Will An Abortion Compromise Help the Democrats in 2008?

In this piece, writer Andrew Sullivan explores the Democratic Party’s stance on abortion, and wonders whether an abortion compromise would help strengthen the Democrats’ chances in 2008. The Alito confirmations hearings will provide a big test, as Judge Alito is clearly opposed to abortion.

“Something very unusual is happening to some Democrats and pro-choice abortion activists in the U.S. They’re getting smarter about their strategy. For years, they’ve harped on and on about a woman’s right to choose, while failing to capture in any meaningful way the moral qualms so many of us have about abortion itself. So they often seemed strident, ideological and morally obtuse. They talked about abortion as if it were as morally trivial as a tooth extraction-not a profound moral choice that no woman would ever want to make if she could avoid it.”

TheStateOf…the Choice. Polls show that most Americans favor keeping abortion legal. Those same polls, however, show that most Americans also favor more controls, especially in the form of parental notification, a ban on partial-birth abortion, and more restrictions on late-term abortion. Polls even show that 76% of Americans (myself included, with exceptions) support laws in favor of spousal notification. In the past decade, the Democratic Party has been dominated by pro-choice forces that have taken the rhetoric from “pro-choice” to “pro-abortion,” turning off voters in the middle. If Democrats want to capture the middle, they will have to tone down the enthusiastic rhetoric, but will that turn off their base? (Note: ignoring black people hasn’t stopped us from voting for them.)