Muzzled (22 page)

Since the 1980s, Christian conservative groups such as the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and National Right to Life have become major players in Republican Party politics because of the power derived from flying the flag of opposition to abortion. On the other side, Emily’s List, the National Organization for Women, and NARAL Pro-Choice America have become major players in Democratic Party politics by trumpeting their defense of the right to abortion. On both sides there are big money, major lobbying organizations, and powerful political allies available for any candidate willing to advocate one view loudly, drowning out all nuances, and to vilify all opposing voices. Abortion has become the one and only litmus test applied by these groups to judge all political leaders. These groups have succeeded in forcing the nation to go along with their one-note, narrow standard for electing leaders, writing laws, and setting budgets. And this goes beyond candidates for elected office. Anyone seeking to be an activist in the base of either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party basically takes a pledge for or against abortion with no explanations allowed. Again, it is the ultimate litmus test.

The abortion issue has become a critical factor in even the most routine business of the U.S. Congress. Every year since 1976 Congress has passed the Hyde Amendment to ban federal
funding for abortion. Medicaid—federal supplements to help the poor get proper health care—is not allowed to pay for abortions. The Hyde Amendment effectively denies a legal medical procedure to poor women. This is a significant issue of fairness and social justice worth discussing. But that discussion is not allowed. Neither side wants to risk upsetting the status quo, which is benefiting them both. The politics of abortion have made it a zero-sum game with extremists on both sides setting the rules and everyone else remaining muzzled.

One critical aspect of the fear of discussing abortion is acceptance of the idea that there is a major religious component to this debate. It is a fact that the Catholic Church and millions of Americans interpret biblical scripture as condemning abortion. The Constitution gives those citizens the right to religious freedom and the right to practice their understanding of God’s word. However, the First Amendment to the Constitution also says that Congress shall make no law respecting establishment of religion. The United States is a secular nation governed by the rule of law. Religious beliefs are not a legitimate basis for making law. The separation of church and state is an established principle of our government. Even though colonists of the revolutionary era were very religious people, they joined in near unanimity in opposing the establishment of an official religion for their new country. The animating idea that led them to that decision was a very conscious desire to not replicate the European models that many had fled in search of religious tolerance. Yet when it comes to contemporary arguments about abortion, the use of religious doctrine threatens to erase the line between religion and government. And when similar tactics are mimicked in arguments about
other hot-button issues, from gay rights to prayer in school, it makes it impossible to achieve progress. It clogs the arteries that have carried the blood of American democracy.

It may sound radical—because it is rarely said for fear of giving offense—but religion is not the law in this country. Inspirational references to the ideals of religious teachings are not the basis for our laws. The Founding Fathers, the abolitionists, and leaders of the civil rights movement all called for America to aspire to become a loving community, with justice and charity. But attempts to dictate political, military, or social policy on the basis of religious doctrine amount to imposing constraints on dialogue that are not accepted by all Americans. Using religion to foment division between Americans may be the vilest form of coded speech because it is so contradictory to the reasons this country was founded. The word “God” does not appear in the Constitution. The only reference to a deity is an expression of the date—“The Year of Our Lord”—which is about as bland a reference as one can imagine. The document has been described as the “godless Constitution.” So how, in a country governed by that Constitution, can the Bible or any other religious text be the final word on what rights a woman has regarding abortion? The sad thing is that advocates and opponents, as well as politicians, know this but still find it politically advantageous to pretend they don’t. And it is ironic that many of those who favor the strictest interpretation of the Constitution are the most liberal when it comes to violating its very first principle.

The power of religion has been a constant force in American life from the start. The Founding Fathers repeatedly referred to the God-given right to freedom as the basis for
their Declaration of Independence from the tyrannical rule of King George. But that religious framework did not extend to the principles articulated in the Constitution. In designing the Constitution the Founding Fathers “believed themselves at work in the service of both God and man, not just one or the other,” wrote Jon Meacham in his book
American Gospel
. “Driven by a sense of providence and an acute appreciation of the fallibility of humankind, they created a nation in which religion should not be singled out for special help or particular harm. The balance between the promise of the Declaration of Independence, with its evocation of divine origins and destiny, and the practicalities of the Constitution, with its checks on extremism, remains perhaps the most brilliant American success.”

