The Trouble with Pleasing Everyone

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With that benefit of the doubt, couldn't Bush take the risk of searching for a policy that can accommodate conflicting moral claims, so that we can stop thinking each other evil? During the perennial debate over partial-birth abortion, something important changed, but the extremists running the show were so dug in that they let the moment pass. For the first time in decades, pro-choicers (and the much desired soccer moms) were confronted with the statistics showing that late-term abortions weren't quite so rare or performed solely in grave circumstances and that the "health of mother" exception had expanded to include numerous gauzy psychological factors. The 1973 trimester construction of Roe v. Wade seemed at odds with what our eyes could see. Viability comes sooner now (a 1991 study found that 34% of babies delivered at 24 weeks can live). Perhaps the time was ripe to consider placing third-trimester restrictions on late-second-trimester abortions (not just partial-birth abortions). At the same time, some on the antiabortion side opened up to the notion that people every bit as moral as themselves might reasonably recoil at the idea that a five-weeks-pregnant 13-year old is carrying a child with rights equal to hers, "which cannot be infringed." Gobel says "a teenager old enough to fornicate is old enough to be a mother," but many others on her side can see that forcing a child to bear a child should not be the punishment for having sex.

Gobel has already prayed with Dan Quayle (whom she may endorse) and Steve Forbes, whom she won't (she doesn't buy his recent conversion or forgive his once calling Pat Robertson a "toothy flake"). She is waiting for Bush to come pray with her, which she expects within the next two weeks, before she makes up her mind. While Bush has so much of the country's attention, will he prove Ford wrong and lead us someplace instead of blowing $60 million on slick ads and a fog machine of road-tested, split-the-difference platitudes? He could lead, not follow, and woo the Christian right by bringing them along, not just kneeling down with them.