Abortion Stops a Bleeding Heart

So says Ann Coulter, Fly-swatter Extraordinaire for the conservative movement. And the particular fly that she is swatting today is the continued delusion that abortion, and the "right" thereof, is still a winning issue for the Democratic Party. Not anymore, she concludes.

Rights, they say. In fact, to paraphrase Gregory Peck in Twelve O'Clock High, they've got a right to explain to the American people irresponsibility, wholesale slaughter of innocents, and a cruel streak a mile wide. And someday they'll have to explain it to God. In the meantime, they can tell us any time they want to lay aside their hypocritical and increasingly lame excuses.

A word on the title: Ann Coulter is pointing out that the Democratic Party has already cast aside the gun-controllers and the welfare addicts, the former after a comprehensive assault-weapons ban cost them control of Congress, and the latter after Bill Clinton signed equally comprehensive welfare reform into law. Though Clinton won the next election, he did not dare try to revoke welfare reform. Result: a permanent break in the cycle of dependence for a lot of welfare families. And the transform of most members of those families into productive citizens.

And now, many columnists on the left are swallowing their gorge and telling the Democrats to lay off defending Roe v. Wade. As well they should, if they were smart, anyway. First, the court in Roe used a legal theory that was every bit as flawed as that in Scott v. Sandford (that's Scott as in Dred). Second, even Jane Roe herself has recanted and sought a reconsideration of her case. Third--and here is something that Ann herself missed, though others have caught it--if the Democrats' constituents keep on having abortions, then Republicans' natural constituents will out-breed them and then out-vote them forever. Arguably, this "Roe Effect" has already decided a Presidential election--the last one. And fourth--more people are now realizing that the earliest feminists--the ones with whom feminism began--regarded abortion as a nefarious anti-woman plot. And they're beginning as well to understand what Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony were talking about!