Are U.S. Voters Pro-Choice?
Ann Coulter says (April 21) Arlen Specter is not really a Republican. One proof is that he was the first Republican to speak out against Robert Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court. According to Coulter, the failure of the Bork nomination made Republicans fearful of nominating true conservatives; inoffensive types including Anthony Kennedy made it to the Court; and extremely liberal decisions on social issues resulted.
"In a democratic process, liberals could never persuade Americans to vote for their insane ideas--abortion on demand, gay marriage and adoption, handgun confiscation, cross-district busing, abolishing the death penalty and affirmative action quotas."
On the other hand, William Saletan says in Slate that the 1989 pro-choice message, "Who Decides: You or Them?" was brilliant, and helped elect a Democrat in (what is usually safely Republican) Virginia:
"The conservative message succeeded brilliantly at keeping abortion legal. The Virginia election scared the dickens out of the GOP. President George H.W. Bush and other Republican politicians retreated from their threats to ban abortion. In 1992, the Supreme Court reaffirmed Roe v. Wade, noting (without acknowledging its obvious influence) that pressure to overturn Roe had been countered by increasingly intense 'pressure to retain it.' Even today, George W. Bush cautions, 'I don't think the culture has changed to the extent that the American people or the Congress would totally ban abortions.'"
So did a handful of politicians and judges really change everything themselves, or were they forced to acknowledge an electorate that is basically pro-choice?
Update: my provisional response is that there's a combination of libertarianism and puritanism. In his dissent on the Lawrence case (which struck down sodomy laws, and prepared the way for same-sex marriage), Scalia lists activities that might legitimately be covered by "laws based on moral choices": bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity. Somehow he is sympathetic to crack-downs on all these things--or at least he thinks there are no constitutional rights that stand in the way of criminal laws concerning them. (Masturbation? This one made my students laugh. How exactly would the policy enforce it?) Yet there is no mention of divorce, which arguably devastates the lives of families and children. Let's face it--some of Scalia's best friends are divorced.
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