Extraordinary Politicians

THIS SUMMER, the Supreme Court frustrated 10 years of fevered anti-abortion organizing, upholding and even strengthening its 1973 ruling guaranteeing women the right to an abortion. Coupled with the defeat of a proposed constitutional amendment banning abortion, crities thought the court's decree would smash an already splintered "Right to Life" movement. But just Thursday the House of Representatives again approved the controversial Hyde Amendment to the budget resolution--a measure forbidding the use of Medicaid funds to pay for abortions that has been in effect for seven consecutive years. Obviously, the movement still has clout.

Operating on the common wisdom that pro-choice groups should "know thine enemy," Boston journalist Connie Paige has written The right to Lifers, an exhaustive and occasionally exhausting account of the anti-abortion movement, Paige describes the movement at its peak, a blatant, sensationalistic drive for power. For example, "Stop the Baby killers" was a political front organization to channel money to pro-life congressional candidates in 1980. Asked about the group's name, an organizer stated, "Frankly, that was brutal, But we had to get attention or we would have lost our money,"

Much of that money, in turn, went to publicizing anti-abortion political candidates and slandering pro-choice ones. Four particularly intense campaigns were against the re-election bids of liberal Senators George McGovern, Frank Church, Birch Bayh and John Culver. In the McGovern campaign, the New Right ran a "stalking borse" candidate whose objective was not to win, but simply to throw mud at the incumbent. Similarly, Church was the target of a conservative media blitz. As part of its anti-Church campaign, the National Catholic Political Action Committee ran an ad claiming the Senator had voted to increase his own salary although Church had actually opposed that measure.

It wasn't always so. According to Paige, the pro-lifers in the first and final analysis are a moral movement, not a political one. Growing out of the Catholic Church, the anti-abortion campaign sought in the early 70s both to reinforce traditional doctrine and to establish the Church as a modern social force. Paige describes the early campaigners as ardent crusaders, low on resources but long on energy and commitment. It was not, as it is now perceived, a monolithic, conservative force, but included liberal elements as well such as some environmentalists and civil rights activists. They won victories commensurate with efforts, placing abortion high on the political agenda in local races and, sometimes, beyond.

But the Right to Life movement as it is now known did not emerge until the Church effort fused with other conservative movements into the political patchwork of the New Right. Buoyed by the business dollars flowing into the New Right's free-market, less-government platform, the anti-abortion movement began to rack up political victories. Right to Life political action committees began to target key Congressional races--the same contests singled out by Republican, business and fundamentalist groups for support. Coordinated or not, the combined forces of these endorsements did contribute to some upsets.

Electoral victories notwithstanding, anti-abortionists began to suspect this political alliance was not advantageous. When they joined the fundamentalist and business-oriented groups, right to lifers found they'd also bought into a sharply conservative ideology that was in some ways antithetical to their own religious principles. Still more troubling was the realization that the New Right was milking the anti-abortion movement even as they themselves were grasping onto the coattails of the conservatives. And the New Right was not giving them much in return. Paige contends that the 1980 election only proved "that the New Right was using abortion to accomplish its real objective--seizing power; and that its power, once ostensibly sized, was not quite what it seemed." Most disappointing was Reagan himself who, once elected, took no real action to advance the right to life cause.

But though the Republicans are abandoning the issue (its political expediency seemingly spent). Paige predicts the anti-abortion movement will continue to live and, perhaps, prosper. While the more political conservative groups had bolstered the right to life movement financially, the subsequent dissolution of the "winning coalition" has allowed the fundamentalist drive to recover some of its ideological purity. During the heyday of the groups collaboration, anti-abortionists had to struggle with the philosophical tension between their own "pro-life" claims and the Darwinistic ideals of the conservatives. Noting this internal contradiction, columnist Ellen Goodman wrote a couple years ago that the New Right "was great on getting you born." but showed less concern for the quality of life outside the womb. Safe delivery into the world, they argued, not welfare or Medicaid, is the outer limit of social responsibility for the individual.

