"Pro-life" politics these days
For some reason, I haven't ever unsubscribed from the Family Research Council's weekday e-mail updates. I subscribed in the first place, back in 2004, because I admired their uncompromising pro-life stance. As angry as their updates often make me, I think I stay on the list because of their occasional flashes of independence from the Republican Party line in the name of saving unborn lives. By the time the most recent Bush left office, FRC had become one of the administration's harshest critics on the right. Even recently, FRC president Tony Perkins has been making the news/talk rounds, urging conservatives to give to individual candidates rather than the RNC. I can respect that.
If only they'd follow their own advice.
The FRC may be talking the talk, but ultimately they're just carrying water for a party whose true commitment to pro-life principles is ever more in doubt. I usually read their e-mail updates, grimace a little, and move on with my day, but this time I thought I needed to write something, because yesterday's update was so illustrative of how pro-life politics on the right have gone wrong. (That, and the fact that Jonathan, without my permission, bragged on Facebook about my upcoming blog post on this topic. So I was stuck.)
Last night's update (I wish I could link to it, but they don't put the really good stuff up on the website) dealt with Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI). Surely you remember Rep. Stupak, pro-life Democrat and briefly the darling of the pro-life movement when he refused to vote for the House health care bill without an amendment explicitly banning the use of federal funds for abortion? He and a bloc of nineteen other pro-life Democrats stood against the Speaker and the President and got the legislation passed in the House with the Stupak Amendment attached. For his trouble, Stupak earned the (still unremitting) hatred of the major pro-choice organizations and, unfortunately, plenty of ordinary people on the left; the normally Republican Susan B. Anthony List, however, picked him to receive their "Defender of Life" award. Although I was at first wary of Stupak's tactics, given that I thought health care reform would probably do more to reduce abortion (by easing one source of stress on women facing unplanned pregnancies) than any funding firewall, I was thrilled when the bill passed the House as amended. Now, finally, I thought, conservatives would have to come to terms with the existence of pro-life Democrats.
But the ending wasn't so rosy. The Stupak Amendment wouldn't fly in the Senate, and in order to get health care reform passed, Stupak and his allies negotiated a deal wherein the president would sign an executive order (which he has now done) banning the use of federal funding for abortion, rather than including the language in the law itself. Bart Stupak found himself out of favor with conservative pro-lifers as quickly as he had become their hero. The SBA List's invitation was revoked, loudly and publicly. He was denounced as a traitor and a sell-out.
(This is despite the fact that I can think of nothing for which he could have sold out. As far as I've heard, there's no "Michigan Kickback" in the health care law, although they certainly could use one. And I don't think he did it to get back in the good graces of the left; he seems to be an all-around outcast these days, and Michael Moore is whipping up a movement to unseat him. At least Moore and the FRC have found something on which they can agree.)
So, now the FRC announces that it has launched an ad campaign to unseat Stupak and the other dirty (pro-life) bums who voted with him. "We plan to raise at least a half million dollars to spend in those congressional districts whose members turned their backs on their convictions--and their constituents," they say. They've even got a catchy name for it - 20 in '10 - referring to the specific purpose of getting rid of the whole raft of pro-life Democrats who insisted on the amendment and the executive order.
Now, I'm guessing the FRC has limited resources to spend on Congressional campaigns. Why in the world, then, are they targeting PRO-LIFE Democrats? Yes, they disagree with the Stupak bloc about how to achieve health care reform. But one would think they'd be more natural allies than genuinely pro-choice Democrats who have no qualms about any sort of federal funding for Planned Parenthood et al. After all, the Democrats do control Congress, some sort of health care package was going to be passed, and Stupak and company did get pro-lifers that executive order. (By the way, for all the hand-wringing about how an executive order is so much more fragile than a law - which, procedurally, it is of course - how exactly is this order going to be rescinded? It would certainly backfire on Obama if he were to rescind his own order. And given that pro-life conservatives have been wailing since the election that Obama is the most pro-choice president in history, and presidential politics in this country generally swing back and forth like a pendulum rather than becoming ever more extreme in one direction or another, who else is going to strike the order? I don't see this issue coming up again for quite a long time, at which point we can address it again.)
