Abortion and Politics

by Jackson Dave

At a luncheon meeting last week with our editorial staff, a charming lady of past acquaintance, a recent GOP dropout, expressed doubts over supporting the Democratic Party because of its pro-abortion position. In response to this sentiment, Robbinsense will step forward to tackle just another difficult cultural issue.

As we perceive it, the Democratic Party does not promote or even endorse abortion. The Democratic Party endorses “choice”. In contrast, the Republican Party, which wails over government intrusion into our lives, tells us that for this matter, government knows best (as long as they run the government) and should step into our lives by removing our right to determine our family.

GOP nostrums over “morality” are specious at best. Abortion is not a moral issue---it’s a spiritual issue. Slogans about “murdering babies” are just inflammatory rhetoric. A zealot’s passion does not bestow truth or legitimacy on any matter. “Murder” is “unlawful killing”; abortion is legal. A fetus is NOT a baby…one need look in a dictionary to confirm these definitions.

But defining terms, or "framing the issue" seems to be the field where Republicans have found mastery; and "death" stirs. We have "death tax" for estate tax, "death panel" for a frank discussion with ones doctor about end-of-life consideration, and "killing babies" for the voluntary termination of pregnancy. This works!

But beyond the rhetoric, does the party really oppose abortion? From 1990 through 2000, the number of legal, induced abortions in this country gradually declined. Considering that abortion only became legal in 1974, these are significant statistics, at least implying that the policies of the Clinton Administration, following 12 years of Republican rule, led to a decrease in the abortion rate. Statistics for subsequent years are difficult to assess considering the intensity of forces opposing abortion. Aside from political “noise”, there is a stream of legislation requiring parental notification among other things, direct intimidation at clinics, outright killing of doctors and the closure of clinics all over the country, making it ever more difficult to find these services.

For political perspective, over the years since American soldiers liberated the Northern Marianas, tens of thousands of people, primarily Chinese and mostly women, have been lured to the main island, Saipan, told they were coming to a job in America. All the flights arrived in the middle of the night. It's scary for the workers; they had no understanding of where they were going to end up. Most of them, in the late ‘90s, were paying huge recruitment fees.

They soon discovered they were essentially indentured servants, thousands of dollars in debt to the company men who had recruited them and often forced to sign secret "shadow contracts." They agreed they wouldn't date, they wouldn't go to churches. If they got pregnant, they'd have an abortion.

The factories, many owned by the Chinese Communist government, manufactured clothing for some of the biggest retailers in America - from the Gap to Jones New York - and legally labeled them "Made in the USA." But workers were paid a pittance. It was a very sweet deal made possible because Congress had exempted the territory from U.S. minimum wage and immigration laws. It was just understood that if a worker filed a complaint against her employer, she would be deported.

The owners had a tremendous amount of control over these workers. They lived behind barbed wire in squalid shacks; the Interior Department called them "labor camps." Forced to work twelve hours a day, often seven days a week, their pay was barely half the U.S. minimum wage. Many were paid with checks that could not be cashed. There was no opportunity to just "walk out", essentially no escape.

Republican Senator Frank Murkowski, then Chairman of the Committee with Oversight of U.S. Territories, traveled to Saipan with Allen Stayman to investigate. But when pressure began to mount to challenge conditions in the islands, the owners hired Jack Abramoff to correct their image. Abramoff set out to paint a different picture, promoting the Marianas to conservatives as a free-market Eden for maximizing profits. He began running all-expense paid tropical junkets for lawmakers, their staff, and conservative activists and journalists.

Abramoff's marquee guest was Tom DeLay. When DeLay, his wife, and daughter and Ed Buckham arrived in 1998, DeLay praised Abramoff as "one of my closest and dearest friends." DeLay later told a Texas newspaper that contrary to reports that workers were being sexually exploited, he had interviewed them one-on-one and found no such evidence. "It's a beautiful island with beautiful people who are happy," he said.

Their first night, Abramoff and DeLay were hosted at a party thrown by Willie Tan, a Chinese textile tycoon who had already paid the largest labor fine in U.S. history - $9 million for sweatshop conditions in his factories. Delay told Tan, “You represent everything that is good about what we are trying to do in America - and in leading the world in the free market system...” After attending a cockfight with him, he called the Marianas a "petri dish of capitalism" and denounced efforts to enforce U.S. laws.