Left to themselves again, right to lifers can direct their full attention to the business at hand--blocking abortion. Not to be dissuaded by the Supreme Court's recent ruling, these groups continue to launch attacks by working through the legislative branch. In Congress, they continue to fight for passage of a once-defeated constitutional amendment outlawing abortion. And while only such a Congressional measure can put a stop to legalized abortions, pro-life groups within many states are fighting to promote sympathetic candidates and pass those states are fighting to promote sympathetic candidates and pass those state restrictions on abortion that have been upheld by the Supreme Court.

IN THE BEST muckraking tradition. Paige has painstakingly documented the origins, evolution and likely prospects for the movement. The Right to Lifers presents not only the nuts and bolts of political organizing and funding, but also telling profiles of the movement's leaders. And occasional jobs not withstanding. Paige offers a generally balanced account of the movement's history to date. Though clearly pro-choice herself. Paige's final assessment of the anti-abortionists is relatively mild:

This is where the real fault of the right-to-life movement lies not you in agitating over a single issue, allying is self with one church or another, attempting to influence the political process or even using underhanded tacties" right or wrong, those things, frankly, are done all the time in American politics--but rather in trying to turn back a historical clock with one-way hands.

Is inadequate historical sensibility truly the last word where the, right to life movement is concerned? Certainly it is not the first political effort to draw on corporation dollars and frequently distasteful, political techniques. Yet it remains difficult to dismiss the anti-abortion campaign as merely another special interest drive.

Perhaps the threatening undertones of the movement are a function of its intensity; alone and in coalition the right to lifers have taken special interest politics to its illogical extreme. In contrast with other single issue groups the anti-abortion activists have not been content merely with lobbying. These organizations forthrightly undertook a program to pack Congress with politicians not only sympathetic to, but also actively involved in the right to life movement. In 1976, Ellen McCormack ran for President of the United States on the abortion issue.

This unparallelled singlemindedness stems from what Paige identifies as the sincerity of many anti-abortionists as opposed to the political opportunism of other right-wing groups ostensibly backing the issue. At its most convincing, this pro-life sentiment struck a responsive chord in those uncomfortable with the convulsions of a society modernizing at breakneck speed. One of the movement's leaders challenged abortion as a building block of a society that would be "engineered," not created:

Where do you draw the line between the sacred and the profane; between what can be engineered and what is off limits? If you believe that life has no intrinsic value, that living things are subject to utilitarian goals to satisfy greed, then you have no purpose which must be accepted and nurtured, then it is impossible to accept [this engineering]on any level.

It is an eloquent argument and, at first glance, a credible one. But how can this sensitive, seemingly humane outlook be reconciled with the reality of the right to life movement and its social implications? Certainly it stands in painful contradiction to the violence peretrated by vehement anti-abortionists; brandishing bloody fetuses at Congressional hearings, invading or even firebombing abortion clinics, and the kidnapping of a couple who ran a clinic.

These sick acts, though disturbingly regular, can be explained as the work of a small, fanatic minority within the movement. What cannot be dismissed, however, is the right to lifers consistent disregard for the ultimate wellbeing of the mother or the fetus. The fetus "right to life" and the mother's right to an abortion (as guaranteed by the Supreme Court in its 1973 ruling) stand in irreconcilable opposition; in singlemindedly promoting the welfare of the unborn, anti-abortionists implicitly if not explicitly discount the concerns of the living. Women have historically sought abortions and in this country the practices has become particularly widespread. Concern for life speaks for making these operations as safe as possible--legalized abortion. Nowhere is right to life's disdain for living more ironically apparent than in state and national measures to cut aid for abortions, placing them out of the reach of women for whom they are often truly a necessity. World ecological and economic constraints speak for population control; psychological studies argue against unwanted children; and a tradition of liberty and individualism argue for personal choice. The anti-abortion movement. by supporting life for life's sake, runs the risk of unalterably cheapening its value.