Aspiring stateswomen have few role models on American soil. Thus, it’s an invent-as-you-go process for people such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, one of only a few women in the U.S. Senate and the most likely Democratic candidate for president in 2008.
Can she become the first female commander in chief?
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A year ago, I would have said “no” simply because she’s not a woman most men–rationally or not–can stand. Democratic women alone can’t elect her, and Republican women aren’t likely to cross over in significant enough numbers to make the difference. Unless.
There’s one issue on which Clinton could bridge a gap that begs someone’s attention, preferably a woman’s. Abortion. Clinton needs to be the voice of ending abortion.
Stateswomen, like statesmen, have to be willing to do and say things that are often unpopular, even among their constituents. Clinton already has proven herself willing to speak in favor of staying put in Iraq, swimming against the tide of her own party.
Separating herself from her fellow Democrats, she has earned the attention of others who might have dismissed her before. Can she do the same on abortion? For too long, the far left and far right have been unwilling to compromise an inch on the abortion question. Any relenting on even certain late-term abortions was viewed by abortion-rights advocates as a subterfuge for the incursion of abortion opponents into women’s reproductive rights.
Likewise, abortion opponents couldn’t acknowledge arguments favoring privacy in decisions as personal as what a woman does with her own body.
The schism between these two perspectives and the voices that dominate the debate seems in no danger of closing. What’s long been needed is a calm voice that acknowledges all sides, the very voice Clinton has begun tuning in recent months.
Speaking in January on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, Clinton made some fairly stunning remarks when she acknowledged that abortion is a “a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women,” and said, “There is no reason why government cannot do more to educate and inform and provide assistance so that the choice guaranteed under our Constitution either does not ever have to be exercised or only in very rare circumstances.”
William Saletan, author of “Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War,” suggested in his Slate.com column at the time that Clinton was repositioning her party to win the abortion war.
Perhaps so, but I don’t care why she’s saying it. I’m just glad someone is speaking up. I’ve always maintained that you eliminate abortion by treating the subject honestly through education. If we can graphically describe or depict sexuality to high school kids, we shouldn’t shy away from an equally graphic treatment of abortion.
Abortion is, indeed, a sad and tragic choice for many, and that’s the way we ought to talk about it–not as a continuum between extremes of “choice” or “murder,” but as an endpoint of last resort that we want to work strenuously against.
Politically motivated or not, Clinton’s shift parallels that of a growing number of Americans who have become less comfortable with abortion and who seek a way out that doesn’t criminalize women.
Politics are often a tedious, tendentious debate that leads nowhere. This may be one of those rare instances where politics lead somewhere important, if belatedly.
Millions of voters will be watching to see whether she has the guts to be the stateswoman she aspires to be.
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