Even so, religion was a point of controversy in national politics from the start. Thomas Jefferson’s ties to atheists during his time in Paris were used by his political opponents to portray him as a godless man, a heathen lacking any moral compass who was not fit to govern the new nation. He was widely quoted as having defined his stand on religion with a pithy line: “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.”

Religion became a major force in American life in the early 1800s, with churches and revival meetings becoming the center of social life in small towns and cities. The evangelical tone, with its optimism and promise of personal salvation, fit with the promise of emerging democratic institutions. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in
Democracy in America
that the new nation was far more taken with religion than any country in Europe. “I do not know if all Americans have faith in their religion,” he wrote,” … but I am sure that they believe it necessary to the
maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion does not belong only to one class of citizens or to one party but to the entire nation; one finds it in all ranks.”

The power of religion to create a common bond and to organize Americans was evident in the spread of organized religion in the United States during what historians call the “Second Great Awakening.” Churches became a regular stop for politicians seeking office, and the era marked “the beginning of the ‘Republicanizing’ or nationalizing of American religion,” according to Gordon Wood’s book
Empire of Liberty
. President Lincoln used references to biblical scripture regularly in his speeches. He capitalized on the religious undertones of the Declaration of Independence to rally his fight to keep North and South as one nation, as well as to compel Americans to deal with the immorality of slavery. Lincoln’s speeches, correspondence, and diaries are full of references to God and the moral importance for a God-fearing country of freeing the slaves. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” stirred antislavery passion with its lyrical appeal to the power of a fierce God who is marching forward to crush the bitter fruit of slavery, the grapes of wrath.

In the twentieth century, religious themes again became central to national identity in the fight against communism. After World War II American politicians framed the ideological struggle between the military superpowers of the day, the Soviet Union and the United States, as a conflict between godless communists and God-fearing Americans. In 1954 the Pledge of Allegiance was altered to include the phrase “one nation under God.” And in 1956 the country’s motto, featured on its currency, became “In God We Trust.” Also during this time, press baron William Randolph Hearst openly promoted
a young evangelical and conservative preacher with a fiery, anticommunist message—Billy Graham. “The principles of Christ,” Graham said at his many crusades, “form the only ideology hard enough to stop communism. When communism conquers a nation it makes every man a slave. When Christianity conquers a nation it makes every man a king.” Graham became a permanent fixture at mass rallies for tens of thousands promoting “born-again” American Protestantism that was tied to fighting the devilish communist menace. Democrats and Republicans in the White House welcomed Billy Graham as a spiritual adviser, but his hard line against communists led conservatives, especially President Nixon, to embrace his willingness to mix Christianity and patriotism. Religion also made news during this period thanks to the Supreme Court’s rulings limiting prayer in public schools. And the 1960 campaign saw John F. Kennedy’s Catholicism become an issue. No Catholic had ever been president, and he felt compelled to speak against suggestions that he might take directions from the pope and not the Constitution.

Beginning in 1965, arguments about the role of religion in American life erupted again. This time the women’s liberation movement and the debate over a woman’s sexual freedoms ignited political passions and arguments over whether the nation was losing its moral grounding. Those social debates became a fire-and-brimstone political fury when the Supreme Court issued rulings on the “right to privacy.” The Court, in a series of decisions, said women had a right to contraceptives under its reading of the Constitution, as a matter of privacy. And then the 1973
Roe v. Wade
decision inflamed social conservatives by giving constitutional protection to abortion. The high court’s ruling, along with Nixon’s political success in winning
the Catholic vote as a result of his opposition to abortion, gave rise to a new political force—a vocal, organized antiabortion right wing that spoke in defiance of any “right to privacy,” invoking scripture and the importance of a fetus’s competing “right to life.”

