Over the years the pro-life movement in the United States has become awkwardly impaled on the horns of a dilemma. On November 7, you might say the dilemma came home to roost.
Here's the problem. To advance its political agenda, the pro-life movement has moved steadily closer to the Republican party. But in doing so it becomes vulnerable to whatever misfortunes befall the GOP. The strategy makes sense when Republicans are in the ascendancy. When the GOP goes down in flames, as happened this year, so does pro-life.
Voters didn't turn against the pro-life agenda on November 7 – they turned against Republican candidates over Iraq and congressional corruption. Even in South Dakota a tough anti-abortion law was overturned in a referendum because of pro-life miscalculations and heavy spending by Planned Parenthood, not because of pro-abortion sentiment as such.
But the blow to the GOP was a blow to pro-life anyway. The loss of pro-life senators like Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Mike DeWine of Ohio, and James Talent of Missouri unquestionably hurts. There will be no new pro-life legislation in the 110th Congress, and pro-lifers will have to fight to defend gains they've already won.
Potentially worst of all, Democratic control of the Senate radically limits President Bush's options if he gets another chance to nominate someone for the Supreme Court. If there's another Bush nominee in the next two years, he or she will likely be substantially to the left of John Roberts and Samuel Alito.
The pro-life movement didn't seek its political dependence on the Republican party. It was thrust on pro-lifers by the Democrats, who've gone out of their way to alienate them for the last 30 years. But now winds of change may have started to blow.
In recent months prominent Democrats like Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, both potential presidential contenders in 2008, have begun urging their party to moderate its stance on social issues like abortion. This shift was reflected in some of the Democratic candidates for office this year.
From that perspective, wins by people like Bob Casey, Jr., the new junior senator from Pennsylvania, and Bill Ritter, the newly elected governor of Colorado, could be a bellwether. Casey, Ritter, and others call themselves pro-life, and if the pro-life movement is smart, it will take them at their word – at least for now – and press them to exert leverage on their party to move away from extreme views.
This doesn't mean pro-life abandonment of the Republicans. But it does suggest the need to take a fresh look at a fundamental question: Does the pro-life movement wish to be forever a part of the Republican coalition, with its fate tied to that of the party and its candidates, or would it rather be an independent force able to throw its weight around in both the Republican and Democratic camps?
Committed Republican pro-lifers unquestionably will call this line of thought hopelessly unrealistic. The Democrats, they will say, will never back off from their diehard embrace of far-out views on social issues, and their talk of moderation is just window-dressing. Pro-life overtures to people like Casey and Ritter would be a betrayal of the movement's only real hope – the GOP.
That may be the voice of political wisdom. But then again, it may not. There's just one way to find out: try. The alternative is standing pat and hoping the electorate swings the other way in 2008. And if there's anything certain in this uncertain world, it's that there's no certainty it will.
