Abortion, remember? It was supposed to dominate the election, according to pundit predictions back in January. And then silence.
Since the primaries, abortion talk has been as scarce as a Monica sighting.
Pro-life Republicans have been uncharacteristically quiet, while Democrats remain smug in their anything-goes corner. Suddenly, just weeks before the election, the A-word is back in all its vainglorious ambiguity. Renewed interest or the final gasps of a moot point?
At one end of the spectrum, discussion centers on giving American women access to the so-called “morning-after” RU-486 pill, which causes spontaneous abortion of a fertilized embryo in the first seven weeks of pregnancy. The Food and Drug Administration approved use of the pill last month, thus ending a 12-year stalemate during which politicians tried to nail down the exact moment that life begins.
At the other end, legislators grappled with a bizarre House bill clarifying for idiots that a breathing, moving newborn with a beating heart is, in fact, a human being. The “Born-Alive Infants Protection Act” passed 380-15 and resolved finally the prickly question of whether an unwanted baby can be destroyed post-“birth” if an abortion fails.
The bill is not expected to go to the Senate before legislators adjourn and, therefore, will die a natural death.
Those who voted against the legislation noted that the bill was unnecessary it’s against the law to kill people and viable babies out of the womb already are considered people and accused the bill’s authors of seeking to make pro-choice legislators look bad. They’re probably correct, though one can imagine that babies intended for the Great Vacuum Beyond are grateful, nonetheless. Hey, one less thing.
And so here we are, stuck somewhere between conception and viability, grappling with an issue of which most Americans are sick and even Republicans seem weary. What seems understood at this point is that approval of the RU-486 pill was overdue for reasons the facts make clear, and abortion is here to stay even if the Republicans take the White House.
In capsule, the RU-486 pills are effective (92 percent to 95 percent effective in the first seven weeks) and safer than surgical abortions, which kill 80,000 women per year around the world. Even though 5 percent to 10 percent of women still require surgical abortion following administration of the pill, the more palatable consequence is that most abortions will occur earlier, thus reducing the likelihood of our needing to entertain laws with names like “Born-Alive Infants Protection.”
Abortion is here to stay, meanwhile, because no one’s going to touch it. Not Al Gore, certainly. He’ll perform one himself if that’s what it takes to get him elected. But neither is George W. Bush, whose slogan should be: “Read My Smirk.” Dubya’s done everything but put a “Pro-choice” sticker on his limo.
The smirk says: Bush has two daughters, and no Yale Daddy worth his frat paddle is going to make his baby have a baby if she doesn’t want to. He’s said he supports abortion in cases of rape or incest, thus separating himself from the rigid hard-right. He promised not to make abortion a litmus test for Supreme Court appointments.
Abortion has been absent these many months because the debate, implicit in the unspoken, is over.
Kathleen Parker is a columnist for the Orlando Sentinel.