Turning the Marianas into a conservative cause was crucial if Abramoff was to block the growing bipartisan consensus in Congress that U.S. minimum wage and immigration laws should be enforced in the islands. Were these “conservatives” worried about the forced abortions?

In the rare inside look at big time lobbying, Abramoff bragged he would work his Congressional connections "to impeach Allen Stayman" and "either defund or severely restrict" Stayman's activities at the Interior Department. According to Interior Secretary, Bruce Babbitt, “Mr. Stayman has been subjected to a massive campaign of intimidation, much of which is being orchestrated by the paid lobbyists for the government of the Northern Marianas.”

Sen. Frank Murkowski's reform bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent. But that's as far as it went. The bill died in the House. “We passed it again, and still nothing was done.”

Nothing was done because Jack Abramoff - and the Marianas' garment industry - had Tom DeLay in their pockets. When Willie Tan met with a human rights activist posing as a clothing buyer from New York, a hidden camera recorded their conversation. Tan was confident he had nothing to worry about.

Tan: “…because Tom DeLay will never let it go.

You're sure?

Tan: Sure. You know what Tom told me? He said, "Willie, if they elect me the majority whip, I'll make the schedule of the Congress. And I'm not going to put it on the schedule." So Tom told me, "Forget it, Willie. No chance."

Willie Tan would contribute $650,000 to DeLay's "favorite non-profit," the U.S. Family Network, with its stated mission of restoring America's “moral fitness”. Furthermore, the Abramoff team persuaded the Bush White House in 2001 to intervene and fire Allen Stayman, who had advocated reforms in the Northern Mariana Islands that Mr. Abramoff opposed.

"We pulled the plug on him," announced one White House email. They got rid of Allen Stayman, and those workers in the Marianas remained at the mercy of Willie Tan and his ilk. No high-level Republicans raised the issue of forced abortions imposed on these exploited women.

There are those who would argue that DeLay, among the many high Republican mucky-mucks who traveled to this island, was ignorant of the conditions of the indentured women, who were being sexually exploited by their “jailers”. But really, who in that position of power could be so naïve as to not suspect that this situation was enforced? And with anti-abortion as the lynchpin of the Republican Party agenda, why was this not pursued?

The real Republican hierarchy has no more inclination than Tom DeLay to oppose abortion. The GOP uses anti-abortion as a “wedge issue” to motivate passionate foot soldiers to their cause. Anybody who believes that Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich or Ralph Reed, for that matter, cares about abortion probably also believes in fairies---or that Sarah Palin sits at home at night, stewing over unwed, teenage mothers. While preaching “pro-life” and churning up as much anger and demagoguery as possible, they know that overturning Roe-vs-Wade would destroy the Party.

For those who would impose “morality” into the issue (their morality, always), consider that Christians don’t bother to claim that abortion violates the teachings of Jesus. Somehow they seem to “just know that it’s wrong.” From a moral consideration how could any person or group impose forced carriage to term of a baby born to a poor, teen-aged mother from the ghetto, likely to bear a “crack baby”, requiring enormous, perhaps life-long public services? The only “moral” position a non-hypocrite who denied abortion to this woman would take is to assume personal, perhaps lifetime financial responsibility for the child. Instead, these crusaders deny poor women birth control and family planning options (“just say no”), then insist that public services in the form of long-term welfare be denied to these needy people. Good Christians? That’s a bad joke.

Hence, to our concerned friend, we say that actually both parties appear to be concerned over reducing unwanted pregnancies. The Democrats’ plan focuses on women’s issues: equal rights, health services, education, birth control and family planning. The Republicans use deprivation of services, along with sanctimony, intimidation and fear…oh yes, “Just say ‘No’”.

Ironically, GOP focus on the religious aspect of the issue harkens back to the earlier roots of Christianity when people were motivated by guilt and fear, fear of God and fear of judgment. Now we are to fear bands of aroused Republicans.

Jackson Dave is a staff writer for Robbinsense