Chris Weinkopf, in an article (Leaving No Child Behind)originally written for the Los Angeles Daily News and reprinted at FrontpageMag.Com, thinks George W. Bush is making a mistake by not emphasizing abortion as a campaign issue. Bush might be afraid of alienating the women’s vote, Wienkopf posits, but that calculus might be erroneous. Weinkopf writes:
They can begin by realizing that, contrary to popular mythology, women are more likely than men to agree with them on the abortion issue. A July 23 ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that while 56 percent of men favor some degree of legalized abortion, that number drops to 50 percent for women.
That’s probably because women, many of whom have experienced the miracle of a child growing and developing within them, can more readily recognize that child’s humanity. Men not only lack that biological connection, but often think of abortion as an insurance policy against the unintended consequences of casual sex.. After the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973, many men decided that their offspring — now the woman’s choice — were no longer their responsibility. A sharp increase in the numbers of single mothers and deadbeat dads followed.
Weinkopf doesn’t give the margin of error for the study, so the difference could be just a statistical fluke, but even if that’s the case it is surprising that about half of women say they don’t favor some degree of legalized abortion, especially since most feminists have made abortion rights a lynchpin of their fight for women’s rights.
Weinkopf’s explanation of the difference in attitudes is, unfortunatley, jsut a rehashing of stereotypes that today are promoted by tboth traditionalist anti-feminists as well as mainstream and radical feminists. I suspect a lot of feminists would find Weinkopf’s description of women somewhat pandering, but he is solidly in the mainstream of contemporary feminist thought when he ascribes to women a wholly different thought process than men. The real explanation, I suspect, is far simpler.
First, the abortion rights movement has really hurt itself with an ineffective response to the “partial birth” abortion issue. To their credit, anti-abortion foes have done a very good job of transforming the issue of abortion away from women’s rights and more toward a debate over when personhood begins. Surprisingly many feminists and abortion supporters don’t seem to have a clue how to handle abortion once it becomes an issue of personhood rather than an issue of women’s rights.
Second, by being so closely identified as a feminist issue for so long, the abortion rights movement is carrying a lot of the baggage of the feminist movement. This is similar to the problem with another worthy cause — the movement to abolish capital punishment which is also bogged down largely by the poor choices made by organizations and individuals within that movement.
The abortion rights movement would likely have more success if it were grounded in a general theory of individual rights that was consistently applied, but most feminists and feminist organizations are notoriously picky about women’s choice — it usually begins and ends with abortion. Many of the feminist who run around shouting “pro-choice, pro-choice” whither and disappear whenever women start wanting to make choices that the feminists disagree with (such as write books that Andrea Dworkin or Catharine MacKinnon don’t like).
Instead although they have won many battles, the abortion rights movement is on the verge of losing the war with an extremely high likelihood that the next president of the United States will be solidly anti-abortion and likely end up with a solidly anti-abortion Supreme Court within a decade.
If feminists can’t even convince more than half of women to support abortion rights, they’re in a world of hurt.