In "The Case for Compromise on Abortion," Sullivan lauds Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for leading the way in her recent speech to pro-choice advocates:
She said something so obvious and so right it's amazing it has taken this long for it to be uttered: whatever side you're on in the pro-choice vs. pro-life debate, we surely all want to lower the number of abortions. Whether you believe that an abortion is a difficult medical procedure for a woman or whether, like me, you believe that all abortions are an immoral taking of human life, we can all agree on a third principle: we would be better off with fewer of them.
Sullivan then goes on to point out that the conservatives in his hoped-for coalition against the frequency of abortion are likely to blanch at such alternatives as "expanded access to contraception," repugnant to many Catholics. Also, at expanding adoption efforts to include gay couples.
Additionally, Sullivan worries that conservatives will be loath to reduce abortion's frequency all that much, in that "their argument for making it completely illegal may become less salient."
Too bad that he ignores parallel drawbacks from the point of view of dedicated pro-choice liberals (who oldstyleliberal thinks need to take their heads out of the ground). Columnist Ellen Goodman, in one of her columns, wrote of Hillary's speech:
Where exactly is it "possible" to find common cause with those who call themselves prolife? In the three states where women must legally be told the lie that abortion increases the risk of breast cancer? In Virginia, where a state legislator introduced a law that would have made women report "fetal deaths"? Among those who think that stem cell research is homicidal? Or want to overturn Roe v. Wade?
It also occurs to oldstyleliberal that liberals might themselves object to a drastically reduced number of abortions making their pro-choice adamancy less salient. If abortion demand were to dwindle, why would abortion need to remain legal?
So here we have exactly the sort of situation which oldstyleliberal feels points up how his style of liberalism differs from the knee-jerk form prevalent today, as well as from knee-jerk conservatism.
The difference lies in the willingness to compromise, to take a both-and approach rather than an either-or approach.
From Andrew Sullivan's standpoint, America's leadership should damp down the feuding over whether abortion should be wholly unconstitutional and illegal or should be wholly unrestricted and available on demand.
Leave the contentious issue of Roe v. Wade for one minute, quit the ideological bickering about when life begins for a while, take down the barricades, and craft a strategy that assumes abortion will be legal for the foreseeable future, but try to reduce it.
The feuding does not reduce the number of abortions in America by one single abortion. It's in service to entrenched and opposed ideological positions, not to what oldstyleliberal thinks ought to be the watchword of our politics: empowering people.
The Hillary Compromise — Sullivan, in fleshing it out, calls it "the pro-choice, pro-life compromise," but that's too ungainly — would empower women to pursue one or more of several non-abortion strategies: abstinence, which "can work for some women"; increased access to contraception, valuable especially for sexually active teens, as promoted by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's proposed Prevention First Act; expanded adoption alternatives, including gay couples. Another possibility not mentioned by Sullivan would be programs that support single motherhood.
In this way, the Hillary Compromise looks like a triumph of pragmatism and people empowerment over entrenched, people-be-damned- there's-something-more-important-at-stake-here ideology. And that suits oldstyleliberal just fine.
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