Taking Choice Rights for Granted?

In a Newsweek article titled "Remember Roe!", published by Sarah Kliff earlier this year, Kliff laments the fact that abortion rights don't seem to be important in politics any longer--in fact, there seem to be, in her opinion, too many anti-abortion-rights Democrats in Congress today, and pro-choice activists can no longer count on the Dems to vote their way.

The health care reform, which inspired the Sarah Palin post from me last week, is part of what inspired Kliff to write her article. The tagline for it reads: "HOW CAN THE NEXT GENERATION DEFEND ABORTION RIGHTS WHEN THEY DON'T THINK ABORTION RIGHTS NEED DEFENDING?" Kliff talks about Nancy Keenan, the president of NARAL, and Keenan's worries that the young people on the side of abortion today don't have the same passion that women in her generation did--women who grew up uncertain of their reproductive rights, who witnessed a multitude of dangerous and illegal abortion procedures.

Kliff's article relays some stunning (and distressing) information:

New NARAL research, conducted earlier this year and released exclusively to NEWSWEEK, only amplified Keenan's fears. A survey of 700 young Americans showed there was a stark "intensity gap" on abortion. More than half (51 percent) of young voters (under 30) who opposed abortion rights considered it a "very important" voting issue, compared with just 26 percent of abortion-rights supporters; a similar but smaller gap existed among older voters, too. Worse still for NARAL, the millennials surveyed didn't view abortion as an imperiled right in need of defenders. As one young mother in a focus group told NARAL, it seemed to her that abortion was easily accessible. How did she know? The parking lot at her local clinic, she told them, was always full.

Kliff mentions that more and more "millenials" are opposed to abortion on a moral issue, even if they do believe that the government doesn't have the right to make the choice for an individual. Most individuals, however (between 75 and 85%) support the right to choose under certain circumstances, and a majority of "millenials" do support the right to choose in "most cases."

However, the problem is what Keenan has expressed: the lack of passion. Perhaps this new group of young people, in an ideological sense, believes that a woman has the right to choose (even if they find abortion itself morally repugnant), but they are not actively defending that right. Instead, it seems that most youths are taking it for granted.

NARAL is struggling to find a way to make it relevant to today's youth, since it seems an unlikely thing, with the current Supreme Court lineup, that Roe would be overturned--though Keenan does concede that an overturning of Roe would certainly rile up the young generation. Of course, nobody in NARAL wants that to happen. The desire of both sides to make the issue black and white doesn't help matters. Now that the pro-life side has technology in their court (the ability to create very detailed ultrasound pictures being a big one) NARAL will have to allow a little bit more "moral complexity" into their message.

Is there a way to convince today's apathetic pro-choice youth that it is still an important issue, without something severe happening like a serious threat of Roe being overturned? Do you think we've grown complacent, taking for granted the fact that if we needed to, we could have an abortion? Or are we as protective of abortion rights as ever? Is the possibility of NARAL conceding to a more moral battle a good thing, or will it undermine their steadfast attitude about abortion rights?

(Citation for the article: REMEMBER ROE! By: Kliff, Sarah. Newsweek, 4/26/2010, Vol. 155 Issue 17, p38-39, 2p

A link to the article can be found here.)

On the other side, Newsweek also published a response to Kliff's article: Remember Roe? Young Activists Say They've Never Forgotten.

--Alexandra