Bush Abortion Views Mirror Majority
Amy Holmes
Friday, Jan. 26, 2001
''Just two days into his term, President Bush has trashed any remaining trace of the moderate mask he wore during the campaign,'' NOW President Patricia Ireland said earlier this week.
Ireland and her radical pro-choice cohorts are in high political dudgeon over Bush's repeal of government funding for abortion services and counseling in foreign countries and on military bases. Bush also is expected to suspend federal funding for fetal-tissue research and push for review of the health risks of RU-486, the abortion pill.
In the view of pro-choice activists, these Reagan-era policies make Bush an ultraconservative abuser of women's rights, terrifyingly out of step with the mainstream.
They are wrong.
As Beltway politicians – including new Washington resident George W. Bush – understand, Americans are profoundly ambivalent about abortion. A Los Angeles Times poll last summer, for instance, found that a majority of the public believe abortion to be murder and less than half of Americans support Roe vs. Wade. More than half believe that abortion should be outlawed, with the possible exception of cases of rape, incest or threat to the mother's health. And a majority believe second-trimester abortions should be illegal – notably, more women than men.
But the poll also found that Americans oppose a constitutional ban on abortion and are wary of legislative action to restrict the procedure significantly. In other words, Americans are pro-life and pro-choice, squeamish yet tolerant of the legal status quo.
Senate Democrats understand this very well. They play on the public's ambivalence, grilling Attorney General-nominee John Ashcroft one week on his ''troubling'' record while cheerfully casting a unanimous vote the next to make pro-lifer Tommy Thompson head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Bush understands this, too. In the tradition of Ronald Reagan, Bush is keeping distance, literally, between himself and his pro-life base. He did not attend the annual March for Life this week. He chose instead to send a written statement of support. And last week, Laura Bush spoke openly with NBC Nightly News of her opposition to overturning Roe vs. Wade. Bush may be walking the pro-life side of the fence, but he's staying close to it – where most Americans want him to be. The ladies of the left just don't get it.
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