Looking at numerous polls going back several years, it is obvious that, at most, only 20% of Americans believe abortion should be illegal "in all cases." In contrast, more than twice that percentage (about 40%-50%, depending on how the question is asked) of all Americans believe that abortion should be LEGAL in "all" or "most" cases. The remaining 30%-40% believe that abortion should be legal in just a few cases, like rape, incest, or to the life and health of the mother.In other words, most Americans support the position of Bill Clinton and other moderate-to-conservative Democrats, like Tim Kaine for example, that abortion should be "safe, legal and RARE."
What this formulation says, essentially, is three things: 1) abortion is a bad thing and, as a society, we do not want women to choose it if at all possible, certainly not as their main method of birth control; 2) whatever our personal beliefs about abortion, we are certain that we don't want the government -- let alone rightwing ideologues or Republican politicians -- meddling in our most personal and private life-and-death decisions; and 3) if and when abortions need to be performed, for medical reasons, as a result of rape or incest, or because there are no other good options, they should be carried out SAFELY by a medical doctor so that the woman's life and health are protected.
Aside from the goal of abortion being "safe, legal, and rare," this whole debate opens up the topic of personal responsibility and trust. The question comes down to this: is it the government's role to tell women what to do with their own bodies, or should women be trusted to make the right choices, in consultation with their doctor, their husband, their conscience, and their God, on the most personal and private matters?
In other words, should the government be there to help women in whatever way possible so that they have options other than abortion? Should government policies work to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies in the first place? Or should the government's job be to deprive women of options and then to harshly punish them (and their doctors) when they make the "wrong" decisions for their own health and well-being?
Unfortunately, it seems that some people, mainly right-wing politicians like Jerry Kilgore, favor the latter approach, preferring to grandstand on the issue (as Matusleo points out on Sic Semper Tyrannus) rather than to actually reduce abortions. In contrast, Tim Kaine -- although religiously/morally opposed to abortion -- believes that women are wise enough to make the right choices for themselves. Government's role, in Kaine's view, should be primarily to help reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies through education, economics, and other means (i.e., access to safe methods of contraception). This is a fundamental difference in the Virginia governor's race this year, and in American politics more generally. To be blunt: Tim Kaine Democrats trust women to make the most important choices, Jerry Kilgore Republicans don't.
But it's more than that. Democratic social and economic policies actually appear, statistically, to decrease abortions. According to statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, the number of abortions in America, after reaching a high point of 1.43 million in 1990, plummeted over the next ten years, falling to 0.86 million abortions in 2000. In that year, the abortion rate hit a 24-year low in America. Interestingly, the 1990s were also the years of Bill Clinton's "safe, legal and rare" abortion policies (i.e., increasing access to alternatives). Could it be that these policies actually helped reduce unwanted pregnancies? Finally, the 1990s were a decade of booming economic growth and declining unemployment rates. Is all this simply a coincidence? Highly unlikely.
In contrast, since George W. Bush took office in 2001, it appears that this positive trend has reversed. Although data is not available from all states, pro-lifer Glen Stassen has found that:
...in 2002, the first full year of the Bush presidency, abortions increased in the 16 states for which I could find data by a total of 5,855. If the data from the rest of the nation fit that pattern, abortions increased nationwide in 2002 by about 24,000 a year, reversing the dramatic decreases of the 1990s.
Why is this? We don't know for sure, but according to the anti-abortion group Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life, two-thirds of women who have abortions cite their economic inability to "afford to have another child" as their primary rationale for doing so. Could it be that the worsening economy (i.e, unemployment up from 4.0% in 2000 to 6.0% in 2003), particularly for lower income people, under President Bush and the Republican Congress had something to do with this? Could it be, more generally, that harmful and immoral right-wing, "trickle-down" economic policies result in more poverty and more abortions than under supposedly "liberal," "permissive" Democratic policies? (by the way, as Stassen points out, the United States has an abortion rate more than three times higher than in Belgium and Holland, where, "though abortion is legal, [they] provide strong support for mothers and babies.")
Moving this closer to home, could it be that here in Virginia, we would actually have fewer abortions under a Tim Kaine "safe, legal and rare" abortion policy than under a Jerry Kilgore "unsafe, illegal, and not-so-rare" approach? I'll leave that for you to decide. Personally, as someone who dislikes abortion and believes that every pregnancy should be a wanted one, I'll choose the "safe, legal and rare" approach every time.