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Jewish World Review Nov. 8, 2005 / 6 Mar-Cheshvan, 5766 To abortion they will always be true By Rich Lowry
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
At stake is the right to abortion — in China. And so the
feminist left and Democrats in this country are mobilizing to oppose
the nomination of Ellen Sauerbrey as assistant secretary of state
for the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. Among
Sauerbrey's sins is her support for the Bush administration's policy
of denying U.S. dollars to the U.N. Population Fund because that
organization is entangled with China's abortion-dependent one-child
policy.
In recent years, foreign-policy analysts have noted that the
left has seemed to lose interest in attempting to spread its ideals
abroad. Not quite. If democracy promotion has lost its appeal for
the left during the Bush years, it still fervently believes in
abortion promotion.
It is not really accurate to say that "the right to abortion" is
at stake in China. It really is "the right not to abort" that is
controversial. This right is opposed by the Chinese government, the
one-child policy of which has long had an element of coercion to it.
Amnesty International's latest report on China noted, "Serious
violations against women and girls continued to be reported as a
result of the enforcement of the family-planning policy, including
forced abortions and sterilizations."
This is the very opposite of the "right to choose" defended by
people who shout, "Hands off our bodies." No controversy distills
quite so clearly the fact that abortion-rights groups are
functionally pro-abortion. "Safe, legal and rare" is the favorite
sound bite for pro-choice politicians trying to sound reasonable.
But when it comes to China, many Democrats are satisfied with "safe,
legal and forced."
Sauerbrey has earned the feminists' ire for a few other pro-life
positions she has taken, even though the job for which she is
nominated overwhelmingly has to do with the care of refugees. But
abortion is the King Charles' head of the Democratic Party. Like the
lunatic in Charles Dickens' "David Copperfield" who can't finish a
manuscript because the severed head of King Charles I keeps popping
into his mind, the Democrats can hardly finish a political thought
without abortion intruding. The Supreme Court rules on important
issues from affirmative action to the detention of enemy combatants,
but for Democrats all of that is eclipsed by the court's role in
protecting the nation from any restriction on abortion whatsoever.
It's abortion über alles. There is no value it doesn't trump.
Liberals assail any hiring or workplace policies that have a
"disparate impact" on blacks. Abortion disproportionately eliminates
black babies — but liberals shrug. To their credit, Democrats are
advocates for the disabled, but when abortion is used to
systematically destroy handicapped children in the womb, they are
unmoved. Feminists champion women's rights overseas, but when
sex-selection abortions in China create a yawning 40 million deficit
of girls, there is little outrage, and most of it is reserved for
the pro-lifers who are too zealous about trying to do something
about it.
Its morality aside, abortion absolutism is bad politics for the
Democrats. It allows Republicans to advocate minor restrictions at
the margin — a partial-birth abortion ban, for instance — that
they know are popular, but Democrats will reflexively oppose. Shrewd
GOP marketing, you say? Perhaps, but Democrats are happy to do it to
themselves. They have focused their abortion-related opposition to
Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito around one of his decisions
holding that a spousal-notification requirement was constitutional.
Spousal notification enjoys the support of roughly 70 percent of the
public, but that is the ground on which the feminist left wants to
fight.
Even Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean realizes
Democrats have hurt themselves on abortion. His solution is to
refuse to call the Democratic Party "pro-choice." Democrats need not
disavow that label, however, so long as they don't discredit it with
an obsessive opposition to the slightest check on abortion anywhere
in America or the world.
Alas, that seems beyond their powers of self-control. To
abortion they will always be true.
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© 2005 King Features Syndicate |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
