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The reality in most American communities is that two decades of moral and religious reflection, legal maneuvering and political assaults have combined to do precisely what conservatives promised when Roe was handed down: roll back the Supreme Court ruling until it is no longer the law of the land. Now, in the noisy streets and legislatures and the bare chambers of the individual conscience, that most fundamental question -- Who decides whether a woman can have an abortion? -- must itself be redecided. With that, America is entering new moral and political territory, rough and uncharted, but lit by the phosphor of righteous certainties. And as the combatants square off with their irreconcilable notions of life and liberty, the middle ground, what there is of it, promises to become scorched earth.
THE WAR OF IMAGES
The National Abortion Rights Action League is distributing a map of America these days that offers its vision of the future. If Roe is overturned, naral predicts that just seven states, mostly along both coasts, can be counted on to keep abortion easily available. Across the broad middle of America, an area stretching from Idaho and Nevada east to Kentucky and Tennessee, the group foresees a nearly unbroken regime of tough new obstacles and outright prohibitions. Though opponents of abortion say the other side is overstating the threat as a way to mobilize supporters, they are quietly confident of roughly the same outcome. "At the end of this decade we will probably have a patchwork of state laws," says Gary Bauer, president of the conservative Family Research Council and formerly the domestic policy adviser in the Reagan White House. "But legal or illegal, it will be much more likely that abortion will be seen as a matter of shame and something to be avoided."
To reinforce the shame and remind women of the options, antiabortion groups are undertaking a war of images. Last month the Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation, a Pennsylvania-based group that contributes to conservative causes, began an ad campaign on cable stations to promote the idea that adoption is the solution to unwanted pregnancies. Michael Bailey, an Indiana advertising-promotions executive, declared himself a congressional candidate in his district's Republican primary, largely in order to run a series of antiabortion ads on television. The 30-second spots graphically depict what he says are aborted fetuses; under federal regulations, local television stations have no power to censor political ads. "I always have believed that if television stations ever aired pictures of aborted babies, it would begin to change many people's minds about the issue," Bailey explains. "People would focus on the evidence of abortion -- which is the aborted baby -- rather than this ill-conceived idea of women's choice. Choice is no choice to babies."