Roundup: Abortion Clinic Safety Zones in Chicago; Misreading the Pew Poll on Attitudes Toward Abortion

Oct 12, 2009, 1:55pm

Jodi Jacobson

Abortion clinic safety zones to be created in Chicago; Posner asks if the Democrats should shift their agenda to satisfy the fantasies of conservative Republicans that Obama is some "radical" on abortion rights?

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley
said he’ll sign a City Council-approved ordinance which forces
protesters to keep a healthy distance from women entering abortion
clinics, reports NBC Chicago.

"There
has to be some civility left in our society. Everybody has the right to
demonstrate and picket. But to use words and other things to frighten
people going in to seek assistance, that is another question," he said
Friday.

The Chicago City Council voted two days earlier on the ordinance, which could get violators slapped with a fine up to $500 for coming within eight feet of someone walking into a clinic.

Women
say they’re routinely approached and handed flyers in anti-abortion
activists’ last-ditch effort to counsel or change the woman’s mind.

Daley
said he expects a legal challenge, but isn’t worried about it.
Chicago’s ordinance is patterned after an even stricter law in Colorado that has already been challenged in the U.S. Supreme Court.

No Shift on Abortion, Says Sarah Posner

Writing in the American Prospect, Sarah Posner argues that some commentators, like Dan Gilgoff of US News and World Report have misread recent polls on abortion.

In his column, argues Posner, Dan Gilgoff buys into the idea that President Obama
and the Democratic Party should be mindful of voters who worry that
Obama will "overreach on abortion rights," based on the new Pew poll out on abortion attitudes.

"But that poll doesn’t show any seismic shift in abortion attitudes," asserts Posner,
nor does it contain any warnings to Obama and the Democrats that they
should be any less pro-reproductive rights.

According to Pew:

Among people who know that Obama is pro-choice, a plurality
(29% of the public overall) think that he will handle the issue about
right. About one in- five (19%) worry that Obama will go too far in
supporting abortion rights, while very few (4%) worry that he will not
go far enough in supporting abortion rights.

Who are the people who are worried about this unspecified
overreaching? Fifty-two percent of conservative Republicans, and only
19% of moderate Republicans, and only 18% of independents. So the
Democrats should shift their agenda to satisfy the fantasies of
conservative Republicans that Obama is some "radical" on abortion
rights?

A commentary in The Politic suggests that U.S. health reform make room for fedearal funding of abortion care. Jonathan McCleod writes that:

[I]t would be wrong for the government to start dictating the terms of valid insurance coverage, such that a common and basic procedure like abortion would be excluded. If the government is going to take taxpayer’s money to create a subsidy, the government has no right to create disincentives to purchase that which an individual considers the optimal insurance coverage.

If the U.S. goes further than that and fully funds health care with public money (as Canada does) and if abortion is legal (as it is in Canada), then it is the responsibility of the government to fund abortions. To do less would be to fail the citizenry. Again, abortion is legal. The government has no business attempting to use a separate programme (health insurance)
to do indirectly what they could not do directly: abolish abortion.
Such legislative chicanery has no place in a thriving democracy. If
pro-life factions wish to outlaw abortion, they must win the debate;
they must not be allowed to game the insurance industry.