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Last month, after Gov. George W. Bush presented his pro-life position on Larry King's interview show, King asked the question that can put a candidate in hot water: If abortion "is criminal, if it is some day determined (to be) criminal, shouldn't the mother be held liable if she initiates the call?"
Bush responded properly that the question "misses the overall point; that people have got to understand that abortion is not a contraceptive; we should not have abortions on demand; that partial-birth abortion is dealing with a live child." Then, not wanting to dodge even "an incredibly hypothetical question," Bush said, "No, I don't think you ought to hold the mother criminal."
Some journalists thought pro-life groups would get hysterical about such a response. But they were thinking in sterotypes, not reality. Pro-life people see the abortionist as one who profits by killing children, but they almost always see the mother of the aborted baby as a person who needs compassion, not incarceration.
That's the way it almost always was in the 19th century as well. In that century's first major abortion case, a Connecticut jury in 1821 sentenced the man who caused the abortion to two years in prison; the mother was not charged. In this and almost every other 19th century case, women were seen as victims rather than perpetrators, because many abortions occured after fathers of unborn children refused to take responsibility.
The primary goal of legislators was to put abortionists out of business. States frequently gave women immunity from all prosecution. Even prostitutes, who made up the majority of most abortionists' clients in those days, were not jailed for the act, because legislatures wanted their help in prosecuting the abortionists.
States that did not give full immunity, such as New York and New Jersey, gave women immunity from prosecution in exchange for testimony. That was the law on the books, but I've written two books on the history of abortion and I cannot recall any instances of women going to jail for abortions they had.
So Gov. Bush's statement was both compassionate and within the historical stream of pro-life thinking. So was last year's action of the Texas Legislature to require anyone who performs 300 or more abortions in a year to get a special license. But the New York City-based Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, an arm of the pro-abortion movement, paid for a lawsuit to stop that legislation, and last week was rewarded with a favorable ruling by an Austin judge.
U.S. District Court Judge John Rainey said the new law is unconstitutional because it sets apart abortionists from doctors who perform outpatient surgeries. Of course it did, and it should. Everyone knows that abortion is not the same as plastic surgery. The U.S. Supreme Court has already set abortion apart by stopping state legislatures from passing laws that could substanstially restrict abortion. Do we now have so much judicial overreach that the Texas Legislature can't recognize abortion's special status? Our country is trying to restrict smoking; do we really believe that abortion is less of an affront to personal health?
Abortionists have a right to life. They must not be shot at. Isolated individuals have made wild statements, but the pro-life movement has not and must not give backing to bombers of abortion businesses or other terrorists. But if we restrict smoking, why can't we restrict abortion? And why should the press, which has done so much in recent years to publicize the misdeeds of tobacco companies, give abortionists a free ride? Why can't today's newspapers follow the example of The New York Times, which in 1871 ran an expose of abortion businesses, "The Evil of the Age," that showed how "thousands of human beings" are "murdered before they have seen the light of this world"?
Gov. Bush did not go into detail with Larry King, but he has stressed the extension of adoption as the real key to battling abortionists, and he is right. He also knows that we can and should go much further in emphasizing abstinence. Although the federal government budgets $50 million for abstinence education, some cynical officials in other states have used funds for head lice inspections or for hockey leagues. Admittedly, both head lice and gaped-toothed hockey faces can be sexual turnoffs, but that's not what the folks who battled for federal budgetary recognition of abstinence were hoping for.
Overall, the Bush message is the right one, and the one backed by today's pro-life movement: Don't pit mother against unborn child. Love them both.
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