Abortion and partisan politics

In the January issue of First Things (not yet on-line), Fr. Neuhaus recounts at some length the argument of a recent Human Life Review article by George McKenna, Criss-Cross: Democrats, Republicans, and Abortion. Some 40 years ago it looked likely that the Republican Party in the US could become the pro-abortion party and the Democrats pro-life. At that time the old New Deal coalition remained at least partially intact, with four major groups constituting the Democratic Party's support base: southern whites, black (or African) Americans, liberal intellectuals and Roman Catholics. The Catholic bishops themselves were closely aligned with the party, perceiving its ongoing efforts to champion the cause of the "little guy" to be in keeping with the church's social and political teachings, as found in the encyclicals of Popes Leo XIII and Pius XI.

Given the significance of these ties, it would have been unthinkable, even as late as the early 1970s for the Democratic Party to thumb its nose at one of its largest constituencies by embracing the abortion licence, particularly since the party had been compelled to do precisely that to southern whites by embracing civil rights for blacks. Indeed, given the Republican Party's libertarian and free-market orientation, an educated guess made in, say, 1965 would have seen that party the more likely to allow freedom of choice on the issue and to spurn efforts to involve government in so personal a matter.

Yet by 1980 the two parties had polarized on abortion, with the Republicans pro-life and the Democrats definitely pro-choice. Although there are pro-life Democrats and pro-choice Republicans, they are increasingly marginalized within their own parties. Few recall anymore that Ted Kennedy, Jesse Jackson, Bill Clinton and Al Gore once opposed the abortion licence, only to embrace it as a right when the party began to make it a test of political orthodoxy. What had happened in the meantime? That's the story McKenna tells in what Fr. Neuhaus effusively labels "a remarkable article."

Though I largely agree with Neuhaus' assessment, something is conspicuously lacking in both McKenna and Neuhaus: a recognition of the historic trajectory of liberalism as it developed and worked out the logic of its own tenets in the public square. Their focus is almost entirely on policy programmes, issues and coalition groups, not on the spiritual underpinnings of the larger liberal project as manifested in different ways in the two American parties. My own view is that, because the Republicans and Democrats represented earlier and later stages respectively in the development of liberalism, it should not be surprising that the latter should take the side of the issue that would expand human choice virtually for its own sake. True, there was nothing inevitable in this and it's easy to be a retrospective prognosticator, but it shouldn't have been altogether unexpected.

On the other hand, perhaps no one should be surprised that Neuhaus at least should neglect the undergirding spiritual foundations of liberalism. As I have written before, Neuhaus is a liberal critic of liberalism who persists in believing that liberalism is basically a good thing that some have nevertheless merely distorted. All the same, I firmly believe that, as long as the debate over abortion remains within the parameters of an individualistic focus on rights, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to make any headway on the issue.