The War is Far from Over.

Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War William Saletan (University of California Press, 2003, 327pp) ISBN: 0520086880, $29.95

IN HIS NEW AND CONTROVERSIAL book William Saletan argues that the prochoice movement in the US backed into the now universal choice message of "Who decides?" to appeal to conservative and libertarian voters in order to win temporary political advantage. And, by doing so, severely hampered its ability to successfully fight subsequent battles over public funding, parental notification, access for military personnel and other vital battles over reproductive health care provision.

The book provides a fascinating and detailed history of many of the high profile political battles in which choice was a major issue--from the 1986 constitutional amendment fight in Arkansas under then-Governor Bill Clinton to the infamous Virginia gubernatorial election of Doug Wilder and the 2000 presidential election. Regardless of how one feels about his thesis, Saletan has done his homework, and for political junkies the book is full of behind-the-scenes political maneuvering that provides compelling drama. He also charts the evolutionary progression of the "Who decides?" theme from its beginnings to the necessarily complicated application as the choice movement faced more complex scientific and political developments.

Though Saletan's fundamental goal is to criticize the prochoice movement's adoption of the "Who decides?" message, he provides no alternative. From the early fight in Arkansas, politically expedient decisions were made that arguably were the only pathway to win majority support. Would he have had the movement stick to what he feels were purer, more intellectually cogent arguments, only to go down in flames? As we know, abortion for most Americans has become a political football, and the struggle we are engaged in is almost exclusively about who holds the political advantage, both strategic and tactical, on game day. Each legislative and electoral battle is reduced to getting the necessary votes at a specific time and place. There is no evidence that messages used in these fights have fundamentally shifted the public's attitude on the issue.

In order to make his point, Saletan oversimplifies political campaigns, and would lead you to believe that the right to abortion was the determinative issue ... if only that were the case. However, choice has and will continue to play a role, not only in motivating pro- and antichoice voters, but also as a proxy for a host of issues that voters relate to a candidate's position on abortion.

Saletan concludes that conservatives have won the abortion war--which is itself arguable. As others have pointed out, Roe is still law, despite an anemic 51 vote affirmation in the United States Senate. What is clear is that over the last two decades, the right wing has executed a sophisticated approach to whittling away if not the fundamental right to an abortion, women's ability to exercise that right. State by state, the right has successfully executed a strategy of incremental assault on access to services and funding by imposing parental notification statutes and a host of other measures that serve to place often impassable barriers between women and their rights. And at the federal level it has launched fight after fight against choice, with successively lurid titles, such as the Unborn Victims of Violence Act. It has demonstrated its tenacity and ability to keep an issue alive that otherwise would fade away, as most elected officials, pro- or antichoice, wish it would.

The truth is that the fight wing gained its advantage in these fights not because of the intellectual construct of prochoice forces or by way of logical argument. In fact, the antichoice successes over the past two decades relate directly to its commitment and engagement in organizing, training and politicizing its grassroots base across the country. Unlike progressives, who seem too often to believe that we can make elected officials vote our way on principle, the fight wing understood early on that it was not the majority of the country, and that the only way to be successful was to build a base that could force politicians into supporting its extreme-right agenda. Through organizing activists, voters and embracing even the furthest fringes of its movement, the fight has demonstrated the ability to constantly play above its weight. Nowhere was this better exemplified than at the Christian Coalition's zenith, where it demonstrated its ability to mobilize not a majority of voters, but the five to ten percent that was determinative in primaries and general elections. And once the far right successfully took over the Republican Party, state by state, it made the job a lot easier. When you have Ralph Reed running the Georgia Republican Party, you can rest assured that the core agenda of the right has been successfully embedded into national politics.

THE GOOD NEWS FOR THE PRO-choice movement is that it has learned how to compete. Over the past six years, the choice movement made a fundamental shift by committing to re-build a sophisticated, organized, trained grassroots base in critical states across the country. This new dedication to organizing at the state level, to building grassroots troops and activists, is paying off. It is much the same lesson learned by the American labor movement, who, facing a shrinking membership, determined that it wasn't sufficient to just talk about expanding its base. To do so requires investing scarce resources and taking institutional risks that can agitate existing members. Growing political power requires serious redirection of financial and political priorities.

Planned Parenthood and NARAL made the tough institutional decisions to build an activist political base, even risking the alienation of some partisan donors, and have modeled a new spirit of cooperation with each other--and it is already reaping enormous dividends for the millions of women who are counting on them to preserve the right to choose. During the past two years of the Bush administration's assault on women's and civil rights, the prochoice movement has demonstrated it would rather win than whine. The movement has played a critical role in activating the prochoice base on a host of issues at the state and federal level. The best evidence of this is its successful mobilization of hundreds and thousands of calls, letters and personal contacts to US senators in key states over the most extreme of the Bush administration's judicial nominees. If not for the choice movement, these appointees would be holding lifetime seats on the federal bench today.

The most obvious impediment to having rational, prochoice policies was painfully evident at the recent bill-signing ceremony of the much ballyhooed "partial-birth" abortion ban. A picture is worth a thousand words, and to see newspaper photos of President Bush framed by a chorus of the bill's congressional sponsors, every one an Anglo male, we know that the real problem is that those who will never have to make the most personal decision about child-bearing are deciding for the rest of us. In the end, it's not about political messaging or political correctness--it's about political power, who has it, who can deliver it. It is encouraging that our movement understands we can't just claim the prochoice majority in this country, we have to mobilize it.

CECILE RICHARDS is the president of America Votes--a coalition working to increase voter registration and participation in electoral politics. Previously she was deputy chief of staff to US House of Representatives Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and the executive director of the Texas Freedom Network, a non-partisan alliance of religious and community leaders who support public education and religious freedom.