And who's going to replace these pro-life Democrats? Pro-choice Republicans aren't rare birds; they're everywhere, since unfortunately the Republican Party is far more tolerant of pro-choice members than the Democrats are of pro-lifers. Remember Scott Brown, who pleased conservatives so much by winning the Massachusetts Senate seat formerly occupied by Ted Kennedy? His record is pro-choice.
But the FRC evidently hasn't given any thought to who the replacements might be for these "traitors." The only conclusion I can draw from this frenzied war on potential allies is that the FRC would still rather see Democrats lose control of Congress (even if that means putting pro-choice Republicans in their place) than put together a genuinely pro-life coalition that might disagree on the details but agree on the overall aim of reducing the number of abortions taking place in this country. Again and again, the conservative pro-life movement lets symbolism and empty stands on "principle" get in the way of actually saving unborn lives. For now, Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, and it's far more effective to look for innovative ways to reduce the demand for abortion than to keep knocking away at a locked door. I don't like the idea of federal money being used for abortion either, but the intensity of opposition to it from the right suggests a desperate attempt to keep their hands clean ("not in my name") by denying to poor women what rich women can have easily, rather than looking at the root causes of unplanned pregnancies and decisions for abortion.
As if the unreasonable attack on Stupak weren't enough, I read further. The next item in the update bore the headline, "One Birth Announcement That's Not Worth Celebrating." That immediately caught my eye, since I thought pro-lifers found every live birth worth celebrating. It turns out that the FRC is bemoaning the results of a new CDC survey showing that births to unmarried women (of all ages; I believe teen pregnancy rates nationwide are still falling, last I checked) have reached a new high, with over forty percent of all births to women who are not married. "[M]ore women are intentionally choosing this lifestyle," the e-mail says. "Instead of marrying, they're raising children alone or living with their boyfriends." It laments the disadvantages to children of not living with a mother and father, and the costs taxpayers are ostensibly paying to "keep broken families afloat."
I guess I'll have to assume that no one at FRC appreciated the irony of putting this item, tsk-tsking at unmarried women having babies, right next to an item stating that pro-life Democrats' failure to, in the organization's opinion, adequately stand against abortion, is a crime worthy of being booted out of office. Has it not occurred to the FRC that one reason out-of-wedlock births are so numerous nowadays is that many of them are, in fact, births rather than abortions? That the stigma associated with the unmarried, cohabiting, or single parenting "lifestyle" led to widespread abortions in the past? Social conservatives, both Republicans and Democrats, have to walk a fine line. We do have to say we think it's best for children to be raised by a married mother and father. But we also have to say that a baby born to a single mother is at least a living baby with a chance at a fulfilling life of following God's calling. We have to acknowledge the possibility that all is not lost, that single parents can do a courageous and good job of raising children, and that churches and communities can step in to help children in less-than-ideal home situations.
When we refer to these children only as statistics, when we lament the money we have to spend on them, we only fuel the defeatism that leads some women to conclude that their fetuses would be better off not having a chance at life at all, than to be born into their current circumstances. I'm not going to celebrate unmarried cohabitation or say that choosing to have a child while single is a good and right and valid choice. But we must speak with compassion, with the realization that people can change and lives - thank God - aren't determined by statistics. One of the reasons I identify with the Democratic rather than the Republican Party is that I believe being genuinely pro-life requires a recognition that it's going to take a village to raise children resulting from unwanted pregnancies. We, from churches to community organizations to the government, have to provide hope and alternatives - not just condemnation and shrill rhetoric and dire predictions. We DO have to celebrate all birth announcements, even as we wish the circumstances of those births were different.
Plenty of people, conservatives and Republicans included, are doing this, through work with crisis pregnancy centers and other avenues. But the FRC isn't helping their cause with its supposed stands on principle - and its determination to oust the very people, like Bart Stupak, we desperately need for this fight.
- KPE
If only they'd follow their own advice.
The FRC may be talking the talk, but ultimately they're just carrying water for a party whose true commitment to pro-life principles is ever more in doubt. I usually read their e-mail updates, grimace a little, and move on with my day, but this time I thought I needed to write something, because yesterday's update was so illustrative of how pro-life politics on the right have gone wrong. (That, and the fact that Jonathan, without my permission, bragged on Facebook about my upcoming blog post on this topic. So I was stuck.)