The Republican Party had to reverse its abortion position to accommodate the new political reality. “Before the early 1970s, Republicans had promoted global and national population control through family planning, including contraception, sterilization and abortion,” wrote Donald Critchlow in his book
The Conservative Ascendancy
. And in the United States abortion had been a moral issue but never a political issue. The social consensus on abortion created informal rules that stood apart from the strict laws regulating abortion. Americans accepted termination of pregnancy as a private medical decision until the so-called quickening of a fetus, the moment when a woman is able to feel the baby moving inside of her. The law, however, was more rigid, with explicit bans on abortion in most states. Before
Roe
was decided in 1973, only four states—Alaska, Hawaii, New York, and Washington—legally allowed abortion on request during the first six months of pregnancy. Another sixteen states allowed abortion when the health of the mother was in danger or after rape or incest. And thirty states barred abortion completely. The feminist movement of the 1960s organized in much of the country around campaigns to pressure state officials to relax laws banning abortion. And the vast majority of women at the center of the movement were white college graduates and suburbanites, and many of them were Catholics. It was the effort of these women that promoted the
Roe
case in an attempt to force state governments to acknowledge that women nationwide had a
right to have abortions. The Supreme Court’s decision legalized abortion in line with the understanding of quickening, or in the words of the Court, the “viability” of the fetus. However, the Court left it up to the states to set their own standards for when a fetus was viable and to impose restrictions on any abortions scheduled after viability.

The uproar that followed the
Roe v. Wade
ruling was immediate and energized both sides of the debate. The decision was a boon to the women’s rights movement, and it was a boon to conservative religious leaders, who started groups including the Moral Majority to preach against the country becoming a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. In the Republican Party, Nixon’s winning strategy of opposition to abortion rights became the new standard for top officials. Critchlow describes the organized ferocity of the antiabortion coalition that emerged in the 1970s as intentionally designed to be a political weapon, “a wedge to lure traditional Roman Catholics and evangelical Protestants away from their Democratic loyalties.”

Gerald Ford, Nixon’s vice president, was criticized in GOP circles as weak on abortion because he never gave strong antiabortion speeches and cited the Court ruling in response to questions intended to get him to personally condemn abortion. Ronald Reagan, who challenged Ford in the 1976 Republican primary, rose to near victory by highlighting his opposition to abortion.

In the 1980 presidential campaign Reagan turned his opposition to abortion into a pledge to appoint federal judges, including members of the Supreme Court, who honored the “sanctity of innocent unborn life.” The Republican Party was now the party of opposition to abortion.

By 1981 the political furor around abortion made it, in the words of
Time
magazine’s Walter Isaacson, “without question the most emotional issue of politics and morality that faces the nation today.” Writing in a
Time
cover story, Isaacson predicted that the conflict had the potential to “test the foundations of [the Constitution’s] pluralistic system designed to accommodate deep rooted moral differences.” He quoted Dr. C. Everett Koop, later the surgeon general, as saying, “Nothing like it has separated our society since the days of slavery.” And national data on the doubling of the number of abortions since the
Roe
decision, from 744,600 to 1.5 million, gave further power to the debate. In his first years in the White House, President Reagan tried to get Congress to pass a “Human Life Statute” to codify when a fetus was to be considered viable and therefore protected from abortion. Congressman Henry Hyde, an Illinois Republican, was the bill’s biggest supporter and made incredibly grandiose statements to try to get it enacted: “Defining when life begins,” he said, “is the sort of question Congress is designed to answer, competent to answer, must answer.” The law was never enacted, but during the early 1980s the Supreme Court ruled on efforts by several state legislatures, inspired by the increasingly powerful antiabortion movement, to restrict abortion through the use of parental notification requirements and even requirements that abortions take place only in hospitals. Those limitations were struck down as unreasonable barriers to a woman’s right to have an abortion. That did not stop the effort to find a way to undercut the
Roe
ruling. In 1986 the Court had to deal with a form issued by the state of Pennsylvania to all women seeking abortions. The wording counseled against terminating any pregnancy. Associate Justice Harry Blackmun, in his majority
opinion, wrote that “the States are not free, under the guise of protecting maternal health or potential life, to intimidate women into continuing pregnancies.”