Making women feel bad.

Back in December, American Prospect Deputy Editor Sarah Blustain wrote a column that could have been a blueprint for Democrats as they rethink their position on abortion rights. "The Democratic defense of abortion makes me cringe," Blustain wrote. While she supports Roe v. Wade and every legislative effort to defend reproductive rights, Blustain deplored the "stridency, the insistence," and the "vocabulary of 'rights'" used by Democrats and pro-choice advocates.

Well, she didn't have to wait long to hear a change in tone. Within weeks, Hillary Clinton, that lightning rod for feminist bashers, was among the first Democrats to start talking about abortion as a "sad and tragic choice." Pro-lifers are the new stars of the party. Stridency is out. Conciliatory language on abortion is in.

Is this apologetic approach really such a good idea? "I'm certainly not recommending any backsliding on Democrats' actual support for abortion rights," Blustain wrote. But defending something you acknowledge as complicated at best and tragic at worst hardly seems like a good bargaining position. Backsliding is sure to follow. Witness the raft of restrictions on abortions, from waiting periods to parental consent laws to bans on particular procedures, that have garnered Democratic support in pursuit of a more "nuanced" view of the issue.

This pursuit has led Democrats to vote for reasonable-sounding legislation that limits abortion rights and to embrace pro-life members of the party who vote for even more restrictive laws. The net effect is not to acknowledge the sad feelings of women who have had abortions, as Blustain urges, but to make abortions hard to get. And, if they can't make abortions illegal, the proponents of all these restrictions seem to make women who seek abortions feel sadder about it.

Take the latest bill to come down the pike, a proposal to anesthetize fetuses before they are aborted. Under the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, doctors would read a statement to their patients: "Congress finds that there is substantial evidence that the process of being killed in an abortion will cause the unborn child pain, even though you receive a pain-reducing drug." Doctors who fail to read the statement could be fined $100,000 to $250,000. The statement would urge that anesthesia be "administered directly" to the fetus. But it turns out that administering a separate anesthetic is a difficult process many doctors are not qualified to carry out.

Making women feel bad, not pain reduction, is the bill's main effect.

Furthermore, as Karen Pearl, interim president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America points out, there is no scientific consensus about whether the fetuses in question really feel pain, as the statement flatly asserts. "We need to expose this for what it is," says Pearl, "a government script based on ideology, not science."

Planned Parenthood is calling for a scientific panel to honestly examine the issue. "We will do whatever science says is the best approach to offer the best care," says Pearl. But not surprisingly, other pro-choice groups, including NARAL, and many Democrats, don't want to touch the issue. There's been a long series of such legislative efforts designed to paint people on the pro-choice side as unfeeling monsters. You mean you are for killing babies without even making an effort to relieve their pain??!!

We all cringe, and squirm, when we confront the gory language and pictures trotted out by abortion opponents. That's the whole point.

The anti-abortion movement is not the least bit concerned about sounding too strident. As Women's eNews writer Cynthia Cooper points out, fetal pain is the new frontier for the anti-abortion folks. Ironically, while there is quite a bit of medical debate about whether the fetuses the pro-lifers want to anesthetize really feel the pain ascribed to them, there is no debate about the pain felt by newborns in many routine hospital births, Cooper points out. The pro-life groups and legislators aren't worried about that, though. Policies that would relieve the suffering of mothers and babies, along with birth control and better health care, are not on the right's agenda. Instead, along with the Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act, legislation at the state level and regulation at the agency level are all part of the new push to put fetal pain at the front of Americans' minds. Ugh.

In an effort not to seem ghoulish, Democrats react defensively.

Instead, we should be talking about what our country might look like if public policy weren't propelled by people obsessed with pain, death, and sin.

This is the vision Planned Parenthood has been promoting for the last ninety years, since Margaret Sanger began her controversial fight to allow women access to birth control. Pearl sees an opportunity in the current political moment. "We need to push prevention issues," she says. Birth control, sex education, and emergency contraception are among the causes she thinks could be "reframed" to emphasize preventing unintended pregnancies "to create the world we all want to see." To this end, Planned Parenthood is supporting pro-life Democrat Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid's "Prevention First" legislation.

Still, Pearl concedes she is concerned about the Democrats' recent recruitment of pro-life candidates across the country. "I think they will be pushed back on that," she says. "We have so many advocates in all the states. People want the candidates we elect to represent them."

Sounding determinedly optimistic, she says, "I believe the Democrats will continue to stand firm where they've always been, which is that abortion must remain safe and legal."

Let's hope so. Because it's clear that the battle is far from over.

I often remember a brief experience I had when I was in my early twenties, traveling in Europe right after college, and I went to get a pregnancy test in Amsterdam. Nervous, miserable, my stomach in knots, I was reassured by a friendly woman doctor in a free public health clinic. While I waited for the (negative) test result, she showed me what she was doing. The relief I felt at being cared for so respectfully and matter-of-factly is hard to describe. It contrasted sharply with the misery I felt only a couple of years earlier when, back in the United States, I unwittingly walked into a phony clinic set up by a pro-life group in my hometown. I got a negative pregnancy test there, too. But while I waited for the result, I was urged to watch a video about abortion. I declined. The woman waiting with me suggested I get on my knees and pray. The whole atmosphere felt seamy, shame-filled, and unsafe.

Unfortunately, most American women and girls are living in an atmosphere where sex and basic reproductive health care get this sort of nasty treatment. I think about my two daughters, born at home with the help of two wonderfully warm, skilled, and dedicated midwives (also an experience more common in Europe than in the United States), and I hope that for the rest of their lives they are blessed with the happiness, pride, and comfort that surrounded their births.

Maybe that's the change in tone Democrats and pro-choice advocates should be striving for--a feminist view of better health care, with happier outcomes for all of us.

Do we really need even more emphasis on suffering and sadness? How about a little uplift for a change?

Ruth Conniff is Political Editor of The Progressive.