Washington, DC — The recent wrenching debate in the Senate was about more than partial-birth abortion. On each side, there was a clear recognition that this was the beginning of a broader struggle, that the long-simmering abortion battle was entering a new, more contentious phase.
For now, that struggle is focused on bills imposing new restrictions on abortion, which suddenly have a chance in a Republican-controlled Senate, and on the confirmation of pro-life nominees, or those who will, at least, uphold pro-life legislation, to the lower courts. But these are, in some ways, proxy wars. Both sides are ultimately focused on the Supreme Court, now in its longest stretch in 180 years without any turnover, and as a result long overdue for a change.
The anxiety — and the political mobilizing — is building at the approach of another summer, when the Supreme Court's term will end and any retirements might be announced. No one outside the court knows when the next vacancy will occur, but many people contend it is imminent, and each side in the abortion debate says it will affect the shape of abortion.
“Without question, that is where we're heading,” said Kate Michelman, president of Naral Pro-Choice America. “We are likely to have a vacancy by June, and we must be prepared.”
Genevieve Wood, spokeswoman for the Family Research Council, said: “We're obviously always thinking ahead to who's going to be the next appointment to the Supreme Court. The politics of abortion is fought out at the ballot box, but it is fought out in the judicial offices as well.”
The intensity and scope of the struggle are apparent in the messages the two camps are sending to their supporters, on their websites, via e-mail and by other means. They are urging their supporters to weigh in on the federal appeals court nomination of Miguel Estrada, delayed by a filibuster by Senate Democrats who contend he is a stealth candidate not forthcoming enough about his views. The Estrada dispute is widely considered a precursor, a chance to test strategy and set the ground rules, for what will ensue when a Supreme Court vacancy occurs.
The National Right to Life Committee is urging supporters to defend his nomination. “Estrada's confirmation is being blocked by the Senate Democratic leadership because he has not committed to support abortion,” it declares on its legislative action Web site. Democrats supporting the filibuster, the Web site says, “should be targeted for phone calls, e-mails, and faxes expressing the clear message, ‘End the filibuster against Miguel Estrada — give the man a vote!’”
On the other side, officials of Naral Pro-Choice America say they produced 35,000 communications to the Senate opposing Estrada last weekend, through their “choice action network” and 30,000 more against the ban on partial-birth abortion. At the same time, another skirmish is beginning with the renomination of Priscilla R. Owen, a Texas Supreme Court justice, to a federal appeals court; she, too, is opposed by pro-abortion groups.
The abortion battles are moving quickly from front to front. A day after the Senate passed the ban on partial-birth abortion, which is expected to pass the House quickly and be signed into law by President Bush, pro-abortion groups served notice that they would seek to block it in the courts. “Planned Parenthood will file suit as soon as the bill is signed,” its president, Gloria Feldt, said in an interview. “I mean that minute.”
The Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 decision three years ago, ruled that a similar ban was unconstitutional under Roe v. Wade. Supporters of abortion rights say the ban the Senate passed this month is every bit as unconstitutional as the law thrown out by the Supreme Court. Pro-life groups reject that argument and they are hoping that the Supreme Court will be a different court by the time any challenge of the law reaches it.
As Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, put it, “We hope that by the time this ban reaches the Supreme Court, at least five justices will be willing to reject such extremism in defense of abortion.”
The partial-birth abortion debate in the Senate also made reference to the upcoming court battles.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), who supports abortion, declared at one point: “I understand what the other side wants to do. They are hoping to get somebody new on the Supreme Court and to turn the clock back completely, to overrule Roe v. Wade.”
Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), the leading pro-life Senator who was the chief sponsor of the ban, countered with a bitter denunciation of the court for the Roe decision, saying that it had coarsened the nation's culture and stained its history as much as slavery. “It took from the people the right to decide their own fate, and rested it in an unelected body, at that time of nine old men,” Santorum told the Senate.
In an interview last Friday, he likened Roe to the Dred Scott decision of 1857, when the court ruled that blacks born into slavery had no constitutional rights. “The more people understand how wide open Roe v. Wade is, how unlimited it is,” Santorum said, the more they turn against it.
The clash of world views on abortion echoes more and more through Washington these days; at one point, the Senate moved from debating the bill to holding a vote on the Estrada filibuster. “There's no coincidence that partial birth and Estrada are banging around at the same time,” Santorum said.
(This article courtesy of Steven Ertelt and the Pro-Life Infonet email newsletter. For more information or to subscribe go to www.prolifeinfo.org or email infonet@prolifeinfo.org.)
