A favorite piece of sloganeering by the abortion/Planned Parenthood crowd when they attack the pro-lifers is, “Don’t let a minority impose its values on the rest of us.” They ignore the fact that it was a minority of seven men in Roe v. Wade who imposed their abortion views on the entire country, thereby overturning the existing laws adopted by majority vote in the big majority (45) of state legislatures.
The 1988 election has afforded us a look at an even more striking example of how a tiny pro-abortion minority imposed its views on the majority of the people of Michigan for 10 years. Just two men ruthlessly stymied the majority will of the State Legislature and of the people, until finally those two were repudiated on November 8.
The story started in 1978 when the Michigan State Legislature passed a bill prohibiting the spending of taxpayers’ funds for abortion except in cases involving the life of the mother. The Governor vetoed the bill, and tax-funded abortions continued.
Over the last 10 years, the Michigan State Legislature passed a prohibition on tax-funded abortions 17 times, and 17 times the Governor vetoed the bill. Wielding the knife was either liberal Republican Governor William Milliken or liberal Democratic Governor James Blanchard.
Those two men successfully defied the people of Michigan and the majority of the State Legislature all those years, with the result that the taxpayers were forced to finance 175,000 abortions. Naturally, we heard no outcry from the American Civil Liberties Union about this minority rule.
Michigan pro-lifers then bypassed the Governor by using the laborious initiative process; they gathered sufficient signatures, and the State Legislature passed the ban on tax-funded abortions for the 18th time. The abortionists then gathered their own petitions and forced the issue onto the ballot in the 1988 election.
When the votes were counted the night of November 8, the abortionists and Planned Parenthood had suffered a smashing defeat. The pro-lifers won by 58% to 42%, carrying 80 out of 83 counties, and their landslide victory helped George Bush to carry Michigan.
The abortionists spent a great deal of money, but the public was alienated by the pro-abortion television spots. For example, one spot had the dehumanizing theme that it costs less to have an abortion than to have and bring up a baby; it’s cheaper to abort than support, they said.
Four years ago, the people of Colorado used the referendum route to ban tax-funded abortions. In 1988, the abortionists tried to overturn that vote through another referendum. Coloradans again said No to tax-funded abortions, even more decisively; the vote was 60% to 40% pro-life.
In a third 1988 abortion vote, pro-lifers in Arkansas also won a referendum prohibiting tax-funded abortions.
Funny thing, when Dan Rather reported the election results on CBS Evening News on November 9, he omitted all mention of these three landmark anti-abortion votes. In selective reporting of the news he did, however, report on the results of two referenda on other subjects in other states where the liberals won.
Inquiring reporters asked the question many times this year, will abortion be an issue in the 1988 elections? Some people were deceived into thinking that issue is outdated because so little about abortion made its way into national campaign coverage and presidential debates.
But, indeed, abortion was THE crucial issue of the 1988 election. No issue was more important in the pre-convention primary/caucus process.
It is now a “given” in American politics that no one can be nominated on the Republican ticket for president or vice president unless he is pro-life, and that no one can be nominated on the Democratic ticket for president or vice president unless he is pro-abortion. That’s why Jesse Jackson and Richard Gephardt abandoned their pro-life positions and turned pro-abortion when they got the presidential bug.
Abortion was decisive in the fall election, too. Exit polls showed that voters named abortion more than any other reason for voting, and that 55% of those said that the abortion issue persuaded them to vote for pro-life George Bush.
Pro-lifers can rejoice at the 1988 election results. They won all their specific referenda and they helped to elect a President who will have the opportunity to replace the three octogenarian abortionist justices who voted for Roe v. Wade in 1973, Justices Blackmun, Brennan, and Marshall.
