In 1989, the pro-abortion movement won significant electoral victories in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City, which inspired commentators and pundits to dub abortion the “silver bullet” for the Democrats, and to warn pro-life politicians across the country that they defended their principles at their peril. The results of the 1990 elections, however, suggest that these warnings and pronouncements were grossly incorrect. Five lessons may be drawn.
Lesson 1: There is no groundswell for abortion rights, in fact abortion-rights candidates did less well than expected.
Following the 1989 elections, Kate Michelman of the National Abortion Rights Action League asserted: “To politicians everywhere, we say with conviction: If you’re out of touch with the pro-choice majority, you are out of office.” As this year’s election results show, Michelman’s hyperbole was out of touch with the very mixed views of Americans on the subject of abortion.
Neither abortion-rights nor pro-life activists can claim a decisive victory. Both sides made important inroads while successfully defending important incumbents. Abortion-rights candidates won governorships in Texas, Florida, California, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Georgia, New Mexico, and elsewhere, while pro-life candidates were successful in Michigan, Ohio, Alabama, Alaska, Kansas, Iowa, and Pennsylvania among others. Abortion-rights activists won in the Montana legislature and captured the Idaho senate, pro-life forces won control of the Ohio and West Virginia legislatures and the North Dakota and New York senate. While abortion-rights advocates picked up a numerical advantage among governors, pro-life advocates made changes, including among state legislators which will now enable them to enact state legislation in 1991 that will directly challenge Roe v. Wade.
In Michigan, defeated Governor James Blanchard had vetoed pro-life legislation sponsored by his opponent, State Senator John Engler. Pro-life forces should now be able to enact new legislation in Michigan. In comparison, it matters little that Florida governor-elect Lawton Chiles may now veto legislation which his opponent, Governor Bob Martinez, could not get through the legislature in the first place.
In congress, both sides beat back stiff challenges to their Senate leadership with the re-election of Jesse Helms of North Carolina and Tom Harkin of Iowa. Abortion-rights candidates did about the same as did the Democratic Party generally by picking up two votes in the Senate and eight votes in the House. But those numbers should also give abortion-rights organizers cause for concern. In the Congress there is a close correlation between the Democratic Party and abortion rights and between the Republican Party and pro-life. Prior to the 1990 election, 77 percent of Republican congressmen and 71 percent of Republican senators maintained a pro-life voting record, while 77 percent of Democratic House members and 84 percent of Democratic senators had abortion-rights records.
Thus, any significant change in the balance between Democrats and Republicans could be expected to bring along with it changes in the pro-life/abortion rights balance as well. Abortion-rights strategists could therefore have expected increased numbers in the Congress with virtually no effort by merely relying on the traditional mid-term election pick-up for the party not in control of the White House. However, given the substantial monetary and grassroots efforts expended by the abortion lobby nationwide, had the abortion rights groundswell predicted by Michelman actually occurred, abortion-rights candidates should have done far better than the Democratic Party.
In fact, the minimal Republican losses in 1990 actually benefitted pro-life efforts. By comparison, during their first mid-term congressional elections Eisenhower lost 18 Republican House seats and Reagan lost 26. Both made substantial gains two years later. Should traditional voting patterns continue through the 1992 election, President Bush should be re-elected and Republicans should make significant gains in Congress and thereby shift the campaign advantage to pro-life forces. In 1992, pro-lifers should gain back this year’s losses and more. For now, they retain sufficient strength in both houses to sustain presidential vetoes of efforts to overturn existing pro-life laws such as the Hyde amendment restricting abortion funding.