Last night's update (I wish I could link to it, but they don't put the really good stuff up on the website) dealt with Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI). Surely you remember Rep. Stupak, pro-life Democrat and briefly the darling of the pro-life movement when he refused to vote for the House health care bill without an amendment explicitly banning the use of federal funds for abortion? He and a bloc of nineteen other pro-life Democrats stood against the Speaker and the President and got the legislation passed in the House with the Stupak Amendment attached. For his trouble, Stupak earned the (still unremitting) hatred of the major pro-choice organizations and, unfortunately, plenty of ordinary people on the left; the normally Republican Susan B. Anthony List, however, picked him to receive their "Defender of Life" award. Although I was at first wary of Stupak's tactics, given that I thought health care reform would probably do more to reduce abortion (by easing one source of stress on women facing unplanned pregnancies) than any funding firewall, I was thrilled when the bill passed the House as amended. Now, finally, I thought, conservatives would have to come to terms with the existence of pro-life Democrats.
But the ending wasn't so rosy. The Stupak Amendment wouldn't fly in the Senate, and in order to get health care reform passed, Stupak and his allies negotiated a deal wherein the president would sign an executive order (which he has now done) banning the use of federal funding for abortion, rather than including the language in the law itself. Bart Stupak found himself out of favor with conservative pro-lifers as quickly as he had become their hero. The SBA List's invitation was revoked, loudly and publicly. He was denounced as a traitor and a sell-out.
(This is despite the fact that I can think of nothing for which he could have sold out. As far as I've heard, there's no "Michigan Kickback" in the health care law, although they certainly could use one. And I don't think he did it to get back in the good graces of the left; he seems to be an all-around outcast these days, and Michael Moore is whipping up a movement to unseat him. At least Moore and the FRC have found something on which they can agree.)
So, now the FRC announces that it has launched an ad campaign to unseat Stupak and the other dirty (pro-life) bums who voted with him. "We plan to raise at least a half million dollars to spend in those congressional districts whose members turned their backs on their convictions--and their constituents," they say. They've even got a catchy name for it - 20 in '10 - referring to the specific purpose of getting rid of the whole raft of pro-life Democrats who insisted on the amendment and the executive order.
Now, I'm guessing the FRC has limited resources to spend on Congressional campaigns. Why in the world, then, are they targeting PRO-LIFE Democrats? Yes, they disagree with the Stupak bloc about how to achieve health care reform. But one would think they'd be more natural allies than genuinely pro-choice Democrats who have no qualms about any sort of federal funding for Planned Parenthood et al. After all, the Democrats do control Congress, some sort of health care package was going to be passed, and Stupak and company did get pro-lifers that executive order. (By the way, for all the hand-wringing about how an executive order is so much more fragile than a law - which, procedurally, it is of course - how exactly is this order going to be rescinded? It would certainly backfire on Obama if he were to rescind his own order. And given that pro-life conservatives have been wailing since the election that Obama is the most pro-choice president in history, and presidential politics in this country generally swing back and forth like a pendulum rather than becoming ever more extreme in one direction or another, who else is going to strike the order? I don't see this issue coming up again for quite a long time, at which point we can address it again.)
And who's going to replace these pro-life Democrats? Pro-choice Republicans aren't rare birds; they're everywhere, since unfortunately the Republican Party is far more tolerant of pro-choice members than the Democrats are of pro-lifers. Remember Scott Brown, who pleased conservatives so much by winning the Massachusetts Senate seat formerly occupied by Ted Kennedy? His record is pro-choice.
But the FRC evidently hasn't given any thought to who the replacements might be for these "traitors." The only conclusion I can draw from this frenzied war on potential allies is that the FRC would still rather see Democrats lose control of Congress (even if that means putting pro-choice Republicans in their place) than put together a genuinely pro-life coalition that might disagree on the details but agree on the overall aim of reducing the number of abortions taking place in this country. Again and again, the conservative pro-life movement lets symbolism and empty stands on "principle" get in the way of actually saving unborn lives. For now, Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, and it's far more effective to look for innovative ways to reduce the demand for abortion than to keep knocking away at a locked door. I don't like the idea of federal money being used for abortion either, but the intensity of opposition to it from the right suggests a desperate attempt to keep their hands clean ("not in my name") by denying to poor women what rich women can have easily, rather than looking at the root causes of unplanned pregnancies and decisions for abortion.
