Monday, Aug. 14, 1989

Can Pro-Choicers Prevail?

By MARGARET CARLSON

A Roman general once said he could live without a friend but not without an enemy. The same assertion could be made about the women's movement, which won just enough concessions in the 1960s and '70s to induce a sense of complacency. A new generation of college-educated women, having never witnessed a female Phi Beta Kappa being told to make the coffee, considered radical feminism as outdated as Gloria Steinem's aviator glasses. By the presidential campaign of 1988, George Bush could flirt with the idea of recriminalizing abortion, knowing the women's movement was not strong enough to retaliate at the polls.

Now the movement may be getting a jolt from a hostile Supreme Court, whose ruling in the case of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services permits the states to place new restrictions on abortion. "Before Webster," says Susan Carroll, a political scientist with Rutgers University's Center for the American Woman in Politics, "there was a very real assumption, especially among college students, that the battle was over." That assumption is no longer valid.

With one of feminism's most cherished gains in danger, the ranks of women's organizations are swelling. In the months since the Supreme Court decided that it would hear the Webster case, the National Organization for Women and the National Abortion Rights Action League each signed up 50,000 new members. NARAL added $1 million to its coffers in July alone. NOW President Molly Yard vows to make every politician confront the question "Are you for the right of a woman to control her reproductive life?" Says political analyst William Schneider: "In abortion the women's movement has an issue that could enable them to break into the mainstream."

Maybe. But six weeks after the Webster decision, pro-choice forces may be squandering their newfound energy in a debilitating squabble. One divisive issue is whether to stage another abortion-rights megamarch on Washington, like the one that drew at least 400,000 to the nation's capital last April, or to direct the energy and money required to mount such a colossal demonstration toward the more productive but less mediagenic grass-roots political organizing.

Another conflict arose at NOW's convention in Cincinnati three weeks ago, when delegates unanimously approved the notion of starting a third party around the woolly notions of sexual, environmental and economic freedom. Hearing that, NARAL executive director Kate Michelman interrupted her vacation in New Hampshire to criticize the third-party idea as "counterproductive." A pro-choice strategist dismissed Yard's notion as the "politics of 'screw you.' " Schneider agrees: "You punish your friends without blocking your enemies."

Yard brushes off the criticism as so much "inside-the-Beltway mentality from people too closely tied to the Democratic Party establishment." Though she complains that she is "fed up" with both Republicans and Democrats, Yard has toned down NOW's third-party talk, insisting that all she has done is set up a commission to study the idea, a frequent inside-the-Beltway prelude to deep-sixing it.

The real cause of the infighting is that there is no agreement on how to sell abortion rights to a wider audience. While most polls show that a majority of Americans favor a woman's right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, they also show that a large segment of the public believes abortion is murder, and it is difficult to build a political movement that can accommodate those contradictory beliefs. Pro-choice adherents range from those who believe in abortion on demand to those who could support some regulations. The latter, larger group is not likely to be drawn by NOW's call to expand the Bill of Rights (one new amendment would guarantee abortion, another would protect all sexual preferences).

Pro-choice moderates are trying to deliver a more nuanced message, stressing the idea that the realities of women's lives can make abortion a necessary evil. But pro-choicers may have to moderate still further to attract broader support. "Every piece of data I've seen shows that parental consent ((for a teenager seeking an abortion)) is where the yuppies come home to the pro-life side," says Republican strategist Vincent Breglio. "They say if you need parental consent to get your appendix out, why not for an abortion?"

Despite their feuding, pro-choice forces scored a victory last week. Ignoring a threatened veto from George Bush, the House of Representatives voted 219 to 206 to permit the District of Columbia to spend public money for abortions, ending nine straight years of House votes tightening control over such spending. But Democratic pollster Harrison Hickman cautions against reading too much into that triumph: "Pro-choicers have to be very careful. Abortion does not cut clean; it cuts a very jagged edge across parties and belief systems." Yet some feminist leaders seem delighted by the prospect of returning to the barricades. Addressing the National Women's Political Caucus in St. Paul last week, former Congresswoman Bella Abzug predicted that abortion will be "the Viet Nam of this nation for young people everywhere," a troublesome analogy for those who believe that abortion is a moral issue requiring thoughtful, reasoned discussion, not bitter confrontation in the street.

With reporting by Steven Holmes/Washington