream
By Kirsten Powers
May 1, 2007; Page A20 Brian Williams asked a revealing question at the Democratic presidential debate in South Carolina last week. The NBC News anchor, who was serving as moderator, inquired whether criticism of the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the federal partial-birth abortion ban put the Democrats on stage at odds with the majority of Americans who applauded the decision.
John Edwards, apparently missing the rhetorical nature of the question, responded, "No, I don't believe it is."
Polls show between 60% and 70% of Americans oppose late term abortions, except to save the life of the mother. The Democratic candidates -- all of whom vocally criticized the ruling -- are out of touch with most Americans, including many who are pro-choice, on this important issue. Even some Democrats who voted for the ban four years ago -- such as Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Joe Biden (two of 17 Senate Democrats to vote for it) -- have dressed down the Supreme Court for upholding a law they voted for.
It's tragic that abortion rights have become synonymous with modern day feminism. But it's mind-boggling that late-term abortions now enjoy the imprimatur of every one of the presidential candidates of one of the two main political parties. Many early feminists -- the Suffragettes -- opposed abortion. They viewed it as an affront to human rights. There is little doubt that they would have recognized elective, late-term abortion for what it is, a gruesome, uncivilized and inhuman procedure. Feminism was meant to establish women as having equal legal rights to men. Yet, in today's twisted debate, women are not mere equals. Instead, they have been elevated to a special status where they have the "right" to determine whether a five-month or older "live fetus," as the court called it, should be partially delivered outside of their body and killed in the most gruesome manner imaginable, even if carrying that fetus poses no threat to their life.
Some elected Democrats ignored this faux-feminist canard, and supported the ban, including Rep. James P. Moran, of Virginia, who said, "It's not about a woman's right to choose. It's about a baby's right to life." The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a pro-choice Democrat, called the practice "infanticide." It needs to be said that there is no constitutional right to crush a living human's skull and suction out its brains, no matter where that life may reside -- inside the womb, or partially outside the womb, as is done in the so-called partial birth abortion. It's immoral and contrary to the values of the Democratic Party, which prides itself on standing up for the weak and voiceless.
If Democratic power brokers aren't swayed by moral arguments, then they should consider how their reflexive pandering to the left wing of the party will play in a general election.
The Democratic Party has made a huge show of reaching out to religious voters, for whom abortion is a central issue. Overtures have been made to acknowledge the moral dimension of abortion, with Sen. Hillary Clinton's famous remarks that, "we can all recognize that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women."
But terrified by the left wing of the Democratic Party, the presidential candidates are aligning themselves with organizations that malign opponents of unrestricted late-term abortions as misinformed hysterics. Yet some of the people who run those organizations are themselves bereft of factual information about the procedure they champion. Recently, National Organization for Women (NOW) President Kim Gandy was asked in a radio interview to describe the procedure she so vigorously supports. She couldn't. When pressed, she sputtered, "I'm not a doctor."
When the host cited testimony of a doctor, one Dr. Martin Haskell -- the man who pioneered and has performed at least a thousand of these abortions -- Mr. Gandy replied "I don't know who Dr. Haskell is." It's important to know who Dr. Haskell is, since he has debunked a central claim of unrestricted late-term abortion proponents, that they are critical to protect the "health" of the mother. According to an interview in American Medical News, Dr. Haskell said, "I'll be quite frank: most of my abortions are elective in that 20-24 week range. . . . In my particular case, probably 20% are for genetic reasons. And the other 80% are purely elective."
Rather than defending the indefensible, rather than parroting the propaganda that elective late-term abortions are "health-care decisions" akin to an appendectomy, the Democratic Party should be taking the lead in eliminating a still legal form of elective late-term abortion where, as the court described it, "The fetus is usually ripped apart as it is removed, and the doctor may take 10 to 15 passes to remove it."
Sen. Barack Obama pointed out that late- term abortions account for less than 1% of all abortions. Sounds sort of benign, until you consider that in the last 10 years more than 10 million babies have been aborted in the United States.
Ms. Powers served in the Clinton administration from 1993-98 and is a Fox News political analyst
