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Faking Right on Abortion

By Michael Kinsley
Posted Tuesday, June 13, 2000, at 3:00 AM ET

Here's the deal: If George W. Bush will say publicly that he supports the Republican Party's official position on abortion, I will vote for him. But almost no one else will. The man in charge of writing the party's 2000 platform, Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, says he plans no change in the abortion language from 1996, and no public discussion about it either. He might as well go all the way and say he won't even read it, because I doubt even he agrees with it.

The official position of the Republican Party is that women who have abortions should be executed. The platform doesn't say this in so many words, but it's not a fanciful interpretation. In fact, it's an unavoidable interpretation.

The platform says: "The unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed." No exceptions. And: "[W]e endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children." It's the second bit that's the killer.

On one level, it's gibberish. Legislation cannot "make clear" the meaning of the 14th Amendment because it is a constitutional provision, whose official meaning is up to the Supreme Court, not Congress. Second, the 14th Amendment begins, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States …," so if anything is "clear" it is that the 14th Amendment's protections do not apply to the unborn. In fact, neither position is "clear," and a second reference to "any person" has sometimes been held to cover resident aliens. (Of course the most recent Republican platform also complains about judges who "invent new rights as they go along, arrogating to themselves powers King George III never dared to exercise.")

What is undeniably clear from the abortion language is that the Republican Party stands for the principle that fetuses are "persons" as that term is used in the 14th Amendment. Among other famous provisions, that amendment forbids "any state" to "deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

In other words, according to the Republican platform, the law should treat the abortion of a 1-month-along fetus exactly like the killing of, say, a 5-year-old child. In every state it is considered a rather serious crime for a mother to hire someone to kill her innocent child. In states with a death penalty, this is just the kind of killing—premeditated, commercial, often remorseless, a betrayal of humanity's deepest bond—that qualifies for the death penalty.

Interpreting the "equal protection" clause has been the Supreme Court's main line of business for decades. What kinds of unequal treatment qualify? How much does the government have to be involved? But there are no complications here. Nothing could be more unequal than the difference between being executed and not being executed, and there's no ambiguity about the government's role.

So the abortion provisions of the Republican platform would give states a choice: Either execute women who have abortions, along with doctors who perform them, or don't execute other premeditated murderers and their hired gunmen. And there's really no choice because elsewhere in this steamy document the platform is quite enthusiastic about the death penalty, complaining repeatedly that it isn't used nearly enough.

Right-to-life Republicans generally say that while doctors who perform an abortion should be punished, the woman who procures one should be seen as a victim. Not only does this make no sense but under the language the party plans to readopt this year, it would be flatly unconstitutional. Even leaving aside capital punishment, a state could not send one woman to prison for murdering her child, do the same to a doctor who performs an abortion, but let another woman who scheduled an appointment, wrote a check, and had the abortion go free.

The full implications of the platform's abortion language also make a mockery of the GOP's "big tent" efforts to find room for pro-choicers in the party. The '96 platform precedes the abortion passages with some fairly desperate lemons-into-lemonade guff about being the "party of the open door" that sees "diversity of views as a source of strength" and is "committed to resolving our differences in a spirit of civility, hope, and mutual respect."

Obviously the Republican Party isn't the Communist Party, with an official "line" everyone must follow. Any party in a democracy must appeal to voters who agree with it on some issues and not on others. And an acknowledgement that issues are complex and that reasonable people can disagree is always welcome. But it's a little silly to talk about mutual respect and tolerance in the context of what you define as child murder, then revert to nasty high indignation when discussing, say, the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House.

It is simply not coherent to tell believers in abortion rights, "We think you're slaughtering children—and, no, we're not prepared to discuss it—but hey! We don't care. Come on in anyway and try to make yourself feel at home." Moral clarity is the great strength of the extreme pro-life position: Abortion is killing a baby, period. But it's a position that's hard to fake, as the GOP continues to learn.

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Michael Kinsley is a columnist for Time and the founding editor of Slate.
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Reader Response from The Fray:


I am interested on what Kinsley thinks of the way women who have the choice to get an abortion have it both ways. Unlike the father, they can wash their hands of anything to do with the child, or--if they have a change of heart--they can force the father to support the child until it reaches maturity. Doesn't really seem fair, does it? Rights without responsibilities?

What I propose--and no pro-choicer has been able to answer me on this--is that the pro-choice side pick one of two alternatives: a) women can have abortions whenever they want, but if they choose to keep the child, the father has no legal obligation to support a life he had no decision in bringing to term, or b) the father can have the right to make the mother abort the child, in a safe, supervised fashion, if he decides that he doesn't want his reproductive rights infringed. After all, if a mother has reproductive rights, then surely the father has them too. It would be absurd to argue otherwise. It's a simple choice and whichever way you go, it would result in a situation fairer than the present one. The thing is, pro-choicers are too gutless to make it. And why should they? As things stand, they can eat their cake and still have it.

--Brian

(To reply, click here.)


Yes, I believe that the Republican Party lacks the guts to stand up for their own views. To get up and say "This is wrong and should not be tolerated!" or "this is right and should be praised!" Because this is what it is to be American. I advise anyone and everyone, Republican or Democrat, Black or White, strongly opinionated or undecided to experience everything first-hand before passing judgement. Have a loved one get pregnant and decide for yourself if you should keep the baby or have it killed because you know you could not sustain its life. I'd like to take a Republican official, take all his money away, stick him in Mexico or Cuba and make him fight tooth and nail to get back to the U.S., just to let him see it through the eyes of an immigrant. Or take a Democrat and give him a minimum wage job and have his girl friend get pregnant--would he kill the baby or find a deep love for the child now inside his girlfriend and fight tooth and nail to keep it and his girlfriend alive?

I am a pro-choice Democrat born in the USA, yet even I don't know what I'd do in these situations. But I'd like the leaders of our country to know exactly what it feels like before passing laws. So they can say with a broad chest and a loud tone, "This is wrong and it will not, and I mean will not, be tolerated."

--Tobias Young

(To reply, click here.)


The so-called pro-life contingent in the GOP is not talking about life or fetuses or babies. Women have no sense and are, or should be, submissive to the power of men, whether the abortionist or the fantasy "king." The issue that consumes the fundamentalist religious right is not saving lives but the control of women and their sexuality. For a woman abortion is the ultimate assurance of privacy of sexual activity and to resort to it is an act of autonomy and free will. Ergo to hold women accountable for murder in the seeking abortion would be to acknowledge rights and powers that are anathema to the fundamentalists.

--Burmalou

(To reply, click here.)

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