Abortion-rights advocates were successful in all three state-wide ballot measures on the issue, but here, too, the deeper meaning of the campaign should have abortion- rights advocates worried. In Oregon, where exit polls found that 55 percent of voters felt abortion should be legal in all circumstances, a ballot measure to require parental notice before a minor could obtain an abortion was defeated by only a 52 to 48 percent margin after opponents of the measure outspent its pro-life supporters by a ratio of six to one. Abortion-rights activists should be equally troubled by the fact that with 55 percent of Oregon voters believing that abortion should be legal in all circumstances, strongly pro-life Senator Mark Hatfield came from behind to win by 54 percent against an opponent who had made abortion an issue in the campaign.
Lesson 2: Politicians who switch positions from pro– life to abortion-rights increase their chances of defeat.
Out of eight major state-wide candidates who abandoned a pro-life position, seven were defeated: John Durkin (NH-Sen.), John Rowland (CT-Gov.), Anthony Celebresse (OH-Gov.), Neil Hartigan (IL-Gov.), Michael Hayden (KS-Gov.), Paul Hubbert (AL-Gov.), and John Silber (MA-Gov.). Â Â Fife Symington (AZ-Gov.) was forced into a run-off election. This is bad news for those Catholic politicians in the above list who learned the hard way that flipping on the abortion issue is particularly distasteful to Catholic voters. It was good news for the pro-life strategists who perceived that the first step after the 1989 defeats was to insulate the pro-life base of support and prevent further erosion, especially among pro-life elected officials. A major part of that strategy was accomplished in 1990. More than a few politicians with pro-life records may be uneasy about 1992, but a decision to flip on an issue which so many voters find intensely personal affects perceptions of a candidate’s integrity. His previous supporters feel betrayed and the new consistency he is appealing to is unlikely to trust his new pledge of support.
Lesson 3: The “consistent ethic of life” and “seamless garment” may be of diminishing value to Catholic politicians who label themselves both pro-choice and pro-life.
Catholic politicians who endorse a pro-choice or “personally opposed to abortion, but” position may need to rethink their strategy in the future. These politicians have coupled abortion rights with positions for “life” such as opposition to the death penalty and nuclear arms and support for increased spending on social programs. In so doing, they have sought cover under the “consistent ethic of life” analysis first proposed by Joseph Cardinal Bernardin. The most successful tactician has been Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, and it once again appeared successful in 1990.
But this year it may have begun to reach the point of diminishing returns. During the campaign, “Citizens for Harkin” distributed a brochure that quoted the Rev. Robert Drinan, S.J., and others who claim there is an “emerging consensus” in the Church that “no single issue should dominate our political agenda” and cite Cardinal Bernardin’s consistent ethic of life. The brochure prompted a letter from the NCCB Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities to editors of major media outlets in Iowa to “correct” the “misleading statements” in the brochure and urge that “political organizations should refrain from distorting the bishops’ statement to serve political goals.” The NCCB letter stated in part:
The NCCB’s 1985 Pastoral Plan for Pro-Life Activities, drafted under Cardinal Bernardin’s direction and unanimously endorsed by the U.S. bishops, says: “Among the many important issues involving the dignity of human life with which the Church is concerned, abortion necessarily plays a central role . . . It is imperative that we, as Christians called to serve the least among us, give urgent attention and priority to this issue of justice.” In November 1989, again at Cardinal Bemardin’s request, the bishops unanimously adopted a Resolution on Abortion which reaffirmed this statement, describing abortion as “the fundamental human rights issue” of our day. They added: “No Catholic can responsibly take a pro-choice stand when the choice in question involves the taking of innocent human life.”
As Cardinal Bernardin has said, “the consistent ethic of life is emphatically not a strategy for down playing the issue of abortion in the Church or in society.” In the bishops’ view, an ethic that protects the lives of others but denies legal protection to the unborn is inconsistent.
Not only did the NCCB letter receive good press treatment throughout Iowa, but bishops in Iowa directed that it be read from pulpits the Sunday before the election. Such a clarification of the bishops’ position made less effective a tactic that had worked quite well for Harkin six years earlier.