As if the unreasonable attack on Stupak weren't enough, I read further. The next item in the update bore the headline, "One Birth Announcement That's Not Worth Celebrating." That immediately caught my eye, since I thought pro-lifers found every live birth worth celebrating. It turns out that the FRC is bemoaning the results of a new CDC survey showing that births to unmarried women (of all ages; I believe teen pregnancy rates nationwide are still falling, last I checked) have reached a new high, with over forty percent of all births to women who are not married. "[M]ore women are intentionally choosing this lifestyle," the e-mail says. "Instead of marrying, they're raising children alone or living with their boyfriends." It laments the disadvantages to children of not living with a mother and father, and the costs taxpayers are ostensibly paying to "keep broken families afloat."
I guess I'll have to assume that no one at FRC appreciated the irony of putting this item, tsk-tsking at unmarried women having babies, right next to an item stating that pro-life Democrats' failure to, in the organization's opinion, adequately stand against abortion, is a crime worthy of being booted out of office. Has it not occurred to the FRC that one reason out-of-wedlock births are so numerous nowadays is that many of them are, in fact, births rather than abortions? That the stigma associated with the unmarried, cohabiting, or single parenting "lifestyle" led to widespread abortions in the past? Social conservatives, both Republicans and Democrats, have to walk a fine line. We do have to say we think it's best for children to be raised by a married mother and father. But we also have to say that a baby born to a single mother is at least a living baby with a chance at a fulfilling life of following God's calling. We have to acknowledge the possibility that all is not lost, that single parents can do a courageous and good job of raising children, and that churches and communities can step in to help children in less-than-ideal home situations.
When we refer to these children only as statistics, when we lament the money we have to spend on them, we only fuel the defeatism that leads some women to conclude that their fetuses would be better off not having a chance at life at all, than to be born into their current circumstances. I'm not going to celebrate unmarried cohabitation or say that choosing to have a child while single is a good and right and valid choice. But we must speak with compassion, with the realization that people can change and lives - thank God - aren't determined by statistics. One of the reasons I identify with the Democratic rather than the Republican Party is that I believe being genuinely pro-life requires a recognition that it's going to take a village to raise children resulting from unwanted pregnancies. We, from churches to community organizations to the government, have to provide hope and alternatives - not just condemnation and shrill rhetoric and dire predictions. We DO have to celebrate all birth announcements, even as we wish the circumstances of those births were different.
Plenty of people, conservatives and Republicans included, are doing this, through work with crisis pregnancy centers and other avenues. But the FRC isn't helping their cause with its supposed stands on principle - and its determination to oust the very people, like Bart Stupak, we desperately need for this fight.
- KPE
posted by The Eastvold Blog at 2:06 AM
6 Comments:
Hi KPE,
Good article. One objection I have, though, is your simple characterization of Scott Brown as "pro-choice."
While he is in support of legalized abortion, he is very active in pro-life politics. He co-sponsored the Woman's Right to Know Act for abortion waiting periods, is against partial birth abortion, is for strong parental notification laws, and against federal funding for abortion.
Bottom line: the gap between Brown and Democrats like Ted Kennedy and Coakley on the issue of abortion is huge. There is a reason why Massachusetts Citizens-for-Life endorsed him.
Scott Brown is a politician who is committed to reducing the number of abortions, which is something that you support. We should be people that look beyond the labels of "pro-choice" and "pro-life" and support politicians like Scott Brown who have records of commitment to reducing abortions.
Insightful and eloquent. Thank you Katherine!
Elnwood -
As always, thanks for your comment. I hadn't heard all of what you bring up about Scott Brown; if you're right, then yes - I agree that we can make common cause with him on abortion, at least in some cases. And I certainly was not saying he's no better than Ted Kennedy on life issues; I was comparing pro-life Democrats and pro-choice Republicans.
- KPE
Hi KPE,
Thanks for your reply. Information on Scott Brown is here.
http://www.ontheissues.org/social/Scott_Brown_Abortion.htm
Another comment (not a critique): I think the biggest reason that Stupak took the flack that he did was that he was raised on a high pedestal, and then disappointed. He was the pro-life, uncompromising, tenacious, put-principle-over-party superhero who publicly vowed several times that he would not vote for the health care bill without his amendment. To an increasingly disillusioned public, he was a bright light of integrity and purity among a sea of wheeling and dealing politicians.
When push came to shove, though, he made a pragmatic compromise. He thought that the bill would pass without his support, so he went for the executive order, and thus broke his pledge. I'm not sure if his reasons were sound (i.e. if Pelosi and Obama could have passed it without Stupak's support, I think they would have), but it was a pretty standard political compromise.
