Reclaiming Our Children: A Blog About Healing After Abortion

By DAVID LIGHTMAN

Hartford Courant

July 31, 2007

Rosa DeLauro wants to change the nature of the debate on the most
divisive domestic issue in America. ‘For years the discussion has been
around the legality of abortion,’ DeLauro said. Now, she and Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat
who opposes abortion, are ‘determined to get beyond that discourse and
say, `How do you reduce the need for anybody to have an abortion?” The
3rd District Democrat and Ryan have persuaded the House to approve a
$647 million measure called ‘Reducing the Need for Abortions
Initiative.’ The measure represents a shift, one motivated as much by
politics as philosophy.

Members of both parties have thought for some time that the fight over abortion has made it harder to enact broad family planning and pregnancy prevention programs. And Democrats
have been losing the abortion fight, at least at the margins, for some
time. ‘They sense they’re out of step with the electorate,’ said Karlyn
Bowman, a polling analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. While
the country has long been divided about abortion – a May Gallup
poll found 49 percent for abortion rights and 45 percent opposed –
polls also have detected some ambiguity in those positions. In that
same poll, 26 percent said abortion should be ‘always legal’ and 18
percent said it should be ‘always illegal.’ Most of the rest said
abortion should be ‘sometimes legal.’ And nearly three in four people
said partial-birth or late-term abortions should be outlawed. Those in
the middle are dubbed the ‘abortion grays’ by Rachel Laser, director of
the Culture Project at the Third Way, a moderate Democratic research
group. She said abortion foes, who generally side with Republicans,
have been more effective at mobilizing their advocates. On the other
hand, those who believe in a woman’s right to have an abortion have
been more politically complacent, believing Roe v. Wade is the law of
the land and not about to be overturned. Nancy Keenan, president of
NARAL Pro-Choice America, wrote in an article last winter: ‘The public
has grown tired of the divisiveness of the abortion debate and was
eager to support policymakers who would focus on common sense ways to
prevent unintended pregnancies.’ That meant abortion rights advocates,
and Democratic Party leaders who were squarely behind them, had to
soften their approach. Laser agreed. ‘Neither the pro-choice nor
pro-life forces make abortion reduction a focus,’ she said. ‘One side
sees abortion as a right; the other, a sin.’ She recommended ‘a message
of abortion as a right that comes with responsibilities.’ Out of such
strategies came the DeLauro-Ryan initiative. Its provisions include:
The first increase in more than six years in federal aid to family
planning programs, allowing an additional 98,000 clients to be served
and expanding contraceptive services. Teen Pregnancy Prevention Grants
to support what the lawmakers call ‘medically accurate,
age-appropriate’ approaches to preventing teen pregnancy. Substantial
funding increases in the Child Care Development Block Grant, which
helps support low-income families receiving education and training, and
after-school programs. Big increases for after-school centers, which
help serve teenagers unsupervised in those hours.

New
grants for nurse home visitation programs, to help young mothers
improve prenatal health and teach them to be better parents. A 15.8
percent increase in funding for infant adoption awareness programs.

Abortion
opponents failed to dilute the initiative, as Democratic leaders kept
pleading for a new direction in the abortion fight. ‘I spent most of
the last six months trying to convince Democrats, primarily liberals,
who are now in control of the House, not to try to use their new
majority to change any language in this bill that had anything to do
with abortion or family planning,’ House Appropriations Committee
Chairman David Obey,
D-Wis., told his colleagues. ‘I have asked them … to recognize other
people’s values as well as their own.’ Some groups, however, see the
new effort as little more than hiding a bid to keep abortion legal.

Douglas
Johnson, legislative director of National Right to Life, called the
DeLauro-Ryan measure ‘a grab bag of existing programs. They’re not
trying to change policy. They’re trying to change perception.’ The
biggest test of the bill so far came when Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind.,
tried to add language that said no family planning money could go to
Planned Parenthood.

Even though the money in the bill would not
go to abortion, Pence wanted to make sure it did not reach ‘an
organization that profits from the abortion trade.’ That ignited a
fierce debate, with DeLauro countering that her bill ‘reaches our most
vulnerable populations.’ She prevailed, but the vote was less than
overwhelming: 231-189 to kill the provision, with 21 Republicans siding
with DeLauro and Ryan. Contact David Lightman at dlightman@courant.com.