Emily’s Choice

A recent editorial by liberal columnist and longtime McLaughlin Group regular Eleanor Clift is entitled: “EMILY's List: Confronting the Growing Ambivalence Over Abortion.” In an look at the future direction of the pro-choice fundraiser ("Early Money Is Like Yeast, because it helps to raise the dough."), Eleanor compares current sentiment over abortion to when the organization was founded a quarter century ago, and how today ...

... attitudes about abortion are a lot more nuanced. Just about every woman has seen her own or someone else's sonogram, and it's not so easy to insist that no laws need apply. Younger women have a more complex view of abortion, and they don't view the issue as passionately as their mothers. "If you ask them if they support abortion rights, they say they don't know or they don't want to answer that question," says Jen Bluestein, Emily's List communications director.

This is a cautionary tale for clinging tenaciously to an unsound premise; the idea that a higher purpose than a woman's choice -- rather, the life of someone else who deserves a choice -- is somehow going to go away, because enough voices on Park Avenue or Hollywood would wish it away. As science and technology advance, the ability to know more sooner, only brings one to the inevitable sooner.

The so-called "woman's right to choose" is a poor excuse for a choice. A new generation of women are coming to term with the obvious, and may be wondering how they survived their own mother's "right."
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