The new real politik arrived with Webster v. Reproductive Health Services, the July 1989 Supreme Court decision granting states greater power to regulate abortion. A triumph for right-to-lifers, Webster also galvanized the long-dormant pro-choice movement. Ever since, the right-to-life forces have fought to regain their advantage on a number of fronts. Accusing the media of underestimating their strength, the leadership mustered more than 200,000 marchers to Washington for a spring rally against abortion. The National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) has toned down its rhetoric and reached out to Americans who are ambivalent, but not outright opposed, to abortion. Says Richard E. Ryan of the Houston-based firm Tarrance & Associates, which conducts polling for anti-abortion groups: “They are no longer saying, ‘Let’s make abortion illegal,’ because the general public will not stand for that. "
Instead, moderate right-tolifers are pressing for specific restraints at the state level. In the last year, the NRLC has peppered 41 state legislatures with as many as 350 model bills for restricting abortion. “It was like a brush fire,” says an official of the National Abortion Rights Action League. “They would go from one state to the other introducing legislation, and we would follow trying to block it.” In moderate states, the movement put forth limited restrictions, such as the politically popular parental-notice requirement; in more conservative areas, it went for broke. Last week, the Louisiana Legislature approved a measure that would allow an abortion only to save the mother’s life, but not for victims of rape or incest. (“Inbreeding is how we get championship horses,” said state Rep. Carl Gunter, who opposed an incest exception.) Gov. Charles E. (Buddy) Roemer has vowed to veto the bill. Richard Wilkins, an antiabortion legal expert, believes such measures do the cause little good. “You don’t win by dropping an atomic bomb on the court,” he says.
Some of the NRLC’s most severe critics come from within the right-to-life ranks. A rift has opened between the pragmatists and the hard-liners, who scorn legislation with exclusions for rape and incest. “We do not think that any pro-life leader has the right to give away a class of human beings,” says Brown of the American Life League. Purists also differ with more mainstream anti-abortionists over the strategic value of civil disobedience. NRLC has distanced itself from radicals like Randall Terry, founder of Operation Rescue. Terry suffered a major setback in May, when the Supreme Court let stand a federal court order banning anti-abortion protesters from blocking access to clinics and imposing heavy fines on anyone breaking the law.
Mixed results: Ultimately, both factions of the right-to-life movement are determined to dismantle Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that made abortion a constitutional right. Despite Webster, right-to-lifers have come to worry almost as much as abortion advocates about Sandra Day O’Connor, the swing vote who last week furnished the majority to overturn one of two Minnesota rulings requiring parental notification because it didn’t offer a judicial bypass option. After a year of mixed results, anti-abortionists insist it is only a matter of time before their side triumphs. Meanwhile, they’re prepared to open new fronts–and fight every battle.