The Catholic abortion-rights candidate who defends his position in terms of “the consistent ethic of life” invites a strong response from the bishops with a heavy political downside among his core constituency. Excommunication of a “pro-choice” Catholic candidate may indeed invite a backlash among certain Catholic voters, but no politician welcomes the prospect of his campaign committee being criticized for unfair campaign practices from the pulpits of hundreds of churches. This will become increasingly evident if and when Roe v. Wade is overturned and Catholics can no longer justify support of abortion rights as a constitutionally mandated accommodation to pluralism.
The bishops’ reaction in Iowa suggests an important shift occurred with the 1989 NCCB statement on abortion. The public debate among members of the hierarchy and “pro-choice” Catholic politicians has ceased being a matter which can be construed as a contest of personality, as happened in the public debate between John Cardinal O’Connor and Geraldine Ferraro. Instead, the collective voice of the bishops’ conference has clearly taken center stage in the dialogue.
Lesson 4: While the Democratic Party continues to be characterized in Congress and in its national platform as the party supporting abortion rights, pro-life Democrats can win.
Surprisingly, a pro-life position can be a winning strategy for Democratic candidates for state-wide elections, as Joan Finney’s upset victory in the Kansas gubernatorial contest and Governor Bob Casey’s one million vote re-election margin against feminist, abortion-rights Republican State Auditor Barbara Hafer in Pennsylvania show.
Casey’s margin of victory is all the more remarkable given the fact that he signed Pennsylvania’s new abortion law now working its way to the Supreme Court — a law which may prove to be Roe v. Wade’s undoing. In addition to Governor Casey, pro-life Democratic governors Mike Sullivan and Bob Miller were re-elected in Wyoming and Nevada.
In the House, pro-life Democrats also did well. Al-though targeted for defeat by the Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, pro-life Democratic Congressman Romano Mazzoli was re-elected with a surprising 61 percent of the vote. Other pro-life Democrats either captured traditional Republican seats or won strongly contested races in Indiana (Tim Roemer), Minnesota (Collin Peterson), and Utah (William Orton), among others.
The extraordinary influence of feminist and abortion- rights constituencies at the national level will continue to preclude the Democratic Party from nominating a pro-life candidate for President. Inside Washington, attention has focused on the newly created Republicans for Choice and its proposal to delete the longstanding pro-life plank from the GOP’S national platform. Hopes for that effort should have diminished with the 1990 election results. The pro-life constituency is just too important in too many states such as Michigan, where Republican John Engler upset abortion-rights Governor James Blanchard. Market Opinion Research exit polls found that nearly 24 percent of those voting for Engler indicated his pro-life position as the reason they voted for him. Only 17 percent of voters said the same for Blanchard. Equally important is the fact that Engler was strongest in areas where pro-life groups conducted extensive get-out-the-vote efforts.
Political pundits in Washington will most likely continue to see the Republican Party as having a difficult time with the abortion issue. But results in Pennsylvania, Kansas, Michigan, and especially in Illinois —where Neil Hartigan, a Catholic Democrat, who was favored to win but got only 49 percent of the Catholic vote and lost — suggests that abortion is a less obvious but deeper problem for Democrats. In modern elections, no Democratic candidate for president has been elected with less than 60 percent of the Catholic vote. Republican national strategists understand that the ethnic Catholic voter is essential to electoral victories in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan — all states Republicans must win in 1992.
Democrats will try to counter Republican gains among Catholics by eroding support for Bush among Republican women of reproductive age. But whether affluent Republicans will leave Bush because he opposes Roe v. Wade and supports restrictions on abortion funding remains to be seen. As unlikely as it may seem, what is clear is that a “pro-life” Mario Cuomo in 1992 could shatter the Republican hold on significant numbers of ethnic Catholic voters. The worst nightmare of the Bush White House would be a presidential bid by Bob Casey.
Lesson 5: After 1990, the abortion debate will move beyond slogans such as “choice.”
