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Wednesday, November 01, 2000
I never liked Ralph Nader much, but couldn't put my finger on the reason. Now, based on his behavior in this presidential campaign, I finally know what it is.
For a guy so intent on being right, he doesn't seem too concerned about wronging the very causes he's spent a lifetime espousing.
At the moment, Mr. Incorruptible is so focused on his quixotic candidacy that he couldn't care less whether it throws the election to George W. Bush and costs American women their reproductive freedom. Apparently, he's perfectly happy to trade us all down the river in exchange for 5 percent of the vote and the matching federal funds that come with it.
Excuse me if I fail to see this as morally superior to the kind of special-interest pandering that Nader denounces on the part of the two major parties. If anything, it proves that even the "progressive" guy has his price -- and it's peachy with him if the entire female population has to pay it.
The full force of his disregard for this basic freedom was on view in Nader's TV interview with Judy Woodruff.
She pressed him hard on issues from the environment to health care, asking if his positions weren't closer to Al Gore's than to Bush's. He insisted the other two were virtual clones of each other and sloughed off his role as a spoiler with the rote rejoinder: "Only Al Gore can beat Al Gore."
That, by the way, is partially true. Gore has been his own worst enemy in certain respects during this campaign. Nevertheless, in a race this close, Nader's presence threatens to throw some key states into the Republican column. He knows it, too, protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.
Finally, Woodruff came to the Supreme Court and Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 decision that established the constitutional right to abortion.
Given that the current court balance is 5-4 on many hot-button issues, and given that the next president might appoint as many as three Supreme Court justices, wouldn't Bush be likely to pick conservatives who would tip the scales the other way? And doesn't that bother him as a longtime advocate of individual rights?
Scare tactics, Nader said derisively. It's not going to happen, he said. The right to abortion is too well established.
Then he dropped the bomb.
"Even if Roe v. Wade is reversed, that doesn't end it. It just reverts it back to the states."
Ah yes, the states, those great defenders of individual rights and liberties.
The states, that had to be dragged feet first out of the Jim Crow era leaving fingernail marks in the dirt.
The states, that would require schools to teach creationism as science and evolution as heresy.
The states, that would force children to listen to Bible verses every morning as a condition of attending public school, and to hell with their own religious beliefs or traditions.
The states, that would require girls raped by their fathers to get parental consent before having an abortion.
The states, that would stop funding all family health clinics that provide mammograms and pap smears to poor women unless they slap an abortion referral gag order on their doctors.
The states, that would replace a woman's judgment about her own body and her own medical care with the judgment of overwhelmingly male legislators who would faint en masse at the prospect of undergoing labor and delivery themselves.
Yes indeed, Mr. Nader, the prospect of returning abortion rights to the states inspires us all with confidence.
Speaking as someone who remembers the bad old days of illegal abortions, I do not appreciate this dismissive attitude toward something so fundamental, and yet so tenuous.
It's not hard to understand Nader's attraction for the young, the idealistic and the fed up. The prospect of a Green Party using federal matching funds to spread its progressive message is very appealing.
But Nader fans should think about this. Catholic bishops are urging the faithful to cast their votes on the single issue of abortion. Would they do that if they didn't think Roe was vulnerable?
Yet here comes Mr. Integrity, willing to hand this election to Bush and set reproductive freedom back 28 years in exchange for getting his party onto the map. What's so bleeping progressive about that?
Sally Kalson's e-mail is:skalson@post-gazette.com