Eleanor Clift has written a good piece on ways the abortion issue is influencing the political positioning of potential candidates, primarily Hillary Clinton and John McCain, in the 2008 national election.
Whatever you might think of Clinton's and McCain's efforts to address voters' concerns about abortion, it would help, I think, to remember these figures that Clift provides:
Only one in ten voters (11 percent) think all abortions should be made illegal. Thirty-nine percent think abortion should be legal only in the most extreme cases, as when a woman’s life is in danger or with rape and incest. Twenty-two percent think there should be only limited regulations on abortion while another 26 percent say regulations are necessary, but abortion should be legal in most instances. That means half the voters (50 percent) are opposed to or lean against abortion while 48 percent support abortion rights.
In my darker moments, I award Roe v. Wade the lion's share of the credit for turning the country in its current conservative direction. Roe v. Wade energized the religious right and spurred a large measure of conservative complaints about judicial activism. One of the completely uncontroversial aspects of Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? is his discussion of the role of the abortion issue in transforming Kansas into a Republican stronghold beginning in the 1990s.
Consequently, I sometimes think that the only thing to do is to pursue the nuclear option on the abortion issue: that is, overturn Roe v. Wade and leave it to the states to draft their own legislation. Of course, this would create a hodgepodge of laws and would lead to abortion being completely outlawed in some states. But such a turn of events would deflate the religious right to some extent, which would only help the Democrats and hurt the Republicans.
My despair over the political fallout of Roe v. Wade — that is, what ultimately turned out to be its bad consequences for the Democrats — is so extreme and abiding that I found myself in agreement with an op-ed by David Brooks — "Roe's Birth, and Death" — from nearly two months ago.
My agreeing with David Brooks, hell, that's gotta be a first for this blog.
Merely altering one's language in speaking about abortion, finetuning one's position, and the like — none of these options will take the issue off the table. But that's what the Democrats need to do as much as possible.