In a post-election article in Commonweal (November 23), Daniel Callahan argues that the abortion-rights movement must move beyond “its underlying moral insecurity” and admit that “not each and every abortion choice is equally justifiable.” In so doing, Callahan recognizes that “to concede even the moral possibility that some abortion choices could be reprehensible, to admit that some choices can be morally wrong, would be to agree that choice itself is not the end of the moral matter.” Callahan is right in his assessment that the abortion debate is moving beyond the issue of choice itself to a consideration of the legitimacy of the choices involved in the abortion decision. This year’s election results suggest that he is wrong in his conclusion that by so doing the abortion-rights movement “will put itself in a far more secure long-term position.”
A nationwide exit poll of 9,444 voters conducted by Voter Research and Surveys on behalf of a consortium of news organizations found that only in three states — California, Oregon, and Vermont —did half or more of the voters agree with the statement that abortion should be legal in all circumstances. In nine states insufficient data was available. However, in the remaining 38 states a majority of voters stated that abortion should not be legal in any circumstances or that it should be legal only in some circumstances.
In most of the 38 states, surprisingly, the numbers are not really close. For example, when voters in the “never” and “only some circumstances” categories are combined they total 54 percent in Maryland and Massachusetts, 58 percent in New York, 60 percent in Illinois, 61 percent in New Jersey, 64 percent in Minnesota and Ohio, 66 percent in Michigan, 68 percent in Pennsylvania, 70 percent in North Carolina, and 72 percent in Wisconsin.
This election exit poll data may be even more problematic for the abortion-rights advocates when considered in light of the misperceptions most Americans have about abortion decision-making. Few Americans know that 92 percent of the 1.6 million abortions performed annually in the United States are done for reasons other than to protect the life of the mother or in cases of rape or incest. Neither do they realize that almost 43 percent of abortions in 1988 (the latest year for which figures are available) were repeat abortions. More troubling still are the findings of a Wirthlin Group poll commissioned by the U.S. Catholic Conference which was conducted prior to the 1990 elections. It found that nearly a third of Americans believe that the total annual number of abortions in the U.S. is less than 100,000. Many Americans also believe that 1 in 5 abortions are obtained for reasons of rape or incest. All of this points quite clearly to the direction future debate on abortion will take.
Under Roe v. Wade’s articulation of abortion rights, no state interest in the protection of life, the marital community, or parental authority may overcome, even in the third trimester, a woman’s decision that an abortion is necessary for her well-being. Those politicians who defend the present abortion liberty as broadly defined by Roe do so against rather sizeable majorities of the electorate in virtually every state — majorities which should continue to grow as the facts regarding abortion choices are made clear to more Americans.
Certainly for most voters issues other than abortion will continue to predominate. But according to the Voter Research and Surveys exit poll, twice as many pro-life voters stated that abortion had been one of the two issues which determined how they voted. The final lesson of the 1990 elections may well be that candidates who oppose abortion rights as mandated by Roe v. Wade and hold that the abortion should be sharply limited to only some circumstances will find themselves well within the views of the majority of voters in virtually every state.
All things being equal, such strong voter sentiment and the extent of its geographic distribution would be sufficient to predict that abortion rights as mandated by Roe v. Wade cannot be sustained politically should Roe be overturned. But all things are not equal here. Abortion-rights advocates enjoy some very important tactical advantages regarding pervasive news media sympathy, the central role of feminism in the Democratic Party coalition, fund-raising capability, and the fact that many women of child-bearing age regard abortion rights as vital to their perception of personal autonomy and integrity.
Both sides in the abortion controversy seem to be marching confidently toward 1992. Prolonged conflict is sure to follow. In the assessment of resources on both sides of the debate, perhaps the biggest question mark is the long-term implications for Catholic voters and Catholic office-holders of the bishops’ decision to make abortion “the fundamental human rights issue” of our day. How the Catholic people respond to that decision may well prove decisive.