If you know who Kate Michelman is, that headline might be a bit surprising. She's the head of NARAL, now apparently known as Pro-Choice America. (Check out the website. For a non-profit, it's surprisingly good, and has had some obvious money put into it.) But given the recent outcry against Senate passage of a bill to 'outlaw' so-called 'partial-birth abortion,' you have to think she's working for the other side.

Ampersand has already given a good summary of why many Republicans don't want to see the issue go away, and are quite happy to see it struck down by the courts. I won't restate what he's put so well, except to say that it's an issue with a high instinctive 'ick' factor and a lot of very complicated and debatable underlying issues that will never reach popular debate. A moderate Republican senator who needs to shore up his support with a pro-life base gets the ultimate hat trick by giving it his vote: (a) whatever else his right-wing constituents say, he can always pull the 'But I oppose partial-birth abortion' card out of his back pocket, and keep their votes; but (b) he knows full well that so long as he throws his voice solidly behind the exclusion of an exception for the health of the mother, O'Connor will never let his vote see the light of day; and (c) he can sit back and watch the money roll into his re-election fund every time a pro-choice activist vehemently protests the act, thus riling his base that bit more. There's nothing to lose, except a bit of integrity, and what do you do with that on Capitol Hill?

It's item (c) which makes me ponder the strategy of the pro-abortion cause, however. (For those who've not been reading, I'm actually against restrictions on abortion, but I don't believe it's beyond the scope of the powers of a state government.) I can confidently predict that I'm going to be seeing a lot of the statements of Ms. Michelman in the next few months. They will appear on the numerous fundraiser letters, Presidential Action Fund requests, and 'surveys' from the Republican National Committee that constitute a goodly percentage of the junkmail I receive. She'll be selectively quoted, of course, but the best bits will be quotations from TV appearances or magazine articles--'proof' that the media is a right wing conspiracy.

Every time I see someone like her on television, a little dollar-sign appears next to her, and my ears hear a 'kaching' in the coffers of the Bush re-election fund.

What's the strategy here? I can't imagine that the money or the influence that NARAL (or similar organizations) receives from the national publicity is worth the funding they give to their opponents, and in this case it's for a law that even if it were to pass constitutional muster (it won't) would be unlikely to stop a single abortion. Even were it to be enforced (it won't), it would not ban alternate procedures. Even were it the start of a slippery slope (it isn't), it would be a very gentle slope covered with a lot of velcro.

And that's not to say that NARAL shouldn't talk about the issue: it should, and loudly, to its own base in its own targeted marketing. But it can cede the field on this issue and lose absolutely nothing, while spending time talking about issues that brings not only its base to the polls, but a broader public to its side. Provision of medical treatment in Africa, for instance, or any of the various Bush-era executive orders with regards to choice. The hyperbole here over a procedure that, whatever its medical merits, is extremely rare and very difficult to defend on a marketing basis (leaving a discussion of the merits to medical professionals) makes any victory pyrrhic at best.

Ah well. At least I get to look forward to entertaining fundraiser letters.