Abortion Is Back

After dozens of wishful prognostications by liberal commentators that abortion will cease to be a political issue in the U.S., and after the first campaign since 1988 in which abortion wasn't much of an issue, it's back. This could truly be to the 21st century what slavery was to the 19th. With half of the country insistent on their 'peculiar institution' and the other half equally insistent on the moral justice of their cause, neither will likely be satisfied by any solution, even a state-by-state one. The stakes are too high, the foundational ethics too irreconcilable.

In the latest round, occuring on the 32nd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, both President Bush and 2008 hopeful Hillary Clinton took a slidestep to their right on the issue. The President's was relatively small, voicing support for legislation that would seek to limit abortion without stopping it. The blue-stater, meanwhile, used an address to 1,000 lefties as a public relations schtick, appealing for common ground on preventing unwanted pregnancies. Hopefully this is more than a smoke-screen; this is a real problem where real cooperation is possible. In fact, Prof. Mike Dukakis has his classes address this very problem, at the state level, as their take-home-midterm-from-Hell every semester.