Feb. 7, 2005
When it comes to social issues beyond gay marriage, conservative religious groups have a better chance of moving forward. November's election added several votes to the antiabortion side in the House and as many as four in the Senate, depending on how the question is posed. Among the pieces of legislation that stand a real shot at passing is a measure that would make it illegal for anyone other than a parent to transport a minor across state lines for an abortion—a move designed to make it more difficult for teens to avoid the parental-notification laws in 34 states. Another measure would require doctors to inform patients seeking an abortion at 20 weeks of pregnancy or later about the possibility that the fetus would feel pain. Bush supports both.

Evangelicals already have lots of successes they can count as their own. They're grateful for the law banning the second- and third-trimester procedure known as partial-birth abortion. They see another victory in the law that allows doctors and nurses to invoke their consciences in refusing to perform abortions in hospitals that receive federal funds, and in the law that makes it two crimes to harm or kill a pregnant woman. They're pleased Bush also banned the use of federal funds to create new stem-cell lines from human embryos.

But nothing matters more to religious conservatives than Bush's appointments to the courts, the effects of which could last a generation or more after he is out of office. It was the February 2004 ruling by a Massachusetts court that same-sex couples could marry in the state that turned the issue into a national controversy. Evangelicals have long insisted that their political setbacks, like Roe v. Wade, have been the product of activist justices. "At the very top of the list is the judiciary, which we feel is out of control and threatening to religious liberty and to the institution of the family," Dobson says. "That would be the most important thing to us because every other issue that we care about is linked, one way or another, to the courts." If Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who is suffering from thyroid cancer, is the next to vacate the court, Bush's appointment of a conservative would leave the court's ideological balance pretty much as it is. Justices John Paul Stevens, 84, and Sandra Day O'Connor, 74, who both voted to uphold Roe v. Wade, have been on the court for 30 and 24 years, respectively. If conservatives replaced them, the court could shift dramatically to the right.

So far, conservatives have been elated by Bush's judicial choices, but they'll watch his Supreme Court pick with special scrutiny because the balance is so close. Many are hoping he'll choose a jurist with a proven conservative record, such as Justice Antonin Scalia, rather than a more cipher-like figure such as Justice David Souter, who quickly disappointed conservatives after being named by the first President Bush in 1990. Conservative Christians are also keeping their eye on Bush's other choices, such as Michael Powell's replacement as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates against indecency in broadcasting.

But conservative Christians have new ambitions too and are expecting the President to embrace those as well. In recent years they have expanded their political agenda into foreign policy, where they have gone beyond the narrow goal of supporting Israel. An estimated 60% of the world's Christians live in Asia, Africa and Latin America, and evangelical missionaries have received a firsthand look at problems that Washington policymakers have ignored for decades. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have put forth reams of reports, but "the religious groups were able to get these issues higher on the agenda, where the secular human-rights groups were not, because of their mass constituency," says Allen Hertzke, director of religious studies at the University of Oklahoma and author of a book on religious activism in foreign policy. Those new interests have produced new alliances. Working with liberal groups, religious conservatives forced the Bush Administration to intercede in the Christian-Muslim civil war in Sudan. They also put political muscle behind global aids funding and legislation against international sex trafficking and lately are becoming increasingly worried about Third World debt.

That's just the beginning. "You will continue to see this agenda of Christian conservatives broaden out," says Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, and as it does, the results will sometimes be unexpected. At last week's annual antiabortion march, activists from the National Association of Evangelicals drew quizzical looks as they paraded under a banner reading stop mercury poisoning of the unborn. It was a protest against water pollution by coal-burning utilities—a cause Ralph Nader or Al Gore would also support. "You can build from the left and build from the right and get something done," Brownback says. Which, in the end, may be what having power is all about.

—With reporting by Massimo Calabresi/Washington and Rita Healy/Denver

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