"Rare" was a political line designed to appeal to choice-conflicted voters... [View all]

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Sun Nov 10, 2013, 01:02 PM - Edit history (2)

Bill Clinton's famous, "abortion should be safe, legal and rare," was formulated to appeal to mildly anti-choice voters—people who are not entirely comfortable with choice but afraid that prohibition would be unfair or unjust in some cases. The reason it was effective in appealing to those mildly anti-choice voters is that it is mildly anti-choice.

You can substitute "grudgingly pro-choice" if you prefer... or even, "willing to be choice agnostic." As a very pro-choice person, I view choice agnosticism as effectively mildly anti-choice, but if one wants to posit a theoretical neutral stance so be it.

When Obama said that he is pro-choice because he "trusts" women to take the decision seriously it was also an appeal to mildly anti-choice voters. Again, it was a mildly anti-choice sentiment.

These things are intentionally mildly anti-choice lines, so it makes no sense to try to unpack them as something other than what they were designed to be.


Both presume that when a woman exercises her option to terminate a pregnancy there is potentially something morally objectionable going on, but it can sometimes be excused by circumstance and, being borderline, is best left up to the woman.

Essentially that abortion is like war... a bad thing that is sometimes necessary and thus justifiable.

I disagree with that stance, but those lines were not crafted to appeal to me.

The stance views regulation of abortion a borderline issue and thus abets or encourages "sensible" regulation. It is, however, not literally anti-choice up front. It is also not at all "pro life," in what that term means politically... it is not really a coherent political view either way.

The most effective appeals to American "middle" voters are often internally conflicted in some way because the voters themselves are internally conflicted in some way and/or want to have both sides of what they find to be a difficult issue.