For Stupak, he did not compromise his own principles, but for the millions of pro-life voters tired of back-room compromises and who looked up to him as the one who would stand up to his own party and uphold his vow, his compromise was a heavy reminder that politics is and will always be politics.
So I still think Stupak is a solid pro-life politician, but I am deeply disappointed in him because I expected more of him, specifically in the area of keep his promises in the face of pressure to compromise to pragmatism.
The same, I think, can be said of Obama's pledge to have an open and honest administration and have all health care discussions publicly aired. Like Stupak, Obama was to many people a bright light of hope and change. Yet, Obama broke his pledge. I understand that Obama went back on his pledge for very understandable and pragmatic reasons, but I still can't help but be more than just a little bit disappointed in him for breaking that pledge.
First of all, thanks for this post KPE, because I've been quite curious as to how you felt about the health care endgame - my corner of academia doesn't have a lot of strongly pro-life thinkers, much less Democratic pro-life advocates (we do have conservatives in academia! But the computer scientists seem to be more libertarian-leaning.)
Second, and mostly in response to Elnwood - I see an analogy between what happened with the Stupak N (where N is unknown) and the House Progressive Caucus. Bear with me, it's a long analogy. There were dozens and dozens of house members that pledged to not vote for any bill that had not only a public option, but a strong public option with rates tied to Medicare, which is an unrecognizable goal looking at the final bill. But their bluff was called by the White House and the leadership and they went quietly. For them, the crisis of the uninsured is an enormous tragedy, it was the one of the (maybe not *the*) biggest injustices in American life, and given the opportunity they were going to try to avoid having people die and go bankrupt due to the inability to purchase insurance on the individual market.
Compare this to someone like Jason Altmire, whose priorities involve protecting large insurance companies. That's his priority, and so noone was surprised (though many were disappointed) that given the opportunity to avoid having people die and go bankrupt due to the inability to purchase insurance on the individual market, he would put the enormous insurance/hospital conglomerate in his district first.
I sympathize for Stupak. I really don't that health care would have passed without Stupak - I think Stupak wanted it to pass without him because he articulated as much (as I recall) in the final week. I think he saw that at the end of the day that this was one of the (certainly not *the*) biggest pro-life issues in American life, and given the opportunity (one! more! time!) to try to avoid having people die and go bankrupt due to the inability to purchase insurance on the individual market, he was going to be slightly more flexible about his interpretation of what was and was not a continuation of the Hyde Amendment compromise than he had appeared to be in the past and take a face-saving compromise (that nevertheless created further precedent for the Hyde Amendment, which I suppose is not nothing.)
The problem, of course, is that at the end of the day he was more like the House Progressive Caucus and less like Jason Altimire (D-UPMC Health Plan), but he never showed any indication whatsoever that this was the case. There are a lot of liberals that saw a public option as a much bigger imperative than death/bankruptcy. The problem for Stupak is that, in America as a whole, people tend to see "abortion" as something that is totally imperative bigger than anything else, including the death/bankruptcy bit. And so when Stupak presented himself as someone willing to blow the whole thing up over his particular interpretation of the Hyde Amendment, he made the whole thing About Abortion (TM), and everyone expected him to prioritize something About Abortion (TM) over everything else. While Kucinich and the Progressive Caucus still have a lot of friends who agree with both their desires (strong public option + reforming the insurance market to avoid death/bankruptcy stuff) and their priorities, most people in America that agree with Stupak on abortion do not agree with his priorities. In other words, Stupak and Kucinich both bluffed for their priorities and then back down. But Stupak got left really, really lonely by doing so.
Concluding the following longlonglong comment, I had the following thought. It seems possible to say "I'm moderately pro-choice" but not "I'm moderately pro-life." If a pro-life stance is a moral imperative (and, I mean, if it's babykilling that's pretty much a moral imperative) then doesn't that make creating common cause with pro-life politicians essentially impossible? Aren't they (shouldn't they be) forced by their beliefs to threaten to blow up any piece of legislation (health care reform? definitely! cap-and-trade? probably!) unless it also further restricts access to abortions?
Is what we're seeing with Stupak's retirement that he is being held to a (less-absurd, but only by a bit) version of that standard? I say "definitely maybe."
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