Reproductive Politics

The pro-life movement may have lost the most recent battle-- the reelection of President Barack Obama-- but they are winning the war of hearts and minds. So says Michael J. New, professor of political science, frequent contributor to conservative publications, and data-driven critic of studies that support pro-choice policy positions: I want to encourage you not to despair. We continue to make good progress. In fact, I would argue that our biggest successes during the past twenty years have neither been political nor legislative. Our biggest success story is that we have succeeded in changing the hearts and minds of millions of Americans. What is his evidence? First, he notes that the number of abortions performed annually (NB: the ones of which we are aware) have declined "from 1.6 million in 1990 to 1.2 million in 2008." This could be for any number of reasons, but Professor New attributes it "partly to the state level pro-life laws we have passed." Profes...

Mark Movesian, on a blog at First Things , examined the Fox News exit polls from the 2012 election, and found that voters who self-identified as Catholic voted for President Obama 50-48%. Mr. Movesian notes the seeming oddity of this, given that the Catholic hierarchy has done its very best to make life issues, especially the health care contraceptive mandate, the primary determinant of a Catholic person's vote. What explains the exit polls? Here are some possibilities. Movesian suggests that the exit polls do not necessarily mean that Catholic voters, by a narrow majority, reject the Church view of the contraceptive mandate and other reproductive issues. Instead, like other voters, they may have looked at the whole package offered by President Obama and the whole package offered by Mitt Romney and gone for Obama despite whatever reservations they have about life issues. Another explanation is that Catholic voters, while uncomfortable in general with abortion and contempo...

A sad and complicated legal case is brewing in Nevada. Elaine Bauer is a mentally-disabled woman in her early 30s who has the mental capacity of a six-year old, epilepsy, and additional health problems. She lives in a group home in Reno. She is thirteen weeks pregnant. The circumstances under which Ms. Bauer became pregnant are unclear. Apparently, Ms. Bauer "has a history of wandering away [from the group home] and having sex. . . . In the past, the woman had been given a birth control injection, but its side effects presented her with health complications, so it was discontinued" ( Reuters ). Articles published in LifeSiteNews (links below) go into more detail about Ms. Bauer's daily life and offer a slightly different take: For whatever reason, they report, she was allowed to leave her group home, and when she did, she would go to a local casino and a truck stop. Assuming this to be accurate, I cannot for the life of me understand why someone with the mental cap...

The results are in, and it is not pretty for the Republican candidates who talked in controversial ways about abortion. Todd Akin, U.S. Senate candidate for Missouri, lost to Democratic incumbent Claire McCaskill by about 15 points. McCaskill was considered one of the most vulnerable Senators running for reelection and the focus of Republican attempts to take back the Senate-- until Akin made his claim that women who are raped almost never get pregnant because their bodies shut down the ovulation and conception process. Mitt Romney won the state by almost 10 points. Richard Mourdock, U.S. Senate candidate for Indiana, lost a close race  (within 1% point) to Democratic candidate Joe Donnelly. This is a pick-up for the Democrats; the contest was for a seat left open when Republican incumbent Richard Lugar was defeated in the primary by Mourdock. Donnelly is a moderate-to-conservative Democrat who self-identifies as pro-life but voted, as a House member, for the Affordable Care ...

Setting aside all of the claims and counterclaims of the candidates and all related white noise, there are four concrete ways that the 2012 presidential election could cause policy changes on abortion, contraception, and family planning. If Barack Obama is reelected, little will change. If Mitt Romney is elected, I predict the following: The contraceptive mandate, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, would be withdrawn.  Barriers to defunding Planned Parenthood could be removed. As it is now, federal courts are stopping the complete defunding of the organization (i.e., withdrawing all federal funding) due to their interpretation of federal legislative language. With Romney as president, that language could be modified (assuming the changes could get past a Democratic Senate). The composition of the federal judiciary, particularly the United States Supreme Court, would be modified through appointments. If, say, Stephen Breyer or Ruth Bader Goldberg retired, ...

National Public Radio produced an insightful analysis of why reproductive issues are so prominent in this presidential campaign and why Mitt Romney's views are being variously pitched-- by his own supporters-- as very pro-life on the one hand and moderate on the other. The very-pro-life vs. moderate oscillation is pretty easy to understand: Romney's overriding goal is to be elected, and so he is pitching different messages to different audiences. This is a specific example of a classic campaign phenomenon: the tension between saying things that fire up one's base (which is good for voter turnout and donations) and saying things that win over moderate and independent voters (that need to feel comfortable with the candidate). Normally this is done by focusing on different issues for different audiences (foreign policy for one audience, social issues for another), or changing one's tone while saying essentially the same thing. On abortion and contraception, Romney has...

Are debates over abortion and rape a distraction from important larger questions about abortion, women, and the unborn, or are they an important part of working out how we think and feel about this area of life? As you know, the question of whether a woman should be allowed to obtain an abortion if her pregnancy is the result of rape has been all over the news, thanks to United States Senate candidates Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock . As a result of their statements/gaffes, every other public figure who self-identifies as pro-life is asked to respond to their comments. This has caused heartburn for pro-life advocates who want to avoid looking controversial and a) just want to get elected, thank you very much, or b) want to push for pro-life policies that have been reframed as common-sense, mainstream proposals. An example of the first phenomenon is U.S. House of Representatives candidate John Koster (Washington state), who was taped being asked questions about abortion and rape....