From: dgp@atlas.wustl.edu (Don Porter)
Subject: Re: Intellectually Challenging moments in Modern history
Keywords: From: decay@
Organization: Washington University, St. Louis Mo.
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 1992 19:40:04 GMT

<1992Jul27.172042.297942@cs.cmu.edu> (Susan Garvin) writes:
>> It may come as a surprise to you, but most people don't
>> vote as single-issue voters on abortion.

<Bs2qsv.1y0@news.cso.uiuc.edu> (Tim Buckley) writes:
> You would never know this after watching the Democratic convention.  If
> Clinton was not for abortion on demand what do you think his chances of
> winning would have been?  My guess is that if both major parties had
> platforms similar to the Republicans then a third party would have been
> formed.  But this is just speculation on my part.

This is something I find very strange.  The Democratic platform
is easily the more moderate of the two.  It supports abortion
rights as understood under RvW, allowing certain restrictions.
Not nearly as extreme as an abortion rights plank could get.

On the other side, the Republican platform supports 14th Amendment
personhood from the moment of conception, extreme both legally
and pragmatically.  (At least they did in '88.  There's still a
remote possibility it will change this year.)

Yet the faces put on the conventions are going to be the opposite.
Republicans are lining up a number of prominent pro-choice speakers.
Democrats allowed no appearance of dissent at all.  Not even in
the pre-televised hours of the convention.  They sent out a message
from the very beginning (with Ann Richards' opening "I'm Ann Richards
and I'm pro-choice and I vote") that pro-life sentiments were not
welcome at the party's party.

The Democrats seem to be counting heavily on an energized pro-choice
constituency to carry them through the election.  Abortion is one
of the wedge issues that sent Reagan Democrats to the polls for
Regan/Bush in the first place.  Maybe the Democrats are counting
on Bush's weakness to send them back.  Or maybe they were counting
on the Perot drain away from Bush's support.

>> Pathetic.  A woman's right to bodily autonomy should depend
>> on geography, Schwartz?  

> Well, Susan, lots of things in this country are geography dependent.
> This is by design.  A major concern of our constitution is to guarantee the
> rights of states (and within state constitutions the communities) to
> make laws that best represent the populace within their boundaries.
> [etc.  Good defense of federalism deleted. ]

You are right, Tim, and I'm on your side.  But I think we both
have to acknowledge that the tide of history is against us.
From the very beginning we've been moving farther away from being
50 (13) states and closer to being one nation.  The Federalists won.
The Union won.  Woodrow Wilson won.  The New Dealers won.
The Supreme Court expansive view of rights won.  If history
indeed has a tide, it is flowing in one direction.  Federalism
has quite a case to make to reverse the trend.

|   Don Porter | dgp@saturn.wustl.edu | Washington University in St Louis   |
|  "The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they     |
|   please; we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we       |
|___risk congratulations." -- Edmund Burke._